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Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

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Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#111

Post by marcan_42 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #107
marcan_42 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the same person working on the Panfrost driver is working on Asahi, right? We aren't a bunch of random people; we've been in this game for years. I think we have a better idea about the development effort required, likely timelines, and what project structure works than Larabel, who runs a blog. As I said, we already have the userspace graphics stack passing a big chunk of basic test suites. We're alre…

Yes, and the infrastructure(Mesa, LLVM) and the like is much better, or at least much better than during the PowerVR MBX days, almost 20 years ago, when I was in the game. I have no doubt that something is going to come out of this. But really, are you going to claim that you have the people to make a RE driver on the level of, say, the Intel one? For someone who is complaining about "sleep issues", I'm quite sure he…

Considering the Intel driver can't even manage tear-free display on some of my machines... Yes, I am.

It helps that we only have to support one hardware platform at this time, not a whole line-up of legacy cards, and that as far as we've seen so far, Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#112

Post by MisterTea »

pkulak wrote: post #24

I’m so worried this project will get 95% of the way there, and then all the fun issues will run out and the M1 will be just another MacBook with WiFi, Bluetooth and sleep issues. The obvious issue is to pay someone to do the work, and I am, but I still can’t shake the fear.

Why all this anxiety over a proprietary general purpose computer?

> I’m so worried this project will get 95% of the way there, and then all the fun issues will run out and the M1 will be just another MacBook with WiFi, Bluetooth and sleep issues.

No one cared that the old G3/G4 Macbooks couldn't run "X" at the time they were released.

AMD is also working on an Arm with RDNA2. I'm more excited about that chip than the M1 as it will be inside of more machines than the M1, even if outperformed by the M1. The M1 is boring as it just comes glued inside of Apple hardware that I have no interest in.

> The obvious issue is to pay someone to do the work, and I am, but I still can’t shake the fear.

If you want the M1 opened because you already bought one hoping it would become open then you counted your chickens before they hatched. The anxiety is your own fault.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#113

Post by caskstrength »

marcan_42 wrote: post #102
caskstrength wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can reverse engineer a whole undocumented display controller and GPU Who says they reverse engineered whole of it? Making it display images is easier compared to making it work fast, support video decode, power saving, etc. Nouveau has been around for long time and never transitioned from former to latter state. > then a fingerprint scanner is easy. Yes, but it is not the point I was making. > The barriers…

Nouveau has a problem with nonredistributable firmware. We don't have that problem because Apple distributes their firmware themselves and it gets loaded before Linux boots. I already put together a prototype installer that deals with the whole firmware situation for users. I've been porting Linux to undocumented platforms for 10 years and the main barrier to getting it polished is motivational, not technical. It's p…

Okay, Hector, so assuming your Patreon reaches 100% when can we expect to have Linux working on M1 with similar performance, battery life and hardware video decoding in mplayer and Firefox?

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#114

Post by AshamedCaptain »

marcan_42 wrote: post #111
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the infrastructure(Mesa, LLVM) and the like is much better, or at least much better than during the PowerVR MBX days, almost 20 years ago, when I was in the game. I have no doubt that something is going to come out of this. But really, are you going to claim that you have the people to make a RE driver on the level of, say, the Intel one? For someone who is complaining about "sleep issues", I'm quite sure he…

Considering the Intel driver can't even manage tear-free display on some of my machines... Yes, I am. It helps that we only have to support one hardware platform at this time, not a whole line-up of legacy cards, and that as far as we've seen so far, Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition.

> Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition.

So the "planets are aligned differently", this time. Well, we'll see. I have my doubts since my impression is that Apple looted Imgtech for their GPU, and everything I remember about Imgtech/PVR is a complete disaster.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#115

Post by DonHopkins »

zamadatix wrote: post #93
DonHopkins wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is that Apple's software that runs on the M1 is absurdly better than the competition, especially on the M1, because both the macOS software and the M1 hardware were designed to work together hand-in-hand fast and efficiently. So even if you could get all the hardware drivers working properly, Linux/Gnome still will lose out to macOS because that hardware simply wasn't designed for that software, and tha…

The "it was all designed by Apple so can't be outperformed in parts" has got to be a trope at this point. If that's the case why is Chrome able to put benchmark Safari on my M1? Not to mention the OS shouldn't be the bottleneck for anything performance related in a desktop type system anyways.

Where did you get that quote? It's certainly not what I wrote, or meant.

And what is a "put benchmark"? Why would you only benchmark a web browser's HTTP "PUT" method?

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#116

Post by Octoth0rpe »

somewhatbetter wrote: post #99

Why is it newsworthy if a programer gets a program running on a general purpose computer? I mean 89 comments seems to be a lot for this.

> Why is it newsworthy if a programer gets a program running on a general purpose computer?

In some sense, a computer with nearly entirely undocumented hardware isn't 'general purpose'. This effort is literally the process of taking a non-general purpose computer and turning it into a general purpose computer, and the news is that a major milestone has been reached.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#117

Post by mjburgess »

dsego wrote: post #89
supperburg wrote: post #32

Wow going through this persons online presence, she is astoundingly prolific. Transgender, as well.

> Transgender, as well. I might be wrong, but that seems to be the norm for techies. At least from what I've seen online.

Theres a somewhat significant correlation between hf autism & gender dysphoria; and hf autism & technical proficiency.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#118

Post by marcan_42 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #114
marcan_42 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the Intel driver can't even manage tear-free display on some of my machines... Yes, I am. It helps that we only have to support one hardware platform at this time, not a whole line-up of legacy cards, and that as far as we've seen so far, Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition.

> Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition. So the "planets are aligned differently", this time. Well, we'll see. I have my doubts since my impression is that Apple looted Imgtech for their GPU, and everything I remember about Imgtech/PVR is a complete disaster.

I don't know exactly how much of Imgtech is still in these GPUs, but the coprocessor/firmware interface is Apple's own design, the AGX2 shaders are a completely new design, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple only keep paying Imgtech because they have patents on TBDR, and there is otherwise none of their IP involved any more.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#119

Post by AshamedCaptain »

marcan_42 wrote: post #118
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's hardware design is much cleaner than the competition. So the "planets are aligned differently", this time. Well, we'll see. I have my doubts since my impression is that Apple looted Imgtech for their GPU, and everything I remember about Imgtech/PVR is a complete disaster.

I don't know exactly how much of Imgtech is still in these GPUs, but the coprocessor/firmware interface is Apple's own design, the AGX2 shaders are a completely new design, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple only keep paying Imgtech because they have patents on TBDR, and there is otherwise none of their IP involved any more.

When I say looted I mean "most of the people I knew who used to work in Imgtech now work at Apple", not any licensing agreement, which I would guess they keep just to avoid a nasty lawsuit.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#120

Post by somewhatbetter »

netdur wrote: post #108
somewhatbetter wrote: post #99

Why is it newsworthy if a programer gets a program running on a general purpose computer? I mean 89 comments seems to be a lot for this.

Because she can... And we really want linux on good arm laptop - you know, so we can ditch x86 on servers.

>we really want linux on good arm laptop >so we can ditch x86 on servers

So linux enthusiasts hate apple for their influence and business methods, but love them for the good arm laptops, but hate them for the undocumented hw so they develop linux to work on an their arm laptop so you can ditch x86 on servers.

I knew linux is a ductape-work, but i never tought you can get high of its glue-fumes.

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