Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree • Hacker News Board

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#231

Post by hobonate » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:41 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #202

fxtentacle wrote: post #42

I sincerely hope that one day, Linux GUI land will receive similar amounts of work as the kernel. While it's great that we can boot it on pretty much every device out there, I would much prefer if it was a viable Windows alternative on a few devices instead. Just yesterday, I plugged an external screen into my Ubuntu laptop. And then I had to duck-duck for like an hour to figure out how to make the fonts large enough…

I've written this before, but it's not going to happen without a large amount of apps, that people actually want and can use. And that's not going to happen unless there's all the necessary tooling, especially for UI. mac/iOS and Windows have great support for building user-oriented applications. And then it still needs a centralized way to monetize the development work. And to get all that, you need a ton of paying…

There's already GTK and Qt. What more do you want?

> And then it still needs a centralized way to monetize the development work.

I disagree: once you put money into the equation, the quality of packages will go down as programmers try to shake as much money out of the users. Compare programs like MATLAB vs GNU Octave or Photoshop vs GIMP for example.

> And to get all that, you need a ton of paying users, not a bunch of freeloading tinkerers.

Do you really? I mean you are basically saying that the only way linux can compete is if it sacrifices most of what makes it good in the first place. I really doubt that users think "hmm today i'm going to pay for a bunch of crappy apps that each do some trivial thing for me while uploading my data to the cloud, then watch some ads, and then wade through a bunch of graphical menus to disable this one stupid feature I don't like, i love using iWinux this is so much better than other OS's".

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#232

Post by m463 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #57

strange_things wrote: post #20

This is very anecdotal but every single laptop I have bought in the last 10 years (4) worked perfectly out-of-the box with either Linux Mint or Ubuntu (which are the same on the inside). I only vaguely remember once I had to change some conf file for my trackpad to work after a dist update but that was it. Not sure why everyone in this thread is so hesitant about Linux on a laptop? It literally just works (tm) for me…

I feel like the pattern is that when you start to dig into people talking about their great experience with Linux on a laptop, you end up eventually getting them to admit that there are a lot of annoyances they’ve just resigned to living with

I think it's good to distinguish if the annoyances are:

- a limitation of the laptop

- a limitation of linux

- a configuration issue (limitation of time / person)

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#233

Post by zamadatix » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

marcan_42 wrote: post #117

Hi HN! I wrote an article about this initial support series and what it took to make things work properly on this machine: https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-febru... It still applies to what got merged; the past month was spent on clean-ups, fixes, and review feedback, but there are no major changes to the approach. This initial merge was quite complex as it has to touch a number of subsystems an…

Hey Marcan, really impressed with the progress it's been 100% worth the patreon sponsorship. I first ran into you back in the Wii hacking days and it's awesome to see you're still doing cool reverse engineering stuff after all this time :).

How are things looking on the "primary job goal" accounting for GitHub sponsors as well? Think you'll hit it this summer?

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#234

Post by m463 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

washadjeffmad wrote: post #203

peteretep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the pattern is that when you start to dig into people talking about their great experience with Linux on a laptop, you end up eventually getting them to admit that there are a lot of annoyances they’ve just resigned to living with

So we don't exclude them to make a point, that's also true for Mac and PC laptops. My XPS 15 wifi won't wake automatically after sleep on Windows. Wifi works perfectly on Linux, but there are things that don't work with the touchscreen in tablet mode on Fedora that I've been told work on Ubuntu. My T2 MacBooks are little nightmares sometimes, fans screaming during video meetings and crashing and draining battery inst…

Reinstalling a T2 machine can be a real cat and mouse game, especially if 2fa is involved.

  security = 1 / convenience

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#235

Post by fulafel » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:48 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #163

fulafel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret to the lightweight nature of Docker is that it just uses various namespacing, cgroup etc functionality provided by Linux with no virtualized OS kernel or hw virtualization mechanisms involved. (Yep you need ARM Docker images when running on ARM of course)

Do we really expect to see many Docker images published that are compiled for ARM? Sure, I expect to see base OS images, but I'd find it hard to believe that many people are going to take the time to cross-build and publish an arm64 version of their container image alongside their x86_64 version. I guess to some extent that might be generally useful, what with things like AWS's Graviton ARM processors, but I expect i…

Most people build their own images using CI/CD to their own registries when using containers in production [1]. You don't really otherwise know what is in them. And for on-laptop hacking it's just a docker build command.

[1]Especially now that public docker hub is ip rate limited to uselessness.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#236

Post by m463 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:49 PM UTC

strange_things wrote: post #20

This is very anecdotal but every single laptop I have bought in the last 10 years (4) worked perfectly out-of-the box with either Linux Mint or Ubuntu (which are the same on the inside). I only vaguely remember once I had to change some conf file for my trackpad to work after a dist update but that was it. Not sure why everyone in this thread is so hesitant about Linux on a laptop? It literally just works (tm) for me…

I remember I gave up on linux on a macbook once.

When I tried again ONE change made all the difference. reconfiguring the trackpad settings. I think before there were confusing click regions for different buttons. I think I changed to one-finger two-finger tap and it was like a different machine.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#237

Post by rvz » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:55 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #152

stepbeek wrote: post #88

Will this have an impact of tools that depend on linux like docker on mac? Maybe android emulation? If so, then I'm super excited for it. I'm using an m1 macbook air right now and it's the first compelling mac laptop for me since 2015. It's absolutely amazing. But for any workload that uses docker, my linux desktop is streets ahead.

Last time I checked, the Android Emulator running on Apple Silicon still has issues and isn't functionally as good as running it on an Intel Mac. There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year which will most certainly be more performant and optimised than the last generation. One of the several reasons why I stayed away fr…

Downvoters: So this is not true? Time to cut through the hype.

From [0] (From Preview)

  Known issues:
    Webview doesn't work
    No sound
    No device skins
    Video codecs not working
    32 bit ARM apps won't work
    Graphical glitches in some Vulkan apps
    Popup on startup about not being able to find the ADB path (ADB will still notice the emulator if you have it installed though)
    When building, it may be faster to start then cancel the Python triggered build and then reissue ninja -C objs install/strip versus letting the Python triggered build finish.

This is not even available in the stable release of Android Studio and is still not production ready. What is the point of using this when it clearly says it has missing functionality and is less functional than the android emulators found on macOS on Intel?

Once again, Another thing the M1 Macbook early adopter hype-squad omitted as they are still suffering from a sunken cost while I get a second or third generation Apple Silicon Macbook which will be much more optimised and by then the ecosystem will be better supported out of the box.

Now, explain yourself.

[0] https://androidstudio.googleblog.com/2020/12/android-emulato...

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#238

Post by monocasa » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC

skunkworker wrote: post #27

lostlogin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Intel simply fabbed their current designs on TSMC's 5nm process I think that ‘simply’ is the wrong word.

This, porting an architecture to another process is a multi-year process. In a Reddit AMA a week and a half ago they mentioned that the Rocket Lake backport took 2 years (from 10nm -> 14nm) [1]. That's quite a quick schedule and also on a very mature process. "The project final concept closed in Q1 2019 and we are launching today, so your estimate is right. Took us 2 years for RKL" https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comm…

A backport is harder FWIW. You have to go looking for gates to cut from the design.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#239

Post by hyperpl » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

apatheticonion wrote: post #39

I say this as a long-time PC user; MacBook laptop hardware is unrivaled in the PC space (trackpad, screen and keyboard - not pure price/performance). Having any distro running Gnome 40 with full gesture support would be seriously compelling for daily driving.

I would say the thinkpad keyboards are far superior to the Mac keyboards. Also the nub is much more usable to those that prefer it over the touchpad.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#240

Post by midrus » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

bradfa wrote: post #204

midrus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience at all. Thinkpads are the one with the best support, but there are always problems with high DPI screens, plugging external monitors, suspending some times works some times doesn't, battery drains really quick, the trackpad just barely works (gestures, hardly work). I feel the only people that say Linux works great on a laptop is because A) it manages to boot it and 2) Never used a MacBook Pro or si…

I've used Linux mostly on IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes. Overall I've had great success. Drivers work, suspend and hibernation work, plugging in monitors just works, wifi works, and battery life is decent enough. My current benchmark for laptop integration is a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that my previous employer bought me with Windows 10. It had a high-DPI screen and there were so many bugs it wasn't even funny. T…

I think the real advantage of Apple is that they're building both, the hardware and the software.

I'm very skeptical we will ever see such a good integration in the linux or windows world because there isn't any single entity doing both.

My ideal situation would be a Macbook Pro running linux to the perfection, or just having MacOS open source. I don't think I'm going to see any of this in my lifetime.