Question as long as we're on the subject... software companies can decompile competitor's software and figure out how they did something. Can Qualcomm or another chip maker "decompile" the M1 and figure out how Apple made it? Apple seems so far ahead of the other ARM chipmakers, can the other guys catch up by studying the M1 chip? Or is it too small/involved/etc to learn much from?
Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
171–180 of 548 posts
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#172No, 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…
>owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? A company who custom-developed drivers specifically to be compatible with a competitor's OS on their own hardware? You're talking about that Apple? The one who said they w…
Bootcamp is dead on M1. In addition they have taken steps towards further locking down which apps can run on OSX. So he's probably talking about that Apple.
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#173Linux has never worked well on Apple hardware. At one of my previous jobs I had the choice between a very high end "MacBook Pro" (1TB SSD, 16GiB RAM, etc) and a lower-end PC.
Since my job was developing a Linux distribution from scratch, I was going to be running Linux on whatever I got. I (naively) assumed that since I saw a lot of MacBook Pro's at open source conferences and other places where open source software is written, and the MacBook Pro was x86-based that Linux would just work -- but it was a disaster.
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
>owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? A company who custom-developed drivers specifically to be compatible with a competitor's OS on their own hardware? You're talking about that Apple? The one who said they w…
And they did all of that in response to community solutions that weren’t as solid as their first party support. They went out of their way to support and extend the viability of their users clear desire for dual booting, at that time of a much more formidable competitor than MS is today.
[deleted]
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#175No. 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 av…
For the record, I disagree with some of your points, but the one point I agree with is really important. There's no clear guarantee that there will be other performance-competitive arm64 CPUs in laptops anytime soon. I don't think anyone has as much incentive as Apple does. Who else is as incentivized to make a laptop/desktop-class arm64 chip? Maybe ARM themselves ... but without a mainstream OS to run it on (with ma…
You do know there is a version of Windows for ARM64 already, right? It was largely hampered by the speed of the available CPUs, but it does exist.
What I’m really curious about is how the ISA for the M1 is different from the CPUs Windows for ARM already supports. And as others have mentioned — I think GPU support will be more difficult, but I don’t have any data to support that.
But, it’s not like alternative (and mainstream) OSs don’t exist for ARM64. Maybe with some faster ARM64 CPUs, this could be the push to really make ARM a viable architecture for more than just Macs.
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#176Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the current 13 inch devices have vastly underperforming cooling systems. Well every device except the Apple macbook pro.
If you're not willing to look outside of the exact form factor and specs that Apple happens to support, then open devices aren't a priority for you. I use a 1 inch thick Thinkpad that's almost a decade old because it runs Libreboot. There is an alternative, but you need to be in the mindset where freedom is more important than hardware.
Exactly you need to compromise significantly on speed and form factor. It's simply not practical for me to do that.
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#178No, 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…
Now here, children, is an example of someone you should never get married to. Someone who would inconvenience you for his mistaken beliefs, and would rather spend money to make sure you get less, than give in and let it be shown he might be wrong. Your mother warned you!
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#179I think if Linux really wants to run well on consumer hardware - in other words, not servers - then we’ll have to build the hardware. No idea how that happens from a business perspective, but Raspberry Pi seems to be a great model. Perhaps a Pi Pro could be designed that meets some of those needs. The Zero is almost too mobile for a laptop to be usable, but who knows, maybe someone will come up with a unique design a…
The Raspberry Pi is not a good example if you want control of the hardware. Closed GPU and microcode, no chance of finding actual hardware documentation (beyond coarse schematics), and no way to buy components. Broadcom is not aligned with your goals.
Re: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?
#180Asking "Per month" for non-specified period of time is not a well posed question. Do you suppose to pay per lenght of developement period? Or you expect users to pay for the resr of their life for priveledge of using such port?