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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?

#21

Post by marcan_42 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #12

If I thought there was a good chance of having the work upstreamed so that a mainline Linux kernel would eventually work on these computers, maybe. In my experience, there are not many ARM SoCs that have mainline support, even some of the Raspberry Pi boards don't, and they're some of the most popular ARM SoCs used for Linux. A lot of these projects get to the stage where a forked kernel will run on the SoC, but then…

This would absolutely all be done with upstreamability in mind, and upstreamed as soon as is practical.

All that horrible forked kernel stuff is the realm of companies with closed development teams who don't care and just want a product out the door.

The PS4 Linux stuff I did was not upstreamed for lack of time/interest, but I absolutely considered it being decent enough to upstream when writing it. PS3 Linux running under GameOS mode patches were indeed upstreamed (though there was a bit of a lawsuit along the way so all of my code ended up attributed to a friend instead since I was keeping a lower profile at the time...).

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

#22

Post by sweden »

internet2000 wrote: post #15
sweden wrote: post #11

Keep in mind that something as fundamental as the GPU driver wouldn't be available even they managed to get Linux up and running. And the M1 GPU is Apple's full custom GPU. Even if someone tried to reverse engineer a driver, it would take decades.

He seems relatively optimistic about getting a GPU driver going: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126014910701568 I don't think it'd take decades. Nouveau was pretty ok after like 5 years, wasn't it?

It has been longer than that and 3D support is still a bit shaky. And this is based on known hardware.

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

#23

Post by marcan_42 »

internet2000 wrote: post #15
sweden wrote: post #11

Keep in mind that something as fundamental as the GPU driver wouldn't be available even they managed to get Linux up and running. And the M1 GPU is Apple's full custom GPU. Even if someone tried to reverse engineer a driver, it would take decades.

He seems relatively optimistic about getting a GPU driver going: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126014910701568 I don't think it'd take decades. Nouveau was pretty ok after like 5 years, wasn't it?

And Nouveau has to work with dozens of Nvidia cards, not just one, and full of legacy nonsense. I'm fairly optimistic it won't take 5 years.

(Especially not to the point of having a composited desktop; long tail game compatibility is less of a critical thing since, well, there are next to no games for ARM Linux...)

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

#24

Post by phendrenad2 »

edoceo wrote: post #20
sweden wrote: post #11

Keep in mind that something as fundamental as the GPU driver wouldn't be available even they managed to get Linux up and running. And the M1 GPU is Apple's full custom GPU. Even if someone tried to reverse engineer a driver, it would take decades.

Maybe Apple can provide some blobs? Like the closed Nvidia drivers

I doubt Apple would though. Why help people run non-standard OSs on your hardware with no App Store?

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

#25

Post by internet2000 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #24
edoceo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Apple can provide some blobs? Like the closed Nvidia drivers

I doubt Apple would though. Why help people run non-standard OSs on your hardware with no App Store?

Because it sells the hardware, where they make the most money. I don't think they will do something like that, but I think the reason is that they just don't care enough to dedicate internal resources.

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

#26

Post by sweden »

marcan_42 wrote: post #23
internet2000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems relatively optimistic about getting a GPU driver going: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126014910701568 I don't think it'd take decades. Nouveau was pretty ok after like 5 years, wasn't it?

And Nouveau has to work with dozens of Nvidia cards, not just one, and full of legacy nonsense. I'm fairly optimistic it won't take 5 years. (Especially not to the point of having a composited desktop; long tail game compatibility is less of a critical thing since, well, there are next to no games for ARM Linux...)

If you are just planning to hack something to show some basic and buggy 2D rendering, 5 years might be realistic.

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

#27

Post by Geminidog »

dylan604 wrote: post #2

I'm assuming this is for the kernel itself. After that, does the distro matter?

A distro specifically targetting the apple form factor would be great. Even with linux as it is now there's still a huge number compatibility issues and jankiness at a per distro basis.

A distro targetting just apple would greatly simplify what needs to be done and overall lead to a better user experience.

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

#29

Post by shmerl »

evolve2k wrote: post #7
shmerl wrote: post #4

Not sure. As long as Apple are hostile to running anything else on their hardware, reverse engineering it (for all the drivers and etc.) might be simply a waste of time and resources which could be better applied to something useful and actually friendly to openness. Especially since such reverse engineering will require constant chasing after changes to stay relevant.

False. Respectfully it seems you didn’t read much of the thread. From the thread Apple have actively left the door open so other (currently non existent) OS could be booted, but as the author said, they’ve left it open but have not provided documentation. From the thread: “Linus himself has said he'd love to see Linux running on M1 macs, but doesn't think it'll happen. Not because they're locked down, but because App…

See the comment by Linus Torvalds about it. Leaving the door open is a poor excuse, because they can close it at any time putting all your invested effort down the drain. I'd say - don't waste your time.

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

#30

Post by izacus »

internet2000 wrote: post #25
phendrenad2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Apple would though. Why help people run non-standard OSs on your hardware with no App Store?

Because it sells the hardware, where they make the most money. I don't think they will do something like that, but I think the reason is that they just don't care enough to dedicate internal resources.

Well, even for BootCamp, a marketed feature, they only dropped a halfarsed set of drivers which worked very poorly and were pretty never updated. We need to use hacked AMD drivers to get updates for the Radeons and the Macs still overheat and burn a lot energy due to lack of even basic power saving features. Heck, even the GPU switching isn't implemented.

Why would there be expectation they'd do anything more for Linux?

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