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ARM64 Linux Workstation

jasoneckert.github.io

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Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#331

Post by apatheticonion »

pjmlp wrote: post #312
baq wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m paid to develop apps which deploy on Linux containers. macOS is uniquely incapable of providing a good development experience for that use case. Even Windows with WSL2 is leaps and bounds ahead.

Then don't buy a Mac, that simple. WSL 2 is a Hyper V VM for running Linux distributions, while WSL emulated Linux syscalls. Surely some of that salary can be used to make OEMs selling Linux hardware happy, instead of buying Apple and then complaining macOS isn't yet another Linux distribution. If you want WSL like experience on Mac, VMWare is happy to provide it to you. It is like complaining using Playstation SDK i…

The issue isn't that a MacBook is the wrong tool for the job, it's precisely that it's demonstrably capable of being the right tool for the job but Apple deliberately chooses to make it useless in an attempt to ring fence products within their ecosystem.

The comparison to the console world is apt as it mirrors Apple's attempts to lock their platform down, much like the console ecosystem. Thankfully the bootloader is unlocked and it's unlikely that's going to change.

Remember that the MacBook pro is a device marketed at professionals looking to do the work of their profession on their laptops. By "professional", it appears that Apple means "multimedia editors". If you are a software engineer, you are no longer the target audience for the MBP lineup.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#332

Post by shaunsingh0207 »

kalleboo wrote: post #263
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?

I'm dearly missing support for the fingerprint reader on asahi, thuogh its likely never going to be supported.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#333

Post by shaunsingh0207 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #309
rcme wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of HW video support will ruin battery life if you do conference calls or watch YouTube. It’s surprisingly important.

Considering the absolutely awful performance of "modern" web/Electron based communications software (aka all of them), I'd be surprised if they used hardware video encoding/decoding to begin with?

Both teams and zoom on macOS seem to encode/decode on the gpu for me, as well as meets over chrome

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#334

Post by shaunsingh0207 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #75
TacticalCoder wrote: post #61

Are these ARM64 Mac using ECC? P.S: the 3440x1440 screenshot in TFA looks gorgeous on my system. Everything is using subpixel AA (terminals, code editor, browser, except for the URL, for whatever reason) but not the file manager. I wonder why that is.

Agreed, a 1080p or 1440p screen with good pixel-sharp graphics (which Mac OS does not provide, leaving you with blurry anti-aliasing) is all you need. 4K resolution is overkill.

the 1440p screen on my macbook looks incredible on macOS. Apple has been on top of the font rendering game for a long time now

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#335

Post by shaunsingh0207 »

nicce wrote: post #47
emilsedgh wrote: post #14

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?

At least for Spotify, there are many other options, like spotifyd and spotify-tui. Also one decent GUI app build with Rust, if you want to try them.

I've been running the `psst` spotify app on my M1 the last few days and its great.

Sadly I miss out on spotify connect and all of the social/playlist features. I'd love to use the web version, but firefox doesn't support drm on arm, and I can't seem to get webkitgtk to compile with EME support.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#336

Post by bornfreddy »

ht_th wrote: post #310
bornfreddy wrote: post #306

A bit off-topic: does anyone know what the best new laptop, available in EU, would be for Linux (exclusively)? Preferably something with a keyboard similar to the old ThinkPads (T480)?

I like my NovaCustom I got at the end of last year, but I'm not sure how it compares to the ThinkPads.

Thank you, I wasn't aware of them. IIUC the laptops are made by Clevo? It looks like a very interesting option, I'll check them out.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#338

Post by pjmlp »

apatheticonion wrote: post #331
pjmlp wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy a Mac, that simple. WSL 2 is a Hyper V VM for running Linux distributions, while WSL emulated Linux syscalls. Surely some of that salary can be used to make OEMs selling Linux hardware happy, instead of buying Apple and then complaining macOS isn't yet another Linux distribution. If you want WSL like experience on Mac, VMWare is happy to provide it to you. It is like complaining using Playstation SDK i…

The issue isn't that a MacBook is the wrong tool for the job, it's precisely that it's demonstrably capable of being the right tool for the job but Apple deliberately chooses to make it useless in an attempt to ring fence products within their ecosystem. The comparison to the console world is apt as it mirrors Apple's attempts to lock their platform down, much like the console ecosystem. Thankfully the bootloader is…

Buying a device for Apple ecosystem developers and pretending it is a Linux distribution, is precisely holding it wrong.

Professional Developer !== Doing stuff on Linux distributions.

Want Linux? Buy Linux.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#339

Post by znpy »

dijit wrote: post #326
diffeomorphism wrote: post #321

Just so that I understand this correctly: he bought a $6000+ Mac Studio with a 20-core M1 Ultra processor and 128GB of RAM. But all these cores, ram, bandwidth, storage are not important, but rather the fact it is an "ARM64" workstation is what was the game changer. Seriously? Would a $6000+ x64 workstation be noticeably slower?

Not sure, but anecdotally I have a machine running linux that was $6,000 and definitely feels slower than my M2 macbook air. Mostly its a question of latency I would imagine. My machine: Archlinux “Zen” (lower latency kernel). Threadripper 3970x 256G DDR4 2666MHz 3x4TiB NVMe (PCIe Gen3) in RAID0 Radeon VII GFX card (more than enough for 2D render of terminals).

> Archlinux “Zen” (lower latency kernel).

that might be the problem

low latency kernels aren't of any help unless you're running realtime (or near-realtime) workloads. not only that, in order to guarantee high priority tasks they will hurt regular process performances.

for desktop usage running a "low latency" kernel is probably a bad idea (no wonder "low latency" kernel config are not the default choice).

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#340

Post by nix23 »

If i where Apple i would completely opensource the PC-Hardware (documentation, firmware etc). I bet ~everyone would buy a M*-Mac, just let the customer install Windows/Linux/BSD. They could wipe out every other laptop producer in one snip.
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