Nothing against the Asahi team, it sounds like they're doing fantastic work. But I'm a little surprised at the talk (which I've seen before) which indicates theirs is the first approach allowing you to use Linux on ARM Macs. A few months ago I used UTM Virtual Machines (which itself uses QEMU) to get ARM Linux up and running on my M1 Mini, and it worked brilliantly. Admittedly I only use the command line interface for working on Linux -- maybe the GUI is lacking? -- but I effortlessly got G++, Perl 5, and Raku working on it, and used that to get a full build of my $work up and running. It was actually easier than getting the same setup working on the MacOS side of things, with great performance.
Linux 5.19
101–110 of 239 posts
Re: Linux 5.19
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
PC component manufacturers offer Linux drivers for their hardware, sometimes it's binary blobs, etc. but at least there's some effort there. And companies like Intel and AMD are paying engineers to maintain it. For example AMD and Intel both have open source Linux GPU drivers available. Does Apple even have specifications for their GPU available ?
It's not the big components like the CPU and the GPU that's the problem most of the time, it's the wifi/bluetooth chip, the sound chip, the LAN controller, the USB controller, the trackpad, the power management stuff, display backlight, etc etc.
>GPU that's the problem most of the time
Developing a GPU driver for a custom chip with no public reference or support from Apple isn't a problem ? I guess you're saying it's not a problem in other laptops - but for Apple Silicon it sounds like more fundamental than those issues you mentioned.
Re: Linux 5.19
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most laptops don't use a completely custom SoC, but most of them have enthusiast driven driver support -- or worse, formerly-enthusiast driven driver support where nobody currently cares -- with no support from the manufacturer. And on less popular hardware; the most popular laptop models in the world are macs. If you want manufacturer support, you need to use macOS or Windows or one of the very limited selection of…
PC component manufacturers offer Linux drivers for their hardware, sometimes it's binary blobs, etc. but at least there's some effort there. And companies like Intel and AMD are paying engineers to maintain it. For example AMD and Intel both have open source Linux GPU drivers available. Does Apple even have specifications for their GPU available ?
> PC component manufacturers offer Linux drivers for their hardware, sometimes it's binary blobs, etc. but at least there's some effort there.
I'm gonna say that it's a "generic" driver, which is totally fine on desktops but almost always (except for Thinkpads and Linux-focused laptop manufacturers) has a nasty edge case (modified chips or chip firmware) that just makes it incompatible. This isn't exclusive to Linux by the way, even Windows suffers from this exact problem (usually audio, fingerprint and touchpad).
Edit: for example, this is the FreeBSD code for HDA sound device (it's messy): https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/sys/dev/sou...
Re: Linux 5.19
#104Somewhat surprisingly, Linux support for Apple Silicon MacBooks seems to be shaping up to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop. The Asahi team don’t have support for everything yet (notably no GPU) but what they do have support for seems to be high quality, well integrated with Linux’s conventions, and upstreamed into the mainline kernel! How much other hardware can claim that? The Asahi developers ha…
> it seems like MacBooks could easily end up becoming the laptop of choice for Linux developers in the years to come. Having used MacBook Pro 14" with an M1 Max for ~6 months, I'd really wonder which developer submits themselves to such a glare-emitting screen and crappy keyboard (and potentially imprinting their palms/wrists on the sharp front edge), if you can get a Thinkpad X1 Carbon for much less? Sure, performan…
> I'd really wonder which developer
I’m wondering the same. It’s probably just a few?
Re: Linux 5.19
#105Somewhat surprisingly, Linux support for Apple Silicon MacBooks seems to be shaping up to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop. The Asahi team don’t have support for everything yet (notably no GPU) but what they do have support for seems to be high quality, well integrated with Linux’s conventions, and upstreamed into the mainline kernel! How much other hardware can claim that? The Asahi developers ha…
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Re: Linux 5.19
#106Nothing against the Asahi team, it sounds like they're doing fantastic work. But I'm a little surprised at the talk (which I've seen before) which indicates theirs is the first approach allowing you to use Linux on ARM Macs. A few months ago I used UTM Virtual Machines (which itself uses QEMU) to get ARM Linux up and running on my M1 Mini, and it worked brilliantly. Admittedly I only use the command line interface fo…
That's not comparable. Asahi is about running natively on the hardware.
Re: Linux 5.19
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple keyboards are the same as Windows, they just have different labels. The ALT key is called "option". CTRL is "control" and the windows key is "command".
Lots more different than that: + Windows has the Windows key (which Linux called "super") + Windows also has the context menu key, which I think it pretty useless to be honest but others might get value from that + The Mac keyboard layout is US-like, even on European models. Which means a bunch of keys are in different places from their European IBM counterparts (like @ and "). The # and / keys I find particularly ha…
Text navigation works in the same way on Linux/mac using readline key bindings.
Re: Linux 5.19
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
You widely underestimate how much work goes into documenting hardware.
They need to have that sort of documentation internally anyway for their macOS devs to work on it, right?
And good luck convincing the team of lawyers to groom tens of thousands of pages of internal confidential documentation and source code and prune what can be release to the public and what stays classified as a competitive advantage.
As lawyers usually play it safe (they're paid to defend the company) they'll tell you to keep everything internal internal, since Apple makes money selling finished products and services, not selling discreet chips to OEMs who's functionality needs to be explained to third parties.
Re: Linux 5.19
#109Wait, if Linus is happy about supporting undocumented hardware, then does he like NVidia now too?
Nvidia is actively hostile. Apple is slightly willing to get Linux to work. It's not comperable.
Apple provides no documentation or any other resources. Nvidia at least provides their closed source drivers and has put in some effort in open sourcing some parts of them. Obviously Nvidia is not great but it is still much, much better than Apple which just totally ignores Linux and there is no guarantee some exec might decide that they need to patch the ‘security holes’ which allow Linux to even run on m1 at some point in the future.
Re: Linux 5.19
#110Nothing against the Asahi team, it sounds like they're doing fantastic work. But I'm a little surprised at the talk (which I've seen before) which indicates theirs is the first approach allowing you to use Linux on ARM Macs. A few months ago I used UTM Virtual Machines (which itself uses QEMU) to get ARM Linux up and running on my M1 Mini, and it worked brilliantly. Admittedly I only use the command line interface fo…
I guess working on bare metal was implied. Virtualization have always been useful but it's another use case. Asahi enable user to bypass MacOS entirely which I guess is the only satisfying way to use apple silicone for Linus Torvalds.