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ARM64 Linux Workstation

jasoneckert.github.io

21–30 of 493 posts

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#21

That's really impressive! That said, I really wish someone other than Apple would release something like an ARM64 NUC, with good Linux compat. Even something on par with the SD Gen 2 should be plenty to run a desktop day to day.

Not a NUC, but there is the ThinkPad X13s. Linux support seems to be shaping up decently, with some hope that it might be supported by stock ubuntu in ubuntu 23.04.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#23

Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio would be compared to a PC build with comparable cost? There's also the obvious set of trade offs, such as being quiet, compact, but being unrepairable, while the PCs having nearly the opposite qualities. Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major advantage in a desktop system?

I watched one guy build a hackentosh for the same price as a Mac mini and compared them. The intel based one wins in multi threaded workloads but the M1 wins in single threaded, power efficiency, and things which it has hardware acceleration like video encoding.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#24

Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio would be compared to a PC build with comparable cost? There's also the obvious set of trade offs, such as being quiet, compact, but being unrepairable, while the PCs having nearly the opposite qualities. Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major advantage in a desktop system?

It’s about half the cost to build your own based on Ryzen thread ripper and DDR5. I’ve done this before however, it’s not ARM64. It also requires like 1000w power supply. Can you build a machine just as capable? Yes. Will it be as efficient? No. Will it be Arm? Probably not. That said, I run Apple MacBook Air as my daily so YMMV.

*edit* ok a bit more than half. Chip shortage has scalpers sitting on threadrippers.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#25

Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio would be compared to a PC build with comparable cost? There's also the obvious set of trade offs, such as being quiet, compact, but being unrepairable, while the PCs having nearly the opposite qualities. Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major advantage in a desktop system?

The 20-core Mac Studio with 128GB RAM is $4,800

It would be interesting to see a 24 or 32 core Threadripper vs the Mac Studio. I didn't price out the full system but those CPUs are in the $1300-2800 range

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#27

Asahi Linux is amazing and pretty usable at this point. However, last I tried I couldn't get stuff like Slack and Spotify to work on it because there are no Arm packages for those. Has anyone found a way around that?

Perhaps the universe is telling you something there? :-)

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#28

Imho the only relevant parts left are: Sleep (which is being tackled right now), USB-C Extra displays (Also WIP) and Hardware Decode for video.

and audio and screen brightness at least...those don't work on my M2 setup.

Screen brightness works on the beta kernel. Speakers work but are disabled by default because there is a risk it could blow up the hardware

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#29

Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio would be compared to a PC build with comparable cost? There's also the obvious set of trade offs, such as being quiet, compact, but being unrepairable, while the PCs having nearly the opposite qualities. Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major advantage in a desktop system?

Only you can answer that question. You just stated the tradeoffs.

Compact quiet low power unexpandable box vs large noisy power hungry expandable box. Pick your poison.

I'd also do more research if I'd plan to run Linux on an Apple box. Just because it's good for TFA's use case, it may not be good for yours.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#30
post #8

> Is there anything that doesn’t work? > To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No.” > Everything works… and works perfectly. That is impressive and really hard to believe! I guess I'll have to find an M1 mac Mini to try myself!

Not everything will work. Once upon time I tried to make CTF with M2 Pro, and I seriously wished that I had x86_64 Linux instead. Many of the penetration testing tools are not mainstream and they include pre-build x86_64 binaries, or are configured just to not compile with ARM, for reason unknown. And there is no time to figure out what is wrong. I know this might be a niche scenario, but still...

That seems like a wonderful opportunity to use QEMU since it's not all that performance-sensitive (I think?) and you're not running random pre-built binaries directly on your computer.
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