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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?

#121

Post by smspf »

No. Because (in no particular order):

- it shouldn't be the community's (or a crowd-funded dev's) responsibility to provide software support for hardware produced by one of the largest companies out there (bonus: with zero hardware specs);

- Apple could make all this futile with a push of a button (SecureBoot can be disabled for now, but what guarantees are there this won't change?);

- other arm64 machines will be available soon enough, most if not all of them with publicly available specs;

- I do not own an M1 machine, nor do I plan on buying one;

From a technical perspective, it's doable. Looks like it has UEFI and can run Windows. But we know nothing about possible silicon errata and required driver changes (or at least I don't).

Anyway, I'm sure others would like to see this happening and would actually pay - hopefully the Twitter poll will reveal whether this is actually worth it.

Disclaimer: I ported things to arm64 for a couple of years as a contractor.

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

#122

Post by my123 »

novok wrote: post #112
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that’s exactly accurate. The special JavaScript instructions, and the optimizations to retain/release counts within memory blocks, seem much more interesting. https://mobile.twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1331735383193903... I haven’t the foggiest idea if any of this could make it to competing ARM chips, but given how many years Snapdragons have been lagging relative to the iPhone “A” chips, I don’t feel t…

I don't think it will be that hard for Intel & AMD to put little operations like the javascript float one (which is a standard ARM instruction BTW) or some special instructions to help garbage collection and retain/release counts work more effectively that all programming languages could leverage. It's something else that makes it better.

And that instruction is to replicate the x86 FP rounding behavior, which ended up in the JS standard. Nothing else...

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

#123

Post by thekyle »

I think if you want a laptop to run Linux then you should just buy a laptop that comes with Linux. There are some pretty good options out there today (Dell XPS Dev Edition, ThinkPad, System 76, etc.) that you can buy from the manufacturer with Linux.

Trying to take a laptop designed for macOS and turn it into a Linux laptop is going to be a painful and frustrating experience. It's like buying a Tesla and trying to put the Toyota navigation operating system on it. If you like Toyota's system then just buy a Toyota.

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

#124

Post by ekianjo »

rowanG077 wrote: post #119
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…

Well I wouldn't pay for it if I could print billions in a snap because then I would start my own company that creates open RISC-V laptops and pcs. But in the current market I will because there's simply no alternative.

X86 based PCs are no alternative?

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

#125

Post by rbanffy »

ralph84 wrote: post #111
pengaru wrote: post #51

Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC's 5nm process, why wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86 CPUs on 5nm or smaller. At least AMD is supporting upstream Linux development for GPU support, if you care about Free software and control over your computers, throw your money at companies better aligned with those goals. Don't reward Apple for being assholes. <=5nm AMD Zen SoCs will be fantastic as we…

5nm certainly helped, but what really made M1 is the team Apple has assembled. Apple’s fat margins allowed them to attract and retain the best engineers with top of market total comp. Meanwhile Intel viewed engineering as a cost center to be optimized. So here we are.

You optimize for where your competition is. For the past couple generations, Intel had to optimize for prices and, with hiccups in the process improvements, this pressure gets even worse.

When Zen 2 came out, IPC became a serious issue for Intel. I imagine that M1 makes it a lot more urgent.

Also keep in mind that, in a sense, M1 is a dead end. Integrated fast memory is great when the size fits, but it's terrible if it doesn't.

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

#126

Post by rowanG077 »

ekianjo wrote: post #124
rowanG077 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I wouldn't pay for it if I could print billions in a snap because then I would start my own company that creates open RISC-V laptops and pcs. But in the current market I will because there's simply no alternative.

X86 based PCs are no alternative?

Unfortunately not. There are no 13 inch x86 devices on the market that don't throttle afaik.

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

#127

Post by rbanffy »

zucker42 wrote: post #77
pengaru wrote: post #51

Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC's 5nm process, why wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86 CPUs on 5nm or smaller. At least AMD is supporting upstream Linux development for GPU support, if you care about Free software and control over your computers, throw your money at companies better aligned with those goals. Don't reward Apple for being assholes. <=5nm AMD Zen SoCs will be fantastic as we…

The other thing that makes M1 interesting is it's ARM with specific hardware support for fast x86 emulation, which IMO is unlikely to be replicated in a top of the line laptop for the next 5 years.

x86 emulation is not an issue for 99% of the ARM market. I think it's safe to assume M1 is the first Apple chip that has it.

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

#128

Post by ric2b »

rowanG077 wrote: post #119
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…

Well I wouldn't pay for it if I could print billions in a snap because then I would start my own company that creates open RISC-V laptops and pcs. But in the current market I will because there's simply no alternative.

What do you mean by no alternative?

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

#129

Post by ric2b »

toper-centage wrote: post #81
devwastaken wrote: post #54

Apple won't support it, therefore support and maintenance will be working around apples proprietary hardware and special drivers. Linux is not meant to live in that environment, I'd argue bettering support for other OEM's is a more fruitfull goal.

On the other hand, we have basically one single model per year to support. That hardware is used by millions and usually users keep it for 5 or more years.

How is that different from simply picking the best option from some other manufacturer each year and supporting only that? There's no mandate that you need to support every device a company makes.

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

#130

Post by rbanffy »

tobinfricke wrote: post #93

Does OS X still run on top of Darwin? If so, seems like a GNU/Darwin environment might be a better bet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

Since macOS runs on top of Mach, maybe we could port GNU/Hurd to it.

/me exits the room.

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