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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?

#241

Post by dboreham »

mmcnl wrote: post #228
dboreham wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people didn't understand what they were actually doing, and somehow believed that Docker is a magic wand that makes binaries for the wrong CPU run ok.

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

#242

Post by znpy »

Maursault wrote: post #233
pxc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> - uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software macOS uses Software Update to manage system packages, and AppStore to manage that world, and for everything else, MacPorts (if you care about your system homebrew is not an option). > - GNU coreutils and related utilities (sed, grep, find, etc.) macOS has a userland... you seriously can't find /usr/bin/sed in macOS? Seriously? >…

>> - 'root is root'; no policy or other bullshit restricting what root can do by default

> Always good to have unrestricted access to root for all those necessary privilege escalations. Security policy just gets in the way. Who has time to activate this and authenticate that?

On gnu/linux there’s SELinux for that, since 2001. Red Hat, that implements security very well, has had that enabled by default since forever basically.

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

#243

Post by znpy »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #170
needle0 wrote: post #161

Early reviews said that even the base 8GB RAM models were snappy, despite the small amount of RAM. I went in believing that, but turns out it was anything but. Maybe it was my specific usage (Firefox with tons of tabs, Electron apps open all the time) but it feels much more sluggish than my previous 2013 iMac. Next one I get is definitely going to have 16GB minimum, maybe 24GB.

If you don't have enough ram no processor can save you. And if you aren't running out of ram adding more won't help. The m1 isn't magic and I'm sure it does some things slower than Intel and some things faster. Maybe for your workload or is slower. For the workloads I run (rails apps, postgres) the m1 has almost identical performance to the Intel i9, but is more efficient in terms of battery life.

Apple does aggressive page-out to swap space.

Some months ago a guy had bricked its own MacBook by running data analysis tools all the day every day, until the ssd finally gave up (and you can’t change that in a macbook pro, it’s soldered).

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

#244

Post by znpy »

kccqzy wrote: post #141
danudey wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what part of docker is a security nightmare?

Dockerd is a daemon that runs with very high privileges and does too many things. People hate using "sudo docker" so they add themselves to the docker group. Now congratulations you are effectively running as root all the time.

There’s podman for that, it runs in rootless mode very well.

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

#245

Post by pxc »

Maursault wrote: post #233
pxc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> - uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software macOS uses Software Update to manage system packages, and AppStore to manage that world, and for everything else, MacPorts (if you care about your system homebrew is not an option). > - GNU coreutils and related utilities (sed, grep, find, etc.) macOS has a userland... you seriously can't find /usr/bin/sed in macOS? Seriously? >…

I'm surprised and kind of impressed by the level of vitriol in this comment, especially given the relatively narrow focus of the comment of mine it's replying to, which didn't really consider the merits of macOS itself so much as the differences that give using it a very different vibe from using Linux for people who are used to desktop Linux.

I'm not going to reply to the ‘substance’ of your post but I will say that nothing you've written here is in fact news to me. A more curious person, or maybe just a person who is having a better day, might wonder what they're missing rather than lose their shit, when someone writes something that surprises them on the internet.

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

#246

Post by kcartlidge »

rgovostes wrote: post #93

I got an M1 MacBook Pro from work last year, and expecting to pay the price for being an early adopter, I set up my previous Intel-based MBP nearby in case I ran into any problems or needed to run one of my existing virtual machines. (I do varied development projects ranging from compiling kernels to building web frontends.) In reality I have hardly turned on the Intel MBP at all since I got it. At all. Docker and VM…

> Curious to see what, if anything, is running under translation

There's a useful app called Silicon Info on Github (https://github.com/billycastelli/Silicon-Info) and also on the Mac App Store.

It adds a menu bar icon that switches according to the currently-focused app's architecture.

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

#247

Post by pxc »

znpy wrote: post #242
Maursault wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - uniform, comprehensive, robust package management, including for the system software macOS uses Software Update to manage system packages, and AppStore to manage that world, and for everything else, MacPorts (if you care about your system homebrew is not an option). > - GNU coreutils and related utilities (sed, grep, find, etc.) macOS has a userland... you seriously can't find /usr/bin/sed in macOS? Seriously? >…

>> - 'root is root'; no policy or other bullshit restricting what root can do by default > Always good to have unrestricted access to root for all those necessary privilege escalations. Security policy just gets in the way. Who has time to activate this and authenticate that? On gnu/linux there’s SELinux for that, since 2001. Red Hat, that implements security very well, has had that enabled by default since forever b…

Right, and SELinux, alternatives like AppArmor, and the various kernel hardening parameters available on Linux are things that get in your way relatively rarely. SIP is much more annoying.

And there are also configuration matters where rather than policy on what root is allowed to do per se, making things a pain in the ass is the security strategy. Like there's no way to non-interactively enable macOS' built-in SSH server without resorting to an enterprise endpoint management system.

Part of what gives the feeling that ‘root is not root’ on macOS is that you can't really administer macOS like a normal Unix system or like Linux. There's a bunch of things that require interactivity, or a cloud account logged in. There are files that are part of a normal POSIX filesystem which play a certain role in configuring Unix systems which are present on macOS, but literally just don't do anything anymore, in favor of some other format that macOS actually cares about and which is a bigger pain to edit or automate using normal Unix userland tools.

Things like creating users in a script is way more verbose on macOS than on Linux or any BSD I've seen. (The least annoying way to handle it IME is to use a wrapper that imitates NetBSD's utilities for this which is bundled in pkgsrc.)

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

#248

Post by kitsunesoba »

mmcnl wrote: post #228
dboreham wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can a CPU make architecture differences (the main issue dealt with by Docker users) disappear? The only way that could happen is if the M-series were x86-64 rather than ARM, which dramatically reduces the possibility space for advancement in user/developer-facing CPUs.

The most that can practically done is a software solution like Rosetta, which is a good holdover in the interim, but ultimately software needs to become more architecture-agnostic, not less. Treating archs matching between development and prod as a given is a crutch, not a long term solution.

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

#249

Post by bredren »

nicoburns wrote: post #112
bredren wrote: post #53

I’m working on re-factoring a developer environment from using vagrant/virtualbox and docker to only docker. The prior goal was to mock production as closely as possible. The realization is that macos as a host machine for orchestration is close enough to build. More strict validation can be done in CI and a staging env. So for this project, the forced transition away from virtualbox Has actually led to simplificatio…

We go one step further and don’t use Docker either!

You just use system installs? Mind sharing the stack?

What do you do to manage language versioning?

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

#250

Post by sircastor »

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?

In the case of Apple at least, they have a 14 day no questions return policy.
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