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Linux Running on Apple M1

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Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#221

Post by dheera »

crubier wrote: post #150
arghwhat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use Thinkpads. I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn…

MacOS a coin toss and Linux being robust regarding drivers/hardware support on desktop? Are you talking about Hackintosh, or do we not live on the same planet?

I've had far less problems with Linux. Just an hour ago I was dealing with someone whose Roboteq motor controller wouldn't work in Windows or Mac without additional drivers but it's basically plug-and-play on Linux.

Yeah there are things Linux doesn't support but just don't buy them. The things that it does support generally don't require any driver installation.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#222

Post by SulfurHexaFluri »

kelnos wrote: post #208
oblio wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the advice is to buy a second hand one 5 years from now?

Maybe. But consider that a non-touchbar 2016 MacBook Pro, which is turning 5 years old this year, still doesn't flawlessly run Linux. And that doesn't even have the custom Apple T1/T2 chip. The ARM hardware will be much harder to deal with.

Macbooks almost never have seamless wifi experiences on linux. At best you will have to manually install a wifi blob and for the newer ones the advice is to just get a wifi usb.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#223

Post by floatboth »

danudey wrote: post #200
tw04 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. Based on...? Apple is pretty straightforward: they support hardware until they don't. And they're quite explicit about ending support and it's almost always a major release. You might be able to hack support after that, but I've literally never had it be a "toss-up" about when Apple was or wasn't supporting their own hardware. As for Windows... I've got a 10 year old 26…

I'm a huge apple fanboy, but there are still issues that crop up on macOS, like it or not. My favourite example is one that the OP mentioned - not supporting multiple stream transport on Displayport. For those who aren't familiar, Displayport MST is a feature that allows multiple streams over one Displayport cable. Some monitors support this directly, meaning you can have Macbook -> Display1 -> Display2 rather than M…

Huh, I've only ever heard of MST in the context of too-high-res displays o_0 Never heard of raw DP supporting daisy chaining, I thought only Thunderbolt does that.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#224

Post by floatboth »

vetinari wrote: post #186
Skunkleton wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that doesn't mean much because they're actually running Linux forks Many of these Arm SoCs are running linux forks because there are some terrible baked in drivers, and no spec associated with them. Still, that is a step ahead of the M1 as there are at least drivers that don't have to be decompiled and reverse engineered.

These drivers are baked, even if there are specs for them. The thing is, that these SoCs have no PCIe or other enumerable bus. You (=your kernel) must know what hardware it is running on and which drivers to load without being able to ask the hardware, what is really present. One wrong POKE and the entire system can hang. And that is on top of the problem, how to boot in the first place. There is not such thing as UE…

> Every single one is a special snowflake with its own special way to boot

Eh, the majority of embedded crap comes with U-Boot (sometimes built without EFI support but always with Linux image support, at least).

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#225

Post by floatboth »

duskwuff wrote: post #210
StillBored wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the about price of a mac mini: https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-compute... You get upgradable ram, a PCIe slot for your favorite GPU/etc, and actual mainline linux support sufficient to boot most random linux distros (ok the onboard 10G+ nic might not work without patches). Its not the fastest machine around (A72s) but there are 16 of them, so it does a decent job of building ARM software, and…

Well... for the price of a Mac Mini, and some, you get a bare motherboard with a small amount of onboard storage (64G eMMC). No RAM, no video, no power supply or case. And it's not like you can just throw an off-the-shelf GPU in, either; neither nVidia nor AMD graphics cards work on ARM devices -- so if you're expecting something you can use as a desktop, you're in for a hard time.

Both amdgpu and nouveau work absolutely fine on ARM devices, why wouldn't they?!

In fact I made the FreeBSD port of amdgpu work on my Macchiatobin :) Absolutely smooth experience btw, video output works even in UEFI (it actually runs the GOP driver from the card in QEMU), amdgpu works perfectly (played vkquake, supertuxkart, openmw, etc.)

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#226

Post by shmerl »

midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

I don't see any reason to do it from practical standpoint, but to do it for fun - why not.

If you want something working, I'd also not recommend using hardware from someone like Apple.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#227

Post by floatboth »

plauribre wrote: post #189
midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

Apple's poor support for Linux on Mac hardware may reverse if the company gains data center ambition for the M1. Partnering with a cloud provider (maybe Microsoft?) to deliver seamless Linux deployment on M1 would be significant...

Microsoft already has a good partner in Ampere, a company fully dedicated to servers and standards.

Apple clearly doesn't seem interested. The M1 is just a scaled-up version of the iDevice SoCs. From the reverse engineering we've seen so far, it is extremely clear that not even a single step towards any standardization was taken. It's very much the ad-hoc hodgepodge of embedded crap companies build when they only care about their own complete product and don't allocate any budget towards any "refactoring" that doesn't directly benefit the end product.

They use some ancient Samsung UART for debug (because the first iPhones used a Samsung SoC?), old P.A. Semi I2C controller, the Synopsys DesignWare USB 3 controller (just like some random cheap Allwinner/Rockchip/etc), and here's the fucking kicker, a custom Apple interrupt controller and a custom IOMMU too. These probably predate GICv2/3 at least. But there was no reason for them to switch to the standard Arm GIC and SMMU so they didn't >_<

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#228

Post by StillBored »

duskwuff wrote: post #210
StillBored wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the about price of a mac mini: https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-compute... You get upgradable ram, a PCIe slot for your favorite GPU/etc, and actual mainline linux support sufficient to boot most random linux distros (ok the onboard 10G+ nic might not work without patches). Its not the fastest machine around (A72s) but there are 16 of them, so it does a decent job of building ARM software, and…

Well... for the price of a Mac Mini, and some, you get a bare motherboard with a small amount of onboard storage (64G eMMC). No RAM, no video, no power supply or case. And it's not like you can just throw an off-the-shelf GPU in, either; neither nVidia nor AMD graphics cards work on ARM devices -- so if you're expecting something you can use as a desktop, you're in for a hard time.

That board is pretty close to the same experience you would get with a random x86 mITX board (once you flash the UEFI firmware on it). It has a m.2 nvme slot, sata, etc. Its one of the lower cost standards based arm boards.

So, yes you have to bring some storage, ram, ps and case. But one can cheap out and probably get all three for And as another commenter points out, yes fairly common GPUs tend to work in it. Its not perfect, for that you have to spend more, but the time you will spend fighting with the mac mini+linux is going to be worth the difference.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#229

Post by sneak »

Kwpolska wrote: post #176
sneak wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first week that XNU ran on ARM, it didn't have very good hardware support either.

Apple has all the documentation needed to write drivers for all the custom hardware found in an iPhone (the original XNU-on-ARM device) or in an M1 Mac. The Asahi volunteers and Corellium don’t, they will need to do much more work, including reverse-engineering. So, what’s your point?

My point is that throwing up one's hands and saying "it's hopeless and it sucks!" literally the first day linux has been brought up on a new board is... premature.

Yes, it will have to be RE'd. Yes, that takes time.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#230

Post by floatboth »

ogre_codes wrote: post #118
midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

> A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight. There are Mac desktops as well. That said, I'd say the list of mandatory components on a laptop is: - Decent GPU Drivers - Workable power management with sleep/ awake - Trackpad (this should be straight forward) The webcam, and brightness controls are s…

Most Windows laptops thankfully use Intel Wi-Fi. Apple is unfortunately completely married to Broadcom. There are open drivers for Broadcom Wi-Fi, at least not-the-newest ones, but they do suck.
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