Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#1

Post by aodaki » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice
gist.github.com

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#2

Post by rubatuga » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:55 AM UTC

This is amazing, and I'm not sure if I will end up using the M1 port of Linux if QEMU is good enough.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#3

Post by cozzyd » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:56 AM UTC

I imagine memory will be quite constrained here for a lot of M1 systems.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#4

Post by erwincoumans » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

Ubuntu Desktop (arm64) works pretty well under Parallels in MacOS on M1 (hypervisor).

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#5

Post by jbverschoor » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

Can’t you just run X11 on the Mac and Linux in a vm?

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#6

Post by CyberRabbi » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #5

Can’t you just run X11 on the Mac and Linux in a vm?

You could but then you would still be in the MacOS desktop environment. I think he doesn’t just want to run Linux applications but instead wants the Linux desktop environment.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#7

Post by seisvelas » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

erwincoumans wrote: post #4

Ubuntu Desktop (arm64) works pretty well under Parallels in MacOS on M1 (hypervisor).

i agree but 'pretty' is the operative word. Sometimes the network gets suuuper slow inside the vm for me and i still have no idea why.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#8

Post by pengaru » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

cozzyd wrote: post #3

I imagine memory will be quite constrained here for a lot of M1 systems.

> I imagine memory will be quite constrained here for a lot of M1 systems.

No worries, the storage is fast enough to stand-in for RAM via swap! You always wanted your RAM to be a wear item, right?

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#9

Post by perryizgr8 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 7:07 AM UTC

Why is this such a big issue? Can't you install any ARM Linux distro from a flash drive? Does that not work? I get that device drivers may not be perfect for any new laptop, but it should mostly work.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#10

Post by x3sphere » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #9

Why is this such a big issue? Can't you install any ARM Linux distro from a flash drive? Does that not work? I get that device drivers may not be perfect for any new laptop, but it should mostly work.

There’s a lot of proprietary hardware inside the MacBook M1s. The only reason device drivers exist is thanks to reverse engineering efforts. For this reason, no you can’t just install any vanilla ARM distro and expect things to work.