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ARM64 Linux Workstation

jasoneckert.github.io

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Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#261

Post by retrac »

ActorNightly wrote: post #215
apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

I seem to be in the minority, but I honestly don't get how people can develop productively on a laptop. The lack of full size keyboard, screen real estate, and uncomfortable touchpad compared to a mouse just feels horrible to me.

To the last point, I have a tiny Bluetooth mouse. Not much bigger than the single AAA battery that powers it. I don't know how I managed to use laptops without one before. (Usually with a full-sized wired mouse, come to think.) I also prefer a traditional keyboard and large screens and so I normally use a desktop. But if you need portable, you need portable.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#262

Post by naikrovek »

apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

> Want to write a program that targets MacOS? Expect a cumbersome CI/CD experience because Apple expects you to manually compile distributables.

I'm not sure this is true anymore. I download source and run "make" and the Xcode compilers all do their thing and entitlements are applied and so on. I haven't tried to do any store submissions or anything but it all seems like Apple are aware that CI systems are a thing, now

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#263

Post by kalleboo »

freetime2 wrote: post #260

> Everything works… and works perfectly. How can this possibly be true when Asahi Linux is still in alpha? A quick trip to the project page shows lots of hardware features that are still not supported. [1] It’s not a knock against Asahi Linux - it’s amazing what they have accomplished with a small team. It just seems so misleading for the author to claim that everything works perfectly. [1] https://github.com/AsahiLi…

From your link, what's missing for the OP is:

Thunderbolt, DP Alt Mode, Video Decoder/Encoder, SEP, Neural Engine, internal Speaker

Thunderbolt seems like the main missing feature. It's easy to see how someone could live a fulfilling life without running into the lack of any of those features. E.g. is there even anything on the Linux desktop that could take advantage of the Neural Engine or Secure Enclave?

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#264

Post by kalleboo »

ActorNightly wrote: post #215
apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

I seem to be in the minority, but I honestly don't get how people can develop productively on a laptop. The lack of full size keyboard, screen real estate, and uncomfortable touchpad compared to a mouse just feels horrible to me.

I prefer an (Apple) trackpad to a mouse to the point where I even have one now at my desk setup. I've used BetterTouchTool to configure custom gestures like three-finger swipe to open new tab/close window, rotate left/right to switch tabs etc.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#265

Post by moondev »

ar_lan wrote: post #179
apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

I would consider myself quite the power user and use both macOS and Linux daily… I don’t really understand, from the developer perspective, your concerns about macOS? While I prefer the feel of Linux, macOS is more than sufficient for almost any development I do (which also involves a lot of container/VM development and I’ve never felt this was slow).

macOS can't run Linux containers because it's not Linux. It requires a vm and additional tooling, configuration, resources and just general considerations because of this.

It's also impossible to work with anything KVM related on macOS, which would require a vm inside a vm and is not supported on any M1 or M2 hypervisor.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#266

Post by kalleboo »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #65
andrewstuart wrote: post #41

I'd be curious to see properly done benchmarks against top of the line Intel or AMD machines. I'd be surprised if the Mac was faster. I do understand that people want the Mac for the build quality of the laptop, not just for speed.

> I do understand that people want the Mac for the build quality of the laptop, not just for speed. I find LG Gram laptops to be of higher build quality than Mac laptops. They may be pricier too depending on which LG Gram and which Mac you buy though. Mac laptops feel and are incredibly brittle. They may look shiny and the screen may look gorgeous, but they're simply brittle. People here and there like to make fun of…

"incredibly brittle" sounds like a massive exaggeration. I've been using MacBook Pros of some form as my main machine for a decade now and they've followed me around the world, usually in a backpack without proper padding, used in very humid environments throughout Southeast Asia, dropped, used outdoors with volcano ash falling on the machine, rain coming in sideways that I've failed to shield it from, I've taken several spills on my bike where I fell on my back with the backpack with laptop in it taking the fall, they've held up to everything. The only failure was that g*ddamn butterfly keyboard.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#267

Post by [deleted] »

bee_rider wrote: post #259
andrewstuart wrote: post #41

I'd be curious to see properly done benchmarks against top of the line Intel or AMD machines. I'd be surprised if the Mac was faster. I do understand that people want the Mac for the build quality of the laptop, not just for speed.

It is a bit odd, Apple’s laptop chips are of course very good. But breathless articles like this make me wonder if the author is not aware that Intel and AMD have desktop chips? Especially in single core performance, Intel’s designs are, from the ground up, built on the assumption of higher power budgets. Apple’s “workstation” chips are a bunch of (very good) laptop cores, they can only go so far.

[deleted]

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#268

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x »

bogwog wrote: post #84
sliken wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the cost for 10x the memory bandwidth of the Ryzen 7950x.

Nope, that's the cost of a monopoly. However fast or special Apple's RAM is, it doesn't cost them 10x the price of the competition, it costs us that because we can't around shop for another supplier.

To be fair, what you're getting is a hardware configuration that "just works." By controlling the hardware configuration, the manufacturer is controlling the user experience. Yes, components like storage and memory are built to standards but interoperability problems do come up.

By controlling components/configs, they (Apple) doesn't have to field angry tech support calls and go down rabbit holes as to why a random RAM manufacturer's DIMMs don't work with my machine.

Apple also does this with thunderbolt products, which have a very strict certification process so that user in theory should have a user experience where the products "just work."

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#269

Post by dougall »

bee_rider wrote: post #259
andrewstuart wrote: post #41

I'd be curious to see properly done benchmarks against top of the line Intel or AMD machines. I'd be surprised if the Mac was faster. I do understand that people want the Mac for the build quality of the laptop, not just for speed.

It is a bit odd, Apple’s laptop chips are of course very good. But breathless articles like this make me wonder if the author is not aware that Intel and AMD have desktop chips? Especially in single core performance, Intel’s designs are, from the ground up, built on the assumption of higher power budgets. Apple’s “workstation” chips are a bunch of (very good) laptop cores, they can only go so far.

Yeah, looks like Intel desktops are currently ~10% ahead of Mac laptops in single-threaded performance:

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i9-13900...

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-16-inch-2023-...

(Admittedly the Mac Studio is slower, since it was released ~360 days ago - probably not the best time to buy one, but who knows when they'll update it.)

The author states the desire is to match the architecture of the servers they deploy software to, which seems reasonable - depending on the software, it can be very useful to be able to run/debug the same binaries locally.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#270

Post by _cenw »

apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

Incientally, the best Windows ARM experience is to be had on the MacBook with Parallels. I haven't really used Linux ARM outside of Parallels (except on a Pi 3, and that's not a fair comparison), but I bet the experience is up there.
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