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OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org

171–180 of 377 posts

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an AMD Linux laptop I’ve been using for work. It’s great. The battery life is great, it’s quite fast with a lot of cores, when I need to do my genetics runs (plugged in). Build quality isn’t bad, plus affordable and lots of ports. After my initial transition away, not missing my 2015 Mac book pro. Linux is the way to go. I don’t blame people with apple hardware for wanting it. I just don’t feel the x86 side is…

Two years ago or so I bought a ThinkPad with an AMD Ryzen CPU, there was a lot of hype about them. How Linux laptops were finally competitive, speed, driver, and battery-wise. The machine was quite a bit slower than an M1 Air, would have loud fans during video meetings, and on Linux the battery would typically last 3 hours (6-7 on Windows, yes I did all the usual power optimizations). In S3 sleep it would discharge o…

> Two years ago or so I bought a ThinkPad with an AMD Ryzen CPU

Things have changed a bit since then[1]. The new Phoenix chips are quite competitive with the M2 as far as performance and TDP goes. Your other complaints are with Lenovo, not AMD.

I doubt anyone will argue that Apple laptops don't have the best build quality. Apple has the advantage of full vertical integration, so it's very difficult for any other manufacturer to compete on things like battery life and power efficiency.

The Linux glitches you describe is the usual Linux jank. I don't disagree that even the most well-supported Linux laptop will have these. As a Linux user, you choose to deal with these issues because the alternative of relying on a corporation to decide how you're going to use your computer is not an option. I've also heard and experienced my share of issues with macOS and Windows. In the eternal words of a modern philosopher: every OS sucks[2].

[1]: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m2-max-vs-amd-ry...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit different, though. Yes. It learns your normal waking time (if you have one) and gives you a full charge before you wake up. Which is what I want. A full charge for the working day, without needlessly shortening the batteries functional lifetime.

Sure, but if I know I won't drain my battery more than 10% that day, I can't tell it not to top it up more than 80%. That's the case for me 99.9% of days. This also seems to work only if you've drained the battery below 80%. If it says 90% and I plug it in? It'll charge it fully right away.

That's not how Apple's implementation works.

It doesn't charge the battery over 80% at all, unless it detects that you have a normal waking time, in which case it charges fully right before you normally wake up.

Unfortunately, other companies copied the 80% charge bit without copying the part about figuring out if you have a normal waking time and giving you a full charge right before that.

For instance, Samsung's S23:

>Once you turn off the battery protection function, you'll be able to charge your battery up to 100%

https://www.samsung.com/ae/support/mobile-devices/battery-pr...

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to. I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Well- where are their kernel contributions then? Lenovo and Dell (my two laptop manufacturers) contribute. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux...

> I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Where did I make that claim in this thread?

> in an ecosystem hostile to OSS

> You are describing how most OSS software has been developed.

Nope. Disagree here

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#174
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be seeing fraction of the performance and capability You'd temporarily lose some hardware support (documented) while it's being worked on. But I'm not sure why you expect losing performance? This is running native code. Same binary will run the same on both systems (+/- the llvm version differences).

Does the CPU run at similar frequencies between Mac OS and Linux (since they're writing their own drivers this isn't guaranteed)? Is the scheduling done similarly? Are there any special hardware modes you have to activate with e.g. binary blobs? There are a bunch of factors that could affect performance even under the same OS (try underclocking your CPU or play around with schedulers). Given the mostly non-existent d…

The currently top-rated top-level HN comment goes into those details. This release significantly improves CPU power management, to the point where it should be similar to MacOS.

Some of this stuff is handled by binary blobs that get installed/upgraded by MacOS, and are running by the time Linux boots.

With the previous release, power per watt and absolute performance were already better than high-end x86 laptops, so if your question is "is this faster and more power efficient than my other Linux laptop?", the answer is probably yes.

If you're asking if it will beat MacOS's perf/watt in all scenarios, the answer will be no for a long time. However, it is probably already beating MacOS in many practical scenarios.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#175
post #72
post #3

Its been more than a year I'm running asahi on my macbook air and I can't stress how grateful I feel for enjoying such wonderful freedom. I don't feel like ever going back to x86 to be honest, at this point there is nothing lacking or unable to run and when the neural engine drivers come online now that the GPU is starting to mature people will be able to juice out every last bit of computation this machine is capabl…

The features support page lists the webcam as TBA. How do you do video conferencing? USB webcam? No video?

People who demand others show their faces in a video call generally aren't fun to be around anyway, and if it's family or friends just use your phone.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be seeing fraction of the performance and capability You'd temporarily lose some hardware support (documented) while it's being worked on. But I'm not sure why you expect losing performance? This is running native code. Same binary will run the same on both systems (+/- the llvm version differences).

E.g. the performance you can get out of the GPU at the moment is a subset of what you can get out of the hardware. Or as another more generic example, until this latest release CPU boost states weren't enabled due to lack of proper cpuidle driver which resulted in regressed single thread performance. There is nothing inherent about running Linux that will require it be slower, in some cases it will/is even faster, bu…

Has anyone tried Steam under Linux? It's quite bad under MacOS (2016 casual games stutter, and there is no 32 bit support).

I know rosetta doesn't exist under Linux, but I don't see any options to run steam / proton under rosetta either.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#177
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to do so You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing Arm issues in the…

> I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. It's very different. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. A trillion-dollar corporation has no incentive to sell their hardware to a niche of a niche of technical users who are not part of their software ecosystem. Another major diffe…

> Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base.

That is not an accurate description of linux support by hardware manufactures from that time period.

> Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it.

I also don't think this is generally correct. Have you looked at all the random drivers in the linux kernel for niche hardware. A ton of that is from one or two hobbyists taking the time to add support.

> Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence.

I guess, but so what? Apple can't break the hardware they are already shipping if you are just running linux on it. Its true, I might not buy a theoretical future laptop from Apple if I can't run linux on it, but I don't see how that would affect my purchasing decision for hardware that is currently available.

> The willpower, patience and skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to swim against the current?

Hmm, maybe you've not worked on projects like this, or are motivated by different things. To me, reverse engineering a thing to figure out how it works and then writing software to get it to do things the original designers hadn't planned for is one of the more satisfying and fun activities of being a software engineer. I suspect the asahi team is having fun doing a lot of this work. (That's not to say its all fun. It sounds like getting things upstreamed has been trying. I also think having to read giant comment threads where people are needlessly negative about their work might be a bit demoralizing.)

> It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for any serious work.

You should obviously run whatever works for you.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#178
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be. I don't think it's hostile, I think they're just hands-off; they throw the hardware over the fence and say, "if you wanna make use of it, here's our software; if you don't like our software, sorry no docs but you're free to write your own". Which is exactly what's happening. I mean it would be nice…

First, personally I don't care what hardware or software people use, if they are happy with the tools that they using then that's good. That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked. As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made…

> That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.

That came partially out of the desire to reduce the lure for thieves and robbers. It was really bad during the first generations that regularly had jailbreaks and ways to bypass "Find My..." or whatever, then the first tightening reduced resale values of stolen iPhones by a good amount (as they were only good enough to slaughter for parts once reported stolen), and the latest round made it even worse for criminals.

Personally though, I'd preferred they simply provided "unlock codes" with a phone that could be used to remove the association between a part's SN and the IMEI/SN of the phone. That way, buyers of iPhone have something similar to a certificate of authenticity.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#179
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been multiple reports of the last couple years that Apple has been informally internally helping the Asahi Linux team to make it run well on their hardware. Apple cannot come out and officially support another operating system of course, but they are aware of the interest and are helping make it happen, in an unofficial capacity.

>Apple cannot come out and officially support another operating system of course Apple officially supported running Windows on Macs for many years.

You can still do so with VMs, officially endorsed. But Bootcamp is RIP. Asahi Linux is not a VM, so not a fair comparison.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#180
post #49

Sorry, but what's the point? Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out of the box? Why are Linux enthusiasts putting so much effort into supporting hardware from companies that - at best - ignore Linux? This question is also valid for other manufacturers, btw, not just Apple. So much time wasted doing free labor for hardware companies that will just break your stuff with the next hardware iteration…

> Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out of the box?

Because these things are rare as gold in the first place as being Linux ready isn't a focus for most OEMs, sometimes severely lag behind the competition in feature support (e.g. limited to UVC webcams with crap quality), have serious availability issues (Framework), you have a tough time getting service or spare parts, or barely any resale value, or limited choices in screens (which is the one and only thing keeping me from a Framework - who the fuck wants a 3:2 screen?). Also, tough luck getting firmware updates for embedded components.

Apple devices, spare parts and repair centers, in contrast, are widely available across the world (okay, maybe not in places sanctioned by the US), firmware updates come around when needed and hold their resale value for years.

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