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Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

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191–200 of 284 posts

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#191

I'm happy with it. Here's a tip for anyone with docker compatibility problems: If you add `platform: "linux/amd64"` to your docker-compose (there's also a similar command for Dockerfile iirc), it just gets the x64 images and emulates those. There is emulation overhead of course, but it's not perceivable in my experience, compared to running native images.

> : If you add `platform: "linux/amd64"` to your docker-compose (there's also a similar command for Dockerfile iirc), it just gets the x64 images and emulates those.

I've never seen docker crash until I did this.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#193
If this were a Debian machine, you could probably just crossgrade your existing amd64 install to arm64 and everything would continue to work. The process would involve qemu user mode until you move the SSD over to the new machine. Once the work of the Asahi Linux folks reaches Debian this will likely be possible for M1 machines, can they accept non-Apple SSDs?

https://wiki.debian.org/CrossGrading https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/user/ https://asahilinux.org/

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#194
post #152

There are many comments here that goes: "we had to do all sorts of configuration for this to work, but it's been great and we like it". As a primarily Linux user these feel like very familiar stories. It's kinda refreshing to hear those stories from mac users. Maybe we are not so different after all.

Mac-using devs are mostly Linux-using devs who prefer a non-free distro ;)

Or work at a company where Linux isn't possible.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is interesting how much impact GitHub has had by not having Apple Silicon support Putting on my tin-foil hat for a sec: GitHub is owned by Microsoft, who would really stand to benefit from slowing down Apple Silicon adoption a bit...

Alternative theory: Apple doesn't offer an M1 server. Github doesn't offer an M1 build server because M1 servers don't exist.

You can't cross compile on an x86?

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#196

At least some aspects of this issue are getting better as we speak. The latest Mac OS (in beta) supports virtualizing ARM Linux but also enables the ARM Linux system to use Apple's speedy Rosetta 2 x86 binary compiler and JIT compiler to run x86 programs within the ARM Linux VM. Based on descriptions, it seems that the rest of the hypervisor VM framework has also matured substantially this release. https://developer.…

I have benchmarked x86 on ARM Linux VM with Rosetta, and while Geekbench 5 shows similar performance between ARM and x86 version (for both single and multi core), this does not translate to the actual real world use cases.

When benchmarking x86 and ARM containers, our application seems to be around ~5x slower with x86-rosetta, and similarly can be observed for mysql-server or just doing `apt install`.

This is still significantly better than using qemu emulation, but it's not really usable in our case.

I've also encountered segmentation faults when running x86 `npm` inside Docker, so couldn't even install packages, but didn't dig further as to what's the cause.

(Note: I've created a simple macOS app using Virtualization framework, enabled Rosetta, and loaded Ubuntu Focal. I've installed the latest version of Docker, which automatically used `rosetta` when encountering x86 executables. Maybe this setup is not ideal.)

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#197
post #189
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not that far from the reality. It’s essentially like using a Linux with really good graphical UI, ecosystem/3rd party integrations that just works and fully supported stellar hardware. After all, macOS is certified Unix and Linux is Unix-like.

As a Linux user who has run a Mac daily for work before, I don't really feel this at all. To me, the core of the Linux experience consists mostly of things that are not part of macOS: - uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software - GNU coreutils and related utilities (sed, grep, find, etc.) - good filesystems - 'root is root'; no policy or other bullshit restricting what root…

If it was the exactly same thing it would have been called Linux :)

You can bend the experience the way you like, you don't have to use it as-is. For example, homebrew can take care of the few of the complaints here.

By the way, I thought that apps stopping working randomly was a Linux feature? Then you dive in to to fix it, not really an experience I miss.

Also, hunting down software for Ubuntu 14.04 or 18.04 because something that works for one doesn't work for the other is a Linux experience. Often you don't have software that simply works on "Linux", you need to find it for specific distro and even specific distro version or compile it from source. The compiling from source often means you need to install the tooling and libraries for that specific version. Then you will have distro and version specific instructions to install, configure and run the thing.

Linux is a horrible experience for people who see their computer as tools and don't really like to manage it and want to spend their energy on using that tool to do other things(like designing apps, studying some data, making videos etc).

Anyway, it boils down to your preferences.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#198

For now I'm ignoring it, I'm usually about two to three years behind the curve and by then the bugs have typically been ironed out. I won't be running macOS anyway, but will wait until a fully supported version of Debian is out there that uses all of the peripherals properly. They call it the bleeding edge for a reason and I see no reason to spend extra effort that isn't driven by an immediate need. I like tech, I ca…

> I'm usually about two to three years behind the curve

This makes so much sense now for many workflows. I no longer complain about my computers being slow so I don't even think of upgrading, and if something's annoying it's mostly about software rather than hardware anyway, so no point in upgrading, although the M1 seems to have convinced a lot of people otherwise. Looking forward to adopt this new tech... in 3-5 years or so.

This also makes it cheaper to upgrade through second-hand device, just stay one or two models behind.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#199

For now I'm ignoring it, I'm usually about two to three years behind the curve and by then the bugs have typically been ironed out. I won't be running macOS anyway, but will wait until a fully supported version of Debian is out there that uses all of the peripherals properly. They call it the bleeding edge for a reason and I see no reason to spend extra effort that isn't driven by an immediate need. I like tech, I ca…

I'm in exactly the same boat. I'd love the quality of the hardware, but only if my current software experience (I'm on Debian) is not degraded. Let's see...

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the M1/ARM migration?

#200
post #152

There are many comments here that goes: "we had to do all sorts of configuration for this to work, but it's been great and we like it". As a primarily Linux user these feel like very familiar stories. It's kinda refreshing to hear those stories from mac users. Maybe we are not so different after all.

Mac-using devs are mostly Linux-using devs who prefer a non-free distro ;)

My company gave me a choice between a Thinkpad running Windows and a Macbook. So yeah, of course I chose the MB.
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