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

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

#221

Post by ntauthority »

pxc wrote: post #189
mrtksn wrote: 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…

Even those points can be argued around in various ways, so they're not even that clear-cut.

> uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software

Every Linux distribution has its own package manager, so that somewhat fails on the 'uniform' point. Package management for system and apps being shared (comprehensive) is an arguable point as well, and 'robust' seems to not be the default on more traditional Linux distributions.

The approach seen in for example Fedora Atomic matches the macOS approach a lot more, including rollback and consistency, but also splitting the system image, overlays, and user apps.

> GNU coreutils

Not all Linux distributions have these, either, busybox distros seem fairly common these days (and offer most the popular switches you'd see with GNU utilities).

In addition, of course, the GNU utilities run under any UNIX-like, so if you do need any of the convenience switches you're used too, they exist anywhere as well.

Again, of course, subjective.

> good filesystems

APFS seems 'better' than the ext* default seen on most Linux distributions, and has had less of a history of 'random corruption' than early btrfs.

> 'root is root', ...

Red Hat-like distributions (and even Ubuntu) seem to by-default enable some kernel security module, which have the same effect.

The implicit UID 0 bypass is nasty for security.

> lots of .. terminal emulators

I'm not a picky terminal user, but macOS Terminal.app nowadays seems to match, say, gnome-terminal or Konsole quite well in behavior.

Perhaps it doesn't support some fancy feature set, but I'm not sure if the main DEs do either.

> some choice in desktop experience

Valid point. However, if you prefer something as uniform as the macOS experience, you can't get that on generic freedesktop Linux.

> popular apps don't just entirely stop working

Depends. The typical Linux distribution has a nasty ABI as well, often only guaranteeing source compatibility.

This is indeed often easier to work around even for binary-only Linux apps (on a multilib amd64 system, you can usually run some libc5 app from the late 90s fine. on macOS, this is 4 CPU architectures ago and you won't even stand a chance).

> pretty much everything is discoverable and configurable if you're determined

Same goes for macOS and even Windows. Reverse engineering is a thing that can be done with sufficient determination, and in many legislations has exemptions for these kinds of use cases.

macOS and Windows also offer symbol names for a fair amount of OS components, it's just perhaps a little more work than 'grep the source code for a flag'.

In the end, however, it's all a matter of tradeoffs and what you're used to (i.e. won't have to waste time learning before being able to get work done), and if you're used to something that varies from the default of any system, this is less and less likely with macOS or Windows.

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

#224

Post by ubercow13 »

pxc wrote: post #211
mrtksn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becaus…

> For example, homebrew can take care of the few of the complaints here. Not really. Homebrew doesn't manage the operating system (which I understand is a desirable kind of separation for some users), and it's also just not comparable to Linux package managers in its technical aspects. The result is that it's just not as reliable, predictable, fast, or complete as virtually any distro package managers on Linux. > By…

>The result is that it's just not as reliable, predictable, fast, or complete as virtually any distro package managers on Linux

I disagree, for example pacman will happily break your system if you have any third party packages or don't use it exactly as prescribed. Not all Linux package managers are perfect or even that good.

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

#225

Post by whynaut »

alsetmusic wrote: post #205
sircastor wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really think people should ignore bench scores and run the processes they need themselves. See what it feels like, and how comfortable you are with that. Benchmarks are good for bragging rights and maybe convincing over-zealous accounting to approve a purchase (but even then that’s probably not all there is to it.)

> […] I really think people should ignore bench scores and run the processes they need themselves. See what it feels like, and how comfortable you are with that. And how do people without disposable income judge?

When I didn’t have disposable income, I don’t remember worrying about the performance of things I couldn’t afford.

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

#226

Post by mmcnl »

I still have trouble figuring out how Docker works on M1 (I don't have one and I'm not sure it it meets my demands, infinite loop). Can I just pull a random image and expect Rosetta to do its thing without worrying? I can understand that 90% will work without issues, but it's always the remaining 10% that will suck up all of your time.

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

#227

Post by mmcnl »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #182

The 8GB M1 versions don't have enough RAM for a lot of dev work, doing pretty ordinary things created a lot of RAM pressure when I had one. I later bought Max with 64GB, and that has been brilliant. I gave up on the idea of using Docker almost immediately. Early on there were major issues if you were targeting x86-64 systems code in C++. A lot of common tooling was broken for months on end. Time has solved some of th…

Why did you give up Docker? How is that brilliant? Docker is brilliant, giving that up is not brilliant.

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

#228

Post by mmcnl »

dboreham wrote: post #129
nicoburns wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mainly seems to be Docker causing the problems. We run node.js apps, and all we had to do was update to the latest version node and a couple of dependencies (those with native modules). No app changes. We run macOS aarch64 locally and Linux x86 on production and have yet to have a single compatibility issue (and we run a staging environment that’s identical to prod, so if there was occasionally an issue it probabl…

To be fair: it's people using Docker that's the problem. For example expecting to be able to run an x86 container image on an aarm64 CPU. Docker is behaving perfectly in it's role of being Docker.

People using Docker are not the problem. That's a perfectly normal workflow. If M! doesn't support that, that's on Apple and not on the users.

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

#230

Post by sofixa »

mrtksn wrote: post #179
d3nj4l wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

> really good graphical UI

Honestly that's subjective. I preferred GNOME, but to each their own. There's too much flashiness for my taste, and some icons and UI just look like something for kids (big, bright, round).

> ecosystem/3rd party integrations

Eh. A big part of that ecosystem is paid for really basic features. The App Store requires an iCloud account to be used. That ecosystem also relies on various hacks to achieve things which are IMHO rather basic - like Karabiner which is a keylogger, just so you can do relatively basic key remapping. What's stopping Apple from saying keyloggers are no longer allowed in the next version, like how they broke all VPNs by deprecating the existing framework used by all of them? Also there are entire, sometimes paid, apps to do basic features the OS should support itself, like having a different scroll direction between the touchpad and mouse.

The hardware, in it's current iteration ( no butterfly keyboard), is very good. I don't particularly care about magsafe ( i keep knocking it off by mistake, which puts the device to sleep) or the giant touchpad that weirdly strains my palm when using it for prolonged periods of time, but those are purely personal. Can't wait to be able to run Linux on an M* Apple device, I might even buy one.

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