Somewhat surprisingly, Linux support for Apple Silicon MacBooks seems to be shaping up to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop. The Asahi team don’t have support for everything yet (notably no GPU) but what they do have support for seems to be high quality, well integrated with Linux’s conventions, and upstreamed into the mainline kernel! How much other hardware can claim that? The Asahi developers ha…
> to be better than that for pretty much any other laptop. No GPU support is a big miss though. ARM also means that you can't make every binary made for x86 out there work, even if initiatives like Box86 and Box64 help bridge the gap.
Linux 5.19
161–170 of 239 posts
Re: Linux 5.19
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best Linux support is always where most Linux developers work on. This seems like obvious but really is not. As long MacBooks keep being the insane machines they now are, they will soon become (and keep being) the best Linux machines available. Just because people will make sure of that.
Not disagreeing (or agreeing) with you about that, but as a coda I would note that I find it somewhat absurd that laptops have become the typical platform for developers. It implies something about what drives people's choices for working environment that I find strange. I do have a laptop, and I appreciate it being portable and thus being able to do work away from my (home) office. But most of the time I work on "de…
Re: Linux 5.19
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple provides no documentation or any other resources. Nvidia at least provides their closed source drivers and has put in some effort in open sourcing some parts of them. Obviously Nvidia is not great but it is still much, much better than Apple which just totally ignores Linux and there is no guarantee some exec might decide that they need to patch the ‘security holes’ which allow Linux to even run on m1 at some p…
Apple actively helped Asahi Linux by changing the boot process. NVidia actively works against Linux by using things like the GPL condom. Nvidia is like that kid that is forced by a teacher to do something and then proceeds to do it in the most shitheaded way but just enough for it to work while actively working against the spirit of the request of the teacher. Apple in contrast has helped Asahi Linux for literally no…
Re: Linux 5.19
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wish other laptop hardware was on par with Apple. One can’t deny their attention to detail, fit and finish.
I just bought a Thinkpad because my home's other Windows machine died. The laptop is ok in general , and I love the mate screen, but the black plastic body is just horrible. It feels as if it's going to break just by opening the screen. Does apple have some kind of patent for the aluminium body?
Re: Linux 5.19
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nonsense. The 10th gen X1 Carbon has basically nothing functional unless you are running master kernel, and even then it's not completely there. It's just an unusable paperweight at the moment, the OLED screen is pretty though.
As a long-time Thinkpad user, it usually helps to not go for the latest/greatest, but even so, the time between release and 99% working linux is in the region of months with Thinkpads, whereas it can be years-never with Mac. I had some issues with my AMD X13 when getting it new - but they weren't show-stopping, just annoying, and they got ironed out over the next 6 months.
Notably the Asahi project got M2 laptops up to parity with the M1 family in ~48 hours of dev work. No doubt this won't always be the case (there's bound to be major hardware revisions at some point) but at the moment this is quite promising looking towards the future.
Re: Linux 5.19
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wish other laptop hardware was on par with Apple. One can’t deny their attention to detail, fit and finish.
I just bought a Thinkpad because my home's other Windows machine died. The laptop is ok in general , and I love the mate screen, but the black plastic body is just horrible. It feels as if it's going to break just by opening the screen. Does apple have some kind of patent for the aluminium body?
No, they just have an absolutely huge farm of CNC machines cutting them out which is expensive to maintain, not generally available from contract manufacturers in the volumes required, and would take a huge capital outlay from competitors who wanted to replicate it.
Re: Linux 5.19
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best Linux support is always where most Linux developers work on. This seems like obvious but really is not. As long MacBooks keep being the insane machines they now are, they will soon become (and keep being) the best Linux machines available. Just because people will make sure of that.
Not disagreeing (or agreeing) with you about that, but as a coda I would note that I find it somewhat absurd that laptops have become the typical platform for developers. It implies something about what drives people's choices for working environment that I find strange. I do have a laptop, and I appreciate it being portable and thus being able to do work away from my (home) office. But most of the time I work on "de…
Re: Linux 5.19
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
My M1 has an HDMI 2.0 port.
That isnt currently supported under linux.
Re: Linux 5.19
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a specious argument. Supporting undocumented hardware is fine and always has been - what’s not is supporting gross non-free kernel blobs.
What if Apple provided a better GPU driver, as a non-free kernel blob?
Re: Linux 5.19
#170While the main focus is on the surprising compatibility of M2, I still laughed a bit at this: > (*) I'll likely call it 6.0 since I'm starting to worry about getting confused by big numbers again. It seems that he ran out of fingers and toes again.