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Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

git.kernel.org

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Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#261

Post by bri3d »

rvz wrote: post #237
rvz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Saying "there is no point in getting an M1 MacBook" is probably what's garnering you the downvotes.

It's rough around the edges and whether or not your use case is successful is definitely very specific, but for my personal hobby projects (ECU reverse engineering), it's been an excellent tool. Ghidra worked out-of-the-box in Rosetta and natively with a few simple build system tweaks, tricore-qemu was trivial to build, Mono is working, VSCode is nicer than ever, and CrossOver Wine (in Rosetta) even works great for running Windows-only toolchains. The battery life and performance-to-price ratio on the Air have been amazing. And, some things like GMP are _ridiculously_ fast - a brute-force RNG -> RSA attack I developed is actually faster on the M1 MacBook Air than on my not-that-old Ryzen desktop.

I agree that the hype is tiring, and yes, some things like Android development don't work correctly yet - but not everyone is an Android developer, and dismissing the first-gen Apple Silicon products in a blanket way goes against the experience of many people. Thus, downvotes.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#262

Post by Ericson2314 »

jychang wrote: post #259
kelnos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that too. If you scroll through the entire diff, it looks like most of it is the removal of those seemingly unrelated things. I also see some changes to what looks like common arm64 code, which isn't guarded to check for Apple or non-Apple; it seemed strange to me that those changes would be ok. I wonder if both of those things are just changes from an unrelated merge that are showing up in this diff for no…

See here https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-febru... Mostly the section on IRQ.

Yeah all this is good not bad. This is an extremely high quality port in that general-purpose yak shaves were taking as necessary.

This is the exact opposite of your e.g. android phone "fork and abandon" where someone does the absolute minimal and ugliest hacks that upstream would never accept.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#263

Post by arnd »

LeonM wrote: post #122

Why does this merge also delete all sorts of (seemingly) unrelated files? Like the 'rocket' and 'Cyclades' drivers in this case.

Some of the Apple M1 changes went into the tty/serial driver tree that GregKH maintains. The actual platform code requires those changes, so we based the branch on top of that, and the top-level merge commit contains all of these.

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/... is the better commit to look at for the stuff that I just merged that was not already part of linux-next.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#264

Post by darekkay »

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…

> There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year

I've been hearing something similar when I got a PS4 in summer 2019. PS5 is still barely available, and I've had almost 2 years of gaming fun. To be fair, the PS4 didn't have as many rough edges back then. But "no point" is a generalization that isn't true for many people.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#265

Post by Ericson2314 »

It would be wonderful if someday some Pine64 device can take advantage of some of the stuff here. They will never get Apple chips of course, but some of general purpose cleanups I mean.

(Thinking back to the stuff in https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-febru...)

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#266

Post by nicoburns »

fulafel wrote: post #155
stepbeek wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'll still be a virtual machine? It'll just mean that there could be an ARM native virtual machine rather than one emulating x86.

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)

It does on linux. On macOS and windows it does still do this... but in a linux VM.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#267

Post by jgalar »

fps_doug wrote: post #180
jiofih wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet a dollar you’re conveniently forgetting a ton of little adjustments you’ve had to make, because they “are not complex at all” for you. Or all you do is use the browser.

You don't seem very confident, betting only a dollar. ;-) But honestly, just buy a Thinkpad and everything works out of the box. Yes, everything.

That's not true.

For example, the microphone of the X1 Carbon 7th generation still doesn't work out of the box. You need to blacklist a handful of kernel modules and edit your PulseAudio configuration to force the loading of an ALSA source hooked to the correct device ID.

The Arch wiki has an article cataloguing issues and workarounds (with various degrees of success) for every generation of the X1.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#268

Post by tediousdemise »

redm wrote: post #211

After reading articles last year on Linus insinuating it would be "unlikely" that Linux would appear on the M1 [1] [2], I drank the cool-aid and took that at face value. I guess I should have known better, just like nature, open source "finds a way". [1] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpost... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25216680 etc..

Yeah, Linus doesn’t know what he’s taking about half the time.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#269

Post by Skunkleton »

yellowapple wrote: post #63
Skunkleton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is that this is a different beast. Much of the hardware in Macs before the M1 was commodity hardware. Now it is all bespoke and undocumented. This is a big undertaking.

I mean, it's really just a case of being back to the good ol' days when Macs had PowerPC (or before then, m68k) processors. So if anything, I'd expect more success with this in the long run than with commodity x86 hardware, since it's a more-or-less new architecture rather than having to adapt an existing architecture to Apple-specific oddities. But yeah, short-term there's a bit of a barrier to entry. Once it's over…

I don’t think so. The CPU itself isn’t the big problem here. You can see basic support is already there. The challenge is all of the surrounding hardware.

I am not sure why would would expect better success with this processor than we have had with x86? Most PC hardware is directly supported by the OEM in Linux.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#270

Post by riquito »

redm wrote: post #211

After reading articles last year on Linus insinuating it would be "unlikely" that Linux would appear on the M1 [1] [2], I drank the cool-aid and took that at face value. I guess I should have known better, just like nature, open source "finds a way". [1] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpost... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25216680 etc..

We are very far from running your run-of-the-mill Linux distribution. Remember that there are no drivers yet either
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