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Linux on the Mac – state of the union

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Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#111

Post by Karunamon »

artursapek wrote: post #93
joshlemer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you taken a look at the Razer Blade? It is basically equivalent to the Macbook pro's hardware in every way, except black, an i7, a touchscreen, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, and a bit less expensive. I just got one. I haven't put Linux on it yet, but I'm pretty blown away with the hardware.

Wow, that looks like an MBPro clone. I've never heard of this company. I wonder if its machines work well with Linux?

Razer's basically a "gamer gear" company. Think stylized light-up keyboards, mice, headsets, and so forth. Problem is, their quality control is really all over the place and they are ridiculously expensive. This weird QC is part of the reason I never bothered with their laptops despite the well specced hardware.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#112

Post by pjmlp »

scotu wrote: post #75
l1k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. As explained in the intro, folks like antirez are considering moving back to Linux and in his linked HN comment he specifically talks about trying Linux on the MacBook he's currently using to see where he's headed. The article seeks to give these folks in particular a helping hand in understanding what works and what doesn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820490 That said, the kernel developers…

maybe, but not all pros are computer science pros, e.g. photo and videographers for example are pretty pissed that the sdcard reader was removed as far as I know... but then again that's solvable, ram limits far less (3d artists might like it?)

There are computer science pros that only care about Swift and Objective-C programming, not UNIX.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#113

Post by asragab »

scotu wrote: post #75
l1k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. As explained in the intro, folks like antirez are considering moving back to Linux and in his linked HN comment he specifically talks about trying Linux on the MacBook he's currently using to see where he's headed. The article seeks to give these folks in particular a helping hand in understanding what works and what doesn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820490 That said, the kernel developers…

maybe, but not all pros are computer science pros, e.g. photo and videographers for example are pretty pissed that the sdcard reader was removed as far as I know... but then again that's solvable, ram limits far less (3d artists might like it?)

That's right. But it seemed for a while that the MacBook Pro had the feature set, hardware configurations and broad appeal that allowed both groups to be aligned on their hardware choices (i.e. a MacBook Pro).

It is perhaps too early to wave goodbye once and for all to that coalition, but it does seem like some of the design directions that Apple has taken have drifted away from that user base.

That said, this war on the professional and creative class of users began sometime ago - I think the introduction of Final Cut X was the first salvo, while the platform has significantly evolved from the first couple of problematic releases, I personally know some who considered the product a literal betrayal and abandoned ship to Premiere Pro or AVID.

I sense Microsoft is attempting to reassemble that coalition with their offerings, namely the Surface line (especially that gorgeous looking Surface Studio) and the introduction of Bash on Windows, which while still quite limited in its functionality, can be a seen as a step.

I really like my MBP 2013 (NVIDIA GPU) and I guess I am going to keep it a while longer.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#114

Post by pjmlp »

WWLink wrote: post #16
abritinthebay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if we're sharing annecdata: literally everyone I know who works in audio would give up their Mac only on death. That covers several DJs, Producers, VO Artists, Audio Editors, and quite a few Sound Designers...

If we're sharing annecdata: Almost every programmer I know owns a Mac and loves it, and prefers working on them. Except me. My employer doesn't let me use my own computer and refuses to buy me one.

Here in my little corner in Europe, I hardly know anyone, other than management and colleagues doing iOS/Appstore projects, having one.

At my company they belong to a pool for iOS projects.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#115

Post by stinkytaco »

l1k wrote: post #110
navait wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple seems to consider macOS purely a client OS from which one ssh's to the outside world but not the other way round. I'm not knowledgeable enough, but this seems a pretty reasonable assumption for 90% of use cases. And if this assumption holds, is it fair to say. I think what you're trying to say is "First of all, macOS power manages devices too aggressively for me " > It looks like macOS suspends the BCM 57765…

For a Linux driver it wouldn't be acceptable to compromise functionality like this as it's expected to work equally well on big iron as on laptops. So we have to tweak a lot more to achieve the same level of battery life.

Just to understand this, why wouldn't that be an acceptable compromise? As someone who uses linux on both a server and a laptop, I can tell you that when my laptop is unplugged, I'd much rather have that battery life than inbound ssh connection stability. I would imagine this is much the same for the vast majority of linux users. Could the lack of compromise be part of the problem?

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#116

Post by l1k »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #108
l1k wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're a penetration tester, you're on-site trying to break into a network, have no Internet connectivity (e.g. because you're in a shielded data center or don't want to raise suspicion) and need to crack some passwords. 5x Skylake CPU + 5x Polaris GPU would be a sufficiently beefy platform for Hashcat, and it would fit into your backpack. Or let's say you want to quickly set up a Hadoop cluster to crunch s…

There's 4 40Gbit/s ports, but their total bandwidth is not 160Gbit/s. IIRC, the ports on the right side of the machine have less total bandwidth because of how they're connected, for example.

That is correct. The Thunderbolt controller has two DisplayPort sink ports which are wired to the GPU, in addition to the PCIe 3.0 4x interface which goes to a root port in the CPU. So to actually max out the 40 Gbit/s, you need to drive external displays and also max out the PCIe 3.0 4x interface. Which is another way to say that 8 Gbit/s are reserved for DisplayPort.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#117

Post by wjoe »

monochromatic wrote: post #58
rocky1138 wrote: post #12

I wish to thank the dedicated people who make this happen. I'm forced to use Apple hardware at work, but thankfully can run whatever OS I choose. Here's to the crazy ones.

What kind of office lets you install a new OS on their machines?

Small companies usually. It helps being somewhere that runs a cross platform stack like Java and/or targets Linux servers anyway.

Once I'd been here a few months, they trusted me not to brick the laptop, they're fine with me installing Linux on a Mac if I say it works better for me and I can leave OS X on there as a dual boot.

Big companies are usually less willing, either due to some OS specific software or policies that enforce some specific encryption/security/monitoring.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#118

Post by wjoe »

criddell wrote: post #109
maggit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs have a good hw/sw-integration, but there are other features as well; I bought my first MBP for its trackpad, which is still unparalleled, and (as l1k puts it) its form language. I'm running Linux, which doesn't offer the same hw/sw-integration quality, but it's pretty good!

The trackpad and also the retina display. If you work with text, how could you not love a high-dpi display? After you get used to it, moving back to a standard 1080p screen feels like you are reading a laser printed page through a screen door.

>how could you not love a high-dpi display?

When the software doesn't handle it well. I don't particularly like any implementation of high DPI scaling. OS X's scaling caused performance issues for me, and programs would get confused moving between monitors. Linux doesn't have any way that I know of to cope with monitors with significantly different resolutions - eg, I can make the window manager scale everything 2x so it looks good on the 'retina' display, but I still have a 1080p monitor attached too, so then everything is huge on that.

Even without multi monitor issues, scaling tends to be picky with some programs on most OSs. OS X seems to be the most consistent, Linux is a roulette wheel depending on your GPU/window manager/program/day of the week. Windows works sometimes but looks blurry.

I have Linux installed on my work Mac and just run the 'retina' screen at 1920x1200.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#119

Post by l1k »

stinkytaco wrote: post #115
l1k wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a Linux driver it wouldn't be acceptable to compromise functionality like this as it's expected to work equally well on big iron as on laptops. So we have to tweak a lot more to achieve the same level of battery life.

Just to understand this, why wouldn't that be an acceptable compromise? As someone who uses linux on both a server and a laptop, I can tell you that when my laptop is unplugged, I'd much rather have that battery life than inbound ssh connection stability. I would imagine this is much the same for the vast majority of linux users. Could the lack of compromise be part of the problem?

If nothing's plugged in then many devices can indeed be suspended in some way, either by putting them in PCI power state D3hot or by cutting power if the platform supports it. Plug events are then signaled e.g. by an ACPI GPE (general purpose event, an interrupt sent by the platform to the OS).

The case I was referring to was with the Ethernet cable still plugged in. They seem to suspend the Ethernet controller but don't wake it when packets come in, presumably because the controller doesn't support that. The machine appears dead from the outside after a few seconds of inactivity.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#120

Post by wjoe »

maratc wrote: post #65
maggit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs have a good hw/sw-integration, but there are other features as well; I bought my first MBP for its trackpad, which is still unparalleled, and (as l1k puts it) its form language. I'm running Linux, which doesn't offer the same hw/sw-integration quality, but it's pretty good!

Couple of guys in my office did the same, but came back to OS X after weeks of suffering problems with high-DPI support, multiple screens, bluetooth etc.

High DPI on Linux is indeed a mess, but I find running the screen at a lower resolution preferable to Apple's implementation of DPI scaling anyway.

Bluetooth is very broken too. Not sure if that's an issue with the drivers or the Linux bluetooth stack in general. Fortunately I only use it for my wireless headphones, which I can live without.

WiFi used to be a big problem when I tried Linux on a Mac at a previous job, thanks to terrible Broadcom drivers, but that all seems fine now.

Been running Linux on a Mac for 2 and a half months now, for me personally the improvements are significant and the issues minor.

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