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The first conformant M1 GPU driver

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Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#171

Post by pezezin »

paulddraper wrote: post #59
europeanNyan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you completely and yet it's practically impossible finding a worthwhile alternative. I've tried finding alternatives on my last upgrade cycle and it's like having to live with endless amounts of compromises just to get away from Apple. For the iPhone, I tried looking at the Pixel for the Vanilla Android experience and long support, yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time. N…

> yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time I miss the days when I charged my cell phone twice a week. It didn't take 100 mexapixel photos or display 4K cat GIFs, so I understand why. But I miss that battery life nonetheless.

I recently bought a Sony Xperia 10 IV and the battery easily lasts 4 days. Performance is great too, at least for my usage (I don't play games on the phone though).

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#172

Post by dlivingston »

klausa wrote: post #121
baby_souffle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really disappointing to see everyone bashing Apple when it's clear to anyone paying attention that they made a conscious decision to leave the door open for 3rd party development. Maybe I'm just a jaded grey-beard but I suspect that this is more of a "placate the anti-trust regulators" play and not a genuine olive branch offering. Apple gets to say "see, look! Not only are we not locking people out - there's a…

I can’t imagine any reasonable argument that would make Apple be a target for an anti-trust action for _Macs_. I understand skepticism and not always giving corporations the benefit of the doubt, but they _clearly_ spent a lot of time and resources to make third-party OSes viable on Apple Sillicon Macs.

> _clearly_ spent a lot of time and resources to make third-party OSes viable on Apple Sillicon Macs.

This actually isn't clear to me -- can you explain? Besides keeping an open bootloader [0], I'm not aware of any affirmative actions Apple has taken.

[0]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Open-OS-Ecosystem-on...

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#173

Post by ColonelPhantom »

klausa wrote: post #125
anentropic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder... is it possible to use this from macOS?

Can you use Windows drivers for your GPU on Linux?

If you look the other way around (which is more relevant anyways), you can compile Mesa for Windows. However I'm pretty sure only the software renderer is available because Mesa is not capable of interfacing with the Windows kernel driver, as all the other drivers are coupled with Linux driver interfaces, iirc. (At least I'm quite certain this is the case for AMD.)

I'm also quite certain the proprietary NVIDIA driver shares a ton of code between Windows and Linux.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#174

Post by enos_feedler »

klausa wrote: post #121
baby_souffle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really disappointing to see everyone bashing Apple when it's clear to anyone paying attention that they made a conscious decision to leave the door open for 3rd party development. Maybe I'm just a jaded grey-beard but I suspect that this is more of a "placate the anti-trust regulators" play and not a genuine olive branch offering. Apple gets to say "see, look! Not only are we not locking people out - there's a…

I can’t imagine any reasonable argument that would make Apple be a target for an anti-trust action for _Macs_. I understand skepticism and not always giving corporations the benefit of the doubt, but they _clearly_ spent a lot of time and resources to make third-party OSes viable on Apple Sillicon Macs.

There is also no precedent for Apple making any kind of pro-active design choices around future regulation. They clearly are the kind of company that does whats best for them and when asked to change, nudges in that direction, and then moves on. This is in the DNA from the top down. It would certainly be weird to make the decision about third-party OSes be about that.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#175

Post by josephg »

klausa wrote: post #121
baby_souffle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really disappointing to see everyone bashing Apple when it's clear to anyone paying attention that they made a conscious decision to leave the door open for 3rd party development. Maybe I'm just a jaded grey-beard but I suspect that this is more of a "placate the anti-trust regulators" play and not a genuine olive branch offering. Apple gets to say "see, look! Not only are we not locking people out - there's a…

I can’t imagine any reasonable argument that would make Apple be a target for an anti-trust action for _Macs_. I understand skepticism and not always giving corporations the benefit of the doubt, but they _clearly_ spent a lot of time and resources to make third-party OSes viable on Apple Sillicon Macs.

They did. Which is why it’s so baffling that they didn’t document any of this stuff. 5 minutes of documentation by apple engineers on the boot process or GPU would have saved 5 hours of reverse engineering work by the Asahi Linux team.

Seems to me like they can’t decide whether they want Linux on their hardware or not. I bet different people in the org are pulling in different directions.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#176

Post by Zetobal »

tornato7 wrote: post #170
BlackjackCF wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. The XPS’s hard drive died within two years and I had to replace it. The keyboard and touchpad also don’t hold a candle to MacBooks.

I bought a MacBook Pro in 2013 and my mom bought a Dell XPS at around the same time. Her laptop died, she got a Lenovo Yoga. That one died within a year and was replaced for free. The new one died after two years. When the M1 Air came out I gave her the old MacBook Pro, which she still uses every day, going strong (aside from battery life, but it's mostly plugged in). It has essentially outlived 4 Windows laptops. I…

The M1 won't, the SSD will wear out before that and with no way to swap, it will be landfill as well.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#177

Post by hedora »

pohl wrote: post #126
nly wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a limit of battery technology. Your Apple laptop will ha e shit battery life in a few years as well

Device manufacturers can engineer for longer useful lifespan by oversizing the battery, can't they? Do they all do that to the same extent?

They can also implement better battery management technology (cooling, charge rate curves, keeping the charge between 10%-90% instead of 0-100%, but reporting 0-100% to the user via scaling), etc, etc.

For a good counter-example, look at the early Nissan Leafs. They burned out their batteries in a matter of a few years, but battery replacements for other brands from that time are basically unheard of. (The inherent information asymmetry for new car purchasers is one reason Biden's IRA dictated minimum car battery warranties.)

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#178

Post by tverbeure »

insanitybit wrote: post #138
sharts wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience. Also, as someone who switched from Pixels and other Android devices to the Apple ecosystem . It’s nice that everything “just works.” It’s kind of like running BSD or Debian stable after having been on Fedora/Arch/etc.

> When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience. Isn't this because Android uses open standards for its SMS and iOS refuses to do so?

Does it matter for me as a user?

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#179

Post by tornato7 »

sharts wrote: post #99
therealmarv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why people think in 2023 that Android can not be a viable alternative to an iPhone. I would never use an iPhone for certain software and UX related issues (biggest is the missing back gesture/button). My Pixel does better photos than ANY iPhone on the market. Macbook Air M1, just look at Dell XPS series. Samsung S9 tablets have an OLED display. OLED... you don't get that on any iPad. Apple Wa…

When most people you know use iMessage then Android is a bad experience. Also, as someone who switched from Pixels and other Android devices to the Apple ecosystem . It’s nice that everything “just works.” It’s kind of like running BSD or Debian stable after having been on Fedora/Arch/etc.

I loved Android back when I had the time to hack around with ROMs and crazy customization. It's fun. But these days in my busy working life, I don't have time for that kind of stuff, I just want something that works well and gets regular security updates. My Android phones weren't really cutting it.

Re: The first conformant M1 GPU driver

#180

Post by saltcured »

paulddraper wrote: post #59
europeanNyan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you completely and yet it's practically impossible finding a worthwhile alternative. I've tried finding alternatives on my last upgrade cycle and it's like having to live with endless amounts of compromises just to get away from Apple. For the iPhone, I tried looking at the Pixel for the Vanilla Android experience and long support, yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time. N…

> yet it seems like people are fighting battery life issues all the time I miss the days when I charged my cell phone twice a week. It didn't take 100 mexapixel photos or display 4K cat GIFs, so I understand why. But I miss that battery life nonetheless.

It's largely the background data-hungry apps and the obsessive screen time with foreground apps. As someone who almost uses their phone like a dumb phone, I charge my Pixel 5a about once every 7 days now, when it gets to around 20% remaining. It was more like 10+ days when I first got it, but that was also before I decided that avoiding the 0-20% range might be better for long-term battery health.

The most power-hungry apps I run are Slack, the built-in GMail and Messages clients, the Garmin app to periodically sync with my watch, and sometimes Firefox if I actually spend time browsing there instead of on my preferred laptop environment. The camera app also eats power when actually taking pictures or video, but I guess I rarely do.

When I first start using a phone, I go through a little effort to disable things I don't want via the system apps menu. For me, that includes the Google Assistant and their native launcher, because the last thing I actually want is to trigger search functions willy-nilly. If I want to search, I'll open Firefox and search...

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