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Linux Running on Apple M1

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Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#131

Post by oblio »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91
midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. However, I’m optimistic that these will be mostly usable on Linux before they’re too obsolete or outdated. The platform is so popular and iconic that it’s drawing a lot of attention from Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.

So the advice is to buy a second hand one 5 years from now?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#132

Post by na85 »

midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

>subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls

Honestly this sounds exactly like my experience with linux on any laptop, including three thinkpads.

Linux is a great desktop and server OS but the UX of a laptop actually demands a certain level of polish/fit-and-finish that linux desktop environments just don't have, otherwise it's constantly getting in your way.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#133

Post by titzer »

my123 wrote: post #101
titzer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1 carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with MD…

If you can pinpoint which pages are affected (in most cases you can), you can just add that range to the blacklist. Can work in the meantime, before you have a new machine.

There were dozens of ranges, too many to blacklist. Which made me suspect that it might actually be the memory controller. In which case, it's totally F'd. But given this I went for total data evac.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#134

Post by Geminidog »

gumby wrote: post #121
Geminidog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. When teams of people compete intensely , the collaboration within the teams themselves must be just as intense. I find it slightly offensive that someone would accuse me of discounting collaboration when 1. I never discounted it, 2. It's obvious that society is full of people who collaborate. In what universe are the words "zero sum" apt for my response? None. I never described a zero sum game. Obviously,…

> I find it slightly offensive that someone would accuse me of discounting collaboration when 1. I never discounted it, 2. It's obvious that society is full of people who collaborate. In what universe are the words "zero sum" apt for my response? None. I never described a zero sum game. Obviously, the replier added the description with his biased imagination. You wrote, "Winner takes all" which seems pretty zero sum…

Your post implies that I discounted collaboration which I obviously did not. Look at the original post again, it deliberately says that competition is important as well as collaboration. Hence why your reply is categorically baseless.

As for “winner takes all” why don’t you look up the definition of a “zero sum game”. A zero sum game usually applies to simplistic games like chess or an island with limited resources aka things that have a measurable gains and losses. Complex situations like the one described are rarely zero sum.

When I say winner takes all its more of an “expression” symbolizing the intensity of competition. I think it’s quite obvious that the situation here is not some contest setup so that a single winner takes everything. There’s no need to make your self sound smart and use the words “zero sum game” redundantly. Only certain types of people use the words “zero sum game” colloquially for the purposes of sounding smart even though the majority of situations in nature aren’t actually artificial games setup to be zero sum.

The word is also used negatively as if zero sum games can’t ever exist. Like it’s obviously wrong if your describing a zero sum game. It’s rare but zero sum games do exist so stating that something is a zero sum game doesn’t move the conversation forward. Like so what? Yeah I could be describing a zero sum game, it doesn’t make me wrong, what’s your point?

Case in point, the credit for the First person or team who can get Linux running on the m1 IS a zero sum game and there already is a winner for that “game.”

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#135

Post by titzer »

oblio wrote: post #129
swiley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a mac after complaining about how you can't replace ram seems a bit odd.

Feelings, not reason, probably applied there. At least it the logic was consistent in both cases.

It was a decision I was considering for months, the memory corruption just forced it. I didn't expect software to be this far behind. I was aware that the RAM and everything is even less upgradeable than a Stinkpad, but I am hoping this machine is more reliable overall and it will give me 5+ years of service. (My last Macbook Pro from 2010 was still kicking up until 2018, when I switched to the Stinkpad because keyboard.).

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#136

Post by saagarjha »

titzer wrote: post #100

Qemu is also several kinds of broken on M1. I was able to get qemu to boot an x86 Linux after applying a huge pile of patches I found on a forum. If you are expecting to get up and running instantly with a VM to put all of your comfy old software in, not so fast!

How so? I've been using QEMU to boot Intel guests without issue for almost six months…

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#137

Post by saagarjha »

glitchc wrote: post #106

Until the Linux kernel leverages instructions specific to Apple M1's extended ISA, this is a waste of time. The whole point of the M1 experience is that out of the box, it's fast, silent and runs for days. Yes, Linux will run, as it would run on any ARM processor, but it will be slow, hot and run the battery down in a couple of hours. It will take years for the open-source community to reverse-engineer the ISA and wr…

I think you're misunderstanding Apple's custom instructions and how useful they are.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#138

Post by wmf »

exikyut wrote: post #13

(Waiting for page to load) "Nice, so they finally got a kernel to boot. I wonder what fancy way they'll be showing the dmesg infor--" "Oh." I think I need to recalibrate my idea of a 10x developer... (The standard would seem to have ratcheted up somewhat as the years have gone by!)

Note that this team already ported Linux to the iPhone, so what they did recently was update their iPhone port to support M1.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#139

Post by my123 »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #114
glitchc wrote: post #106

Until the Linux kernel leverages instructions specific to Apple M1's extended ISA, this is a waste of time. The whole point of the M1 experience is that out of the box, it's fast, silent and runs for days. Yes, Linux will run, as it would run on any ARM processor, but it will be slow, hot and run the battery down in a couple of hours. It will take years for the open-source community to reverse-engineer the ISA and wr…

What instructions from an extended ISA are you referring to? The only ones I've seen written up have been: 1. Instructions to change the memory ordering mode, which allows Rosetta2 to skip some expensive memory fences when translating x86 binaries to ARM. 2. Some instructions for matrix math. I wouldn't expect either of these to affect typical usage or battery life much, unless your workflow involves running things t…

And the former isn't even an instruction, set a single bit in ACTLR_EL1 and off you go.

The second is an extension that talks to a coprocessor that's quite application specific. And that has an unstable ISA that changes every year. Probably not the biggest priority for anyone.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#140

Post by mmphosis »

oblio wrote: post #127
arghwhat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use Thinkpads. I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn…

The thing is, many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes. So your anecdata goes against a mountain of anecdata from people using those platforms.

The thing is, many more people are using phone and tablets, than Windows and many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes and many more people are using desktop Linuxes, than desktop BSDs. So the anecdata goes against your mountain of anecdata that goes against a world of anecdata from people using those platforms.
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