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Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

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Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#141

Post by deergomoo »

kllrnohj wrote: post #127
OldHand2018 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone needs 32GB then they need 32GB. The M1 is Apple’s low-end chip, currently available only on their cheapest computers. It’s like complaining that a Corolla can’t keep up with a Ferrari on a race track. The most charitable interpretation is that the person doesn’t understand the market position of the two items.

Apple brands one of these machines as a "Pro" system and previously offered 32Gb in that model's option range. The person isn't the one that's failing to understand the market position of the two items, Apple is the one that failed to brand it appropriately. It should have been a Macbook Air & Macbook, not a Macbook Pro. Although realistically at this point "Pro" has lost nearly all meaning in Apple's lineup. It's li…

> Apple brands one of these machines as a "Pro" system and previously offered 32Gb in that model's option range.

They still do. The Intel, 4-port, 13” MacBook Pro is still available, and can be configured with 32GB of RAM. I don’t think it would be a sensible purchase at this point though.

That 2-port Pro has no reason to exist IMO. Even on Intel it used a chip with a TDP closer to the Air than the 4-port models; now on ARM they’re using the exact same part. Yeah it has a fan but most workloads will never turn the thing on.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#142

Post by aodaki »

shadeslayer wrote: post #131

Hi! Virgl3D developer here. Could you please open a MR with your patches so we can look into integrating them into master?

Thank you for your work & reply. I already submitted some and a few were merged and one is in review.

The other patches are not submitted yet because they require a little change for Epoxy, which is not merged yet, or I'm being lazy. Maybe I should open a MR as a RFC.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#143

Post by aodaki »

shadeslayer wrote: post #133
aodaki wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virgil 3D renderer provides some desktop GL emulation, so it is still somewhat usable. But a serious application expecting desktop GL would see glitches. My recommendation is to use Wayland, and to play serious games on macOS (although such games are not available on Linux AArch64 anyway...)

Virgl3D should support emulating GL on GLES usecases. If you're seeing issues, please open bug reports on https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer/-/issues and we can try and look into them :)

Virgil 3D does good enough for my workload. I saw some problems in GLES backend support but they are minor and I have already written patches for them.

However, as feature_list in src/vrend_renderer.c shows, some features are unavailable and cannot be emulated. It is good enough but not perfect (and I think it is reasonable.)

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#144

Post by aodaki »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #90
aodaki wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Frame rate heavily depends on workload. For me, it is completely fine. I just develop some softwares with little graphics load, and use Web applications and watch some videos. You have no luck here if you are going to play modern games, but modern proprietary game engines do not support AArch64 Linux anyway. It would be difficult time for Linux desktop if other PC vendors migrate to AArch64.

It’s still a really large discrepancy. I would guess something is broken somewhere. What is the webgl frame rate on native Mac? Have you tried running those webgl demos with chromium?

You can see native Mac demo at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezvQPREjN1s

Note that I haven't really optimized it yet. Certainly there should be low-hanging fruits, but I don't dare to get them as it is good enough for me as GNOME is no longer laggy and I know some overheads cannot be eliminated.

If I have to do graphics-intensive workload, I would simply run it on macOS or buy another accelerator as M1 is not the best performant graphics accelerator in the market anyway.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#145

Post by brokenmachine »

skohan wrote: post #69
OldHand2018 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone needs 32GB then they need 32GB. The M1 is Apple’s low-end chip, currently available only on their cheapest computers. It’s like complaining that a Corolla can’t keep up with a Ferrari on a race track. The most charitable interpretation is that the person doesn’t understand the market position of the two items.

I’m just asking what would be a use case where you would actually need this

Virtual Machines.

Or a web browser with a lot of tabs.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#146

Post by mark_l_watson »

lars-b2018 wrote: post #99
mark_l_watson wrote: post #70

I like the attitude of author of this gist. Just make it work. My own practical practice is to use both a very fine System76 Linux laptop and also a super fast, if constrained, M1 MacBook Pro. Depends on what I am doing, or sometimes just what I feel like using. To be perfectly open though, I had considered switching to just using Linux until the M1 was released. The thing that held me back was spending $3500 on a co…

I use Common Lisp daily on macOS and Linux, but use SBCL and Emacs with Sly. Never tried out a commercial implementation so I cannot compare to Emacs and SBCL. Are they worth the money vs. the open source tools?

I use LispWorks proprietary UI library CAPI, otherwise all of my code is portable.

SBCL and Emacs are great, use them often, also.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#147

Post by pjmlp »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #121
lars-b2018 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Common Lisp daily on macOS and Linux, but use SBCL and Emacs with Sly. Never tried out a commercial implementation so I cannot compare to Emacs and SBCL. Are they worth the money vs. the open source tools?

How could they be worth it? Vendor lock-in has a huge cost IMO. You're going to have to keep paying for these insanely expensive licenses for years, maybe decades?

If one wants to use Lisp as the Lisp Machines/Interlisp-D allowed for, only the commercial versions offer such experience.

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#148

Post by erwincoumans »

seisvelas wrote: post #7
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.

It could be related to how many cpu's you allocate for the vm. I use 1 single cpu, and networking is extremely fast, very low ping times. (mainly usr the headless server version, no x11)

Re: Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in Practice

#149

Post by immigrantsheep »

skohan wrote: post #57
_gqhf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good for you and I'm glad you're happy but for some of us, considering the work with are doing, sometimes even 32GB is not really enough. Different people, different needs.

What do you need 32GB for? Video editing? ML training on CPU? I have to imagine this is a minority.

Run and compile very big C++/.net applications and big scenes in Unreal Engine and Houdini.

edit: I love how I got downvoted because my work can't fit into a toy Mac M1

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