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Welcome to the M1 Windows project

amarioguy.github.io

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Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#101

Post by amarioguy »

zeusk wrote: post #80
boardwaalk wrote: post #52

I’d frankly be surprised if you were able to muster the talent/willpower for something like this. 1. Most of the people able to do this sort of thing probably work in Linux/FreeBSD/etc land. 2. You’re really working doubly against the tide here. You have proprietary stuff on the Mac and on the Windows side. 3. (Personal opinion) Dear God that sounds like a lot of work for something that is a fairly unfriendly experie…

I work on the NT kernel and DirectX, I'll definitely take a look at this over the weekend.

hey, I'm the person embarking on the project, thanks for checking it out!

one of the big reasons I started this project is that I've really been wanting to work on a project that deals with bootloader and kernel level code, and doing Windows bringup on the M1 seemed like a really interesting thing to tackle.

While initial progress might be slow, it is indeed happening, I'm planning to post an update tonight actually, but I realize you're busy so feel free to check the website whenever you have a free moment. (It's basic I know i'm not a web person lol)

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#102

Post by jhgb »

emptysongglass wrote: post #84
roblabla wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true up to a certain point. ARM is a very weird target, because a lot of standardized stuff we take for granted in x86/PC land aren't standardized on ARM. In particular, take the Interrupt Controller: x86 has a standard for it (well, technically has two, the PIC and APIC). The "standard" in ARM-land is the GICv3 or GICv4, but many different CPU vendors have their own. Apple has the "Apple Interrupt Contro…

This part is why I hope x86 has a long life ahead of it. Everybody and their dog have their own standard for things in ARM-land.

One can hope that RISC-V in the future will not follow ARM's past mistakes.

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#103

Post by oofbey »

jokoon wrote: post #10

Can't microsoft work on this instead? I don't get it.

Microsoft and Apple are traditional enemies. Microsoft has no reason to make Apple's hardware more attractive to customers.

The thing I don't get is why a consumer would want this. You want an _extremely expensive_ windows laptop. I guess the hope would be that the battery life is worlds better than anything you'd get in standard windows-land. But in reality battery life optimization requires paying careful to the devices and their drivers -- e.g. when parts of the system shut down because they're not in use. Not easy for a project like this.

So I'd sadly guess you end up with an expensive windows laptop with battery life comparable to a standard windows laptop. But you get that nice minimal Apple industrial design. :shrug:

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#104

Post by amarioguy »

fold3 wrote: post #14

Do you think it would eventually be possible to run amd64 programs on it (like rosetta2 but for Microsoft Windows?) The main feature of Windows is legacy compatibility and that is perhaps why arm Windows doesn't seems to gain much traction. Eventually I wonder if this project could be helpful to run wine on asahi linux, which would be awesome.

Project developer here, Windows actually has a x64 compatibility layer now for ARM64 systems in general, so any ARM64 Windows device should be able to run x64 apps (granted the performance penalty is worse than Rosetta since Rosetta relies on Apple SoCs actually implementing small slices of x86 (memory ordering model for instance) which isn't true for any Qualcomm SoC at the moment.)

The problem with x64 on arm64 is no longer if it's possible, but rather the performance penalty. As for whether I'll try to make a Rosetta-like compat layer using the hardware optimizations: not sure yet, I have bigger fish to fry before I get there.

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#105

Post by stevewatson301 »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #100
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, Microsoft seems to be moving towards: Windows as "just another Linux distribution" with a backwards compatibility layer. Previous Step: Linux compatibility layer on Windows. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install Current Step: Get DirectX to be first-class on Linux. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsof... Next Steps: Get the Windows GUI + Win32 APIs + backwards compa…

Are those final two steps (next, final) pure speculation on your part? I'd be surprised if Windows threw out NT and moved to Linux kernel, and yet at the same time, it sounds like a great idea IMO (WSL2 + Docker is already a great experience for software development).

Not the parent commenter but this isn’t as far fetched as it seems. Since much is abstracted by the Win32 and other APIs, they could write something to do exactly this.

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#106

Post by tobylane »

amarioguy wrote: post #87

hey, OP here, figured i'd clarify some things about this project: 1) yes, I realize this is going to be way harder than it seems, but I'm actually going to do my best to hopefully get a good user experience out of this and I'm easily preparing for this to be a multi-year effort, but I'm not going to give up right at the gate 2) Custom HALs were actually an option, up until very recently, since as of Windows 10, versi…

I’m interested in Windows VMs that have minimal overhead/maximum speed. As far as I understand that’s done by it being installed as native to the hardware as the native OS, but with generic drivers. Roughly what % of the work for running Windows on M1 is running Windows in a VM on M1?

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#107

Post by hoistbypetard »

behnamoh wrote: post #68
reaperducer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers Apple is a device maker. I wonder if Apple could buy a license from Microsoft. I'd like to see either Apple or Microsoft officially support Windows on the M-series machines. Not because I give fig one about Windows. But I'd like to see the chaos that follows. The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.

> The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up. There is no OS industry anymore. What's left is OS's that ship telemetry and ads to customers (both Apple and MS do this). Linux-based OS's made a lot of progress, but still they're not ready for mass adoption.

I have a pretty good handle on what ads and telemetry MS ships. What ads and telemetry does Apple ship to their customers?

Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project

#109

Post by tobylane »

vlunkr wrote: post #79
sumy23 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there should be a common etiquette rule on HN where if you don't care about a particular project / technology / initiative that you skip commenting and move on. For example, your comment says that this initiative will not work out. Should there be a debate whether or not it's theoretically possibly for this to work out logistically? What is the value in that? Even if there is a convincing argument that th…

They didn't say they aren't interested in the idea, they just expressed skepticism. > Should there be a debate whether or not it's theoretically possibly for this to work out logistically? What is the value in that? Certainly if you're going to work on this you'd like to know if it's just a dead end.

You’ll only know by doing it. It is especially blind because, as you say, it’s bringing two black boxes together. It’s a sufficiently major point of interest to such a large number of people that I hope people feel motivated to try.
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