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Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

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Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#101

Post by heavyset_go »

chippiewill wrote: post #39
heavyset_go wrote: post #12

If I thought there was a good chance of having the work upstreamed so that a mainline Linux kernel would eventually work on these computers, maybe. In my experience, there are not many ARM SoCs that have mainline support, even some of the Raspberry Pi boards don't, and they're some of the most popular ARM SoCs used for Linux. A lot of these projects get to the stage where a forked kernel will run on the SoC, but then…

I think this is a legitimate concern, but it seems less likely to me, specifically in the case of Apple hardware, for two reasons: 1. There will be far more interest in being able to run Linux on that hardware, and in being able to keep it up to date (since it'll be a daily driver). 2. Apple are probably less likely to regularly make drastic changes between hardware revisions because they will need to support multipl…

With regard to #1, Linux support on existing Intel Macbooks since 2015 has been pretty poor[1]. That doesn't give me much confidence about support while Macs get more and more esoteric hardware configurations.

As for #2, perhaps, but we've already seen what happens when Apple adds their proprietary hardware to existing x86 systems with things like the T2 chip or the Touchbar. Support for either on Linux is still poor and nonexistent. Full integration with hardware and software on Apple's end means that they don't have to worry about compatibility like 3rd party hardware manufacturers do.

[1] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#102

Post by saddlerustle »

judge2020 wrote: post #61
hu3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an ETA for 5nm AMD SoCs?

Although Apple booked TSMC’s entire production line (for an unknown length of time)[0], this official graph looks like it indicates 5nm before 2022 (so 2021)[1]. 0: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsm... 1: https://youtu.be/iuiO6rqYV4o?t=12m56s

Huawei got a large fraction of TSMC's 5nm production this year because it had to stockpile chips ahead of the trade sanctions kicking in

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#103

Post by macintux »

melq wrote: post #83
macintux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is this notion is not able to be disproved. While I'm completely confident that 10 years from now the Mac will still be open enough to be considered a "real" computer, I'm also confident that 10 years from now someone will be predicting its imminent demise because the water just keeps boiling hotter and hotter. So we'll keep having this argument (and the argument over whether apps will be installable in t…

IMO it's not an unreasonable notion to have. I don't think its out of the question that they would change course and lock it down. I'm not saying it's likely or probable, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. In any event, it annoys me that the parent commentator is being dismissed out of hand and downvoted for expressing a legitimate concern.

It's a tired, un-nuanced concern that doesn't indicate any understanding of why Apple favors lock-in.

It's like an online political debate: it's possible to persuade someone, maybe, but you need a better argument than mean old Apple wants to take our toys away.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#105

Post by marcan_42 »

oblio wrote: post #55
marcan_42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi from Linux on an Intel Mac. (I've got fixing up amdgpu to work on this 2015 iMac on my TODO list too... might even do that as a bonus warm-up if this takes off, while I get my hands on an M1 mac)

I admire the work but you have to admit that even after all this time it's easier to install Ubuntu, say, on a random PC :-)

To be honest, the only problems on this iMac are audio (fair to say Apple's fault), the screen only running at 4K max (Apple custom stuff involved for 5K, but hey, not complaining about 4K, go find me an AiO PC with a 5K screem), the amdgpu issue (not really an Apple problem, it's just a rarer chip and probably a dumb bugfix and the older radeon driver works fine), and the Ethernet and SD card reader being problematic (that's a Broadcom chip and their silicon is universally buggy; not Apple's fault, these chips have issues on PCs too)

So really just audio is the one thing that jumps out as broken and specific to this being a Mac. I personally happen not to care as I use an external audio interface anyway :-)

Actual installation is trivial, it's just standard UEFI pretty much. As long as the right GPU driver loads you're fine. Thunderbolt and all that works out of the box.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#106

Post by shmerl »

macintux wrote: post #103
melq wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not an unreasonable notion to have. I don't think its out of the question that they would change course and lock it down. I'm not saying it's likely or probable, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. In any event, it annoys me that the parent commentator is being dismissed out of hand and downvoted for expressing a legitimate concern.

It's a tired, un-nuanced concern that doesn't indicate any understanding of why Apple favors lock-in. It's like an online political debate: it's possible to persuade someone, maybe, but you need a better argument than mean old Apple wants to take our toys away.

I'd say it's not tired and is completely legit. Apple have no one to blame but themselves for having such reputation. They simply didn't do enough to earn trust, while did a ton to earn distrust.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#107

Post by marcan_42 »

codetrotter wrote: post #53
marcan_42 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, as the author of that: that was mostly a job of reverse engineering what was weird/broken/different about the PS4's GPU, which is otherwise a standard Radeon. It was effectively adding support for a new Radeon variant chip of an existing GPU generation. There was definitely a deep dive into the platform and I reverse engineered the proprietary Radeon firmware CPU architecture in the process (which nobody…

If you get funding to do the Linux to Apple hardware port, have you considered streaming the whole process on e.g. Twitch? Would be very interesting to watch everything from the sideline. And as a reason to do it, aside from being inspiring and educational to others, by live-streaming your work you will certainly be able to attract even more funding over time.

I don't think I'd do literally the whole process as that could get old and tiring quite quickly, but I am definitely considering doing streams when it makes sense and I'm in the mood, or maybe setting up a regular schedule, or something like that.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#108

Post by myrandomcomment »

buryat wrote: post #85

Cant a $2 trillion dollar company fund this by itself??

Yes, but they make macOS not Linux. The amount of HW sales generated by Apple putting people on writing code to support Linux on their HW will be less then the Apple sales teams collective bar tab.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#109

Post by ddingus »

squarefoot wrote: post #94

No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap. I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform, rather to a technically superior but proprietary close one whose owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields. No thanks, I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness, n…

As spiffy as Apple mobile devices are, I never found the locked down environment worth it. Nice hardware, too bad about the OS/App model...

This new hardware is awesome!

I could care less overall though.

Frankly, open computing can be done fast enough to not be a worry. I will stick with all that and see where this new path leads.

And my mind is open. Who knows? Maybe it all ends up in a good place.

I am quite happy to run FOSS on the many devices that will do that reasonably for the foreseeable future.

Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

#110

Post by voltagex_ »

The_Colonel wrote: post #86
qwerty456127 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the companies better aligned make full-metal laptops challenging MacBookAir durability and design while being 100% Linux-compatible?

There are e.g. Dell XPS "developer edition" which are shipping with Ubuntu and have near 100% hardware support (I think there's some issue with fingerprint reader).

I wonder at what point they got rid of the Intel RAID/RST controller that'll never be supported in upstream Linux - it's in the non-"developer" 9350.
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