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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

#131

Post by rdsnsca »

flomo wrote: post #50
jbverschoor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a strategic move from Apple to allow other OSses. They could've gone the iOS route, requiring jailbreaking. They know very well how they became so big. It was in the early 2000's, because they had the support of many developers.

Yes and no. Specifically, Mac was lifesupport marketshare until Intel. Bootcamping or VMing Windows was a huge selling point at the time. (But maybe in the long-run, it turned out that UNIX was more valuable after all.) With apple silcon, Apple is dropping what was a huge feature -- Windows. Ability to run Linux distros on Mac hardware is like rounding error hacker stuff.

Less than 5% of Mac users used bootcamp according to Apple.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#132

Post by nixpulvis »

h4x0r12345 wrote: post #96
nixpulvis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some people it's a nice challenge to tackle. So is killing a tiger, but you don't see any stripes on my wall.

With your anti-intellectual mindset, Linux and BSD would never had made any progress. Linux now runs on countless platforms and all of it has been reverse engineered and hacked from the beginning. Getting Linux working on the M1 is a worthwhile challenge for the most talented hackers, which you are definitely not one of.

um, ok thanks.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#133

Post by rdsnsca »

pkulak wrote: post #23
jeppesen-io wrote: post #21

I know a pipedream, but if apple provided the docs and drivers for Linux on m1, it would really cement the current defacto standard of a MacBook as the development laptop of choice Amazing progress - but I wonder if getting accelerated gui is 10x the current effort No skin in the game, but can't wait to see how this progresses

I’m pretty sure if you’re not signed into iCloud, you’re of no use to Apple. They’d probably prefer folks not buy their hardware just to wipe it.

Not signed into iCloud on my M1 Mac mini and everything works perfectly.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#134

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

coldtea wrote: post #25
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should! But apparently isn't. In fact, nearly every image viewing/accessing program assumes that your image content will just happily fit entirely in available RAM after decompression and doesn't bother with things like live tiling.

> In fact, nearly every image viewing/accessing program assumes that your image content will just happily fit entirely in available RAM after decompression Sounds like a totally reasonable assumption, for 99.9% of the cases (including graphic designers).

Absolutely, and the pervasiveness of that mindset leads to things like tearing through swap and grinding the computer to a halt because the user clicked on a random file. It doesn't take supergenious or paranormal powers to realize that files might be arbitrarily large. Engineers mostly just fail to care.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#135

Post by nixpulvis »

dncornholio wrote: post #110
nixpulvis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not the same meaning of "free". But anyway Would you care to enlighten me please? Otherwise your comment is of no value.

There's basically only 2 meanings for free (not in jail, price of 0), so if it's not the one, it's the other. Don't think his comment wasn't of value to me.

Then I fear you've oversimplified your model. I believe there is a lot of grey area between being placed behind physical bars and being forced to pay for services.

For example, let's say one comes down with a horrible disease, clearly they are not being directly charged in cash and no police have been involved. Yet I can't shake the feeling that they have been parted with some freedoms.

Anyway, food for thought. This thread is perilous.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#136

Post by azinman2 »

teekert wrote: post #85
azinman2 wrote: post #4

I’m extremely impressed with anyone’s ability to do this at any age, but if I remember correctly, she’s like 17-19 years old or something? Incredible! You go Alyssa!

From what I remember from that age, it was the sweet spot for having the intelligence, the enthusiasm and the time to just grab a problem and completely loose myself in it. I didn't care at what time I slept, there were no children requiring attention, my bachelors was pretty easy and didn't require much time investment. My parents were also pretty easy and let me be at my computer for very long times at very strange…

It’s not so much cognitive capability, but experience and knowledge. This is well beyond the experience and knowledge of many professional senior software engineers, let alone someone who hasn’t actively worked at NVIDIA/etc on video chips. She’s figured all this out on her own — not even a full CS degree at a top tier school would go into this level of detail to know how these chips & drivers work, let alone reverse engineer a cutting edge chip from a black box. Reverse engineering is its own skill set, and be the first in the world in this uncharted territory means this isn’t your first time reverse engineering something. It isn’t her first, which makes it even more impressive what she was doing at an earlier age. That combination of self-drive, knowledge, and talent is extremely rare… even more rare when her peers are wanting to hang out and do normal teen stuff!!!

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#137

Post by linguae »

p4bl0 wrote: post #51
nixpulvis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, as I see it, is that "free software" becomes unfree when you have to pay to port it. Back in the glory of more universal general computers this was perhaps a lesser spoken requirement of the system. Today, it's clear to me that we are slipping back into chaos. EDIT: Seems like FSF's "freedom to run" might fit the definitional benchmark for me. I'm not really sure how people are going to react to that tho…

> "free software" becomes unfree when you have to pay Not the same meaning of "free". But anyway, for now, you have to pay Apple prices to have a computer with an M1 chip on it. If the price is a string requirement, one probably won't buy Apple hardware and rather get something that less expensive and is already well supported by free software :).

The remarkable thing about Apple prices these days is just how affordable powerful M1 computers are. The entry-level Mac Mini costs $699 (https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini). In single-core CPU benchmarks the M1 chip has a Geekbench score of 1744 (https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9460112), which is slightly higher than the Intel Core i9-11900F, which scored 1726 (https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i9-11900...) and has a recommended customer price of $422-$432 (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/212254/...). (To be fair, in multi-core benchmarks the i9 outperforms the M1 by nearly 2000 GeekBench points, but the M1 is still comparable with good chips like the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX) By the time you add a motherboard, RAM, storage, and graphics, a Core i9-11900F build would be more expensive than an entry-level Mac Mini. Also, the M1 chip has a TDP of just 15W, while the Core i9-11900F has a 65W TDP.

While it's unfortunate that Apple has kept many of the technical details of their M1 Macs secret, thus making it a gigantic effort to port Linux and other alternative operating systems to it, what has people so excited about the M1 is the performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar ratios the chip provides.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#138

Post by exotic_00 »

MisterTea wrote: post #112
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…

> 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.

AMD GPU on ARM is also likely going to be a good but since that RDNA2 is going to paired up with a Samsung CPU it's not as compelling as Samsung CPU's are not close to the M1 CPU. So far the rumours suggest RDNA2 is coming to Samsung phones. I don't about you but that's hardly exciting. For me to interested about RDNA2 on ARM it needs to come on laptop with a great CPU as well.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#139

Post by Razengan »

Razengan wrote: post #69
nixpulvis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why we even bother trying to support these hardware vendors sometimes. I have been trying really hard to simply not deal with them for my own sanity. Are we not simply letting the leash out further for what we will accept and buy? Are we truly that powerless against the market forces which drive HW/OS sales?

Or, or, or.. bear with me.. do we simply like what’s being offered and nothing about it turns us off to change our habits and try alternative products, all of which come with their own brand of bullshit anyway?

* turns us off enough

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#140

Post by Wowfunhappy »

rdsnsca wrote: post #131
flomo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Specifically, Mac was lifesupport marketshare until Intel. Bootcamping or VMing Windows was a huge selling point at the time. (But maybe in the long-run, it turned out that UNIX was more valuable after all.) With apple silcon, Apple is dropping what was a huge feature -- Windows. Ability to run Linux distros on Mac hardware is like rounding error hacker stuff.

Less than 5% of Mac users used bootcamp according to Apple.

Now, but I expect it was a lot more common in the early days of the Intel transition.
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