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ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

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Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#251

Post by jki275 »

ryandvm wrote: post #82
octorian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Microsoft or Apple majorly screws something up, people say this. It still hasn't happened yet. However, I think Apple has been a far greater threat to Linux adoption than Microsoft. Why? Because it gives techies the *nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. There is real value in proprietary commercial end-user application software. Most companies wh…

> Because it gives techies the *nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks. The hardware used to be pretty nice, but honestly I'm still having trouble forgiving them for getting…

Package management == Homebrew. No issues there.

Not a fan of the touchbar of course.

Otherwise everything else I need is usable on a Mac.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#252

Post by dclusin »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #163
adrianpike wrote: post #118

I'm actually not worried, for a few reasons; - I already do cross-arch development day-in and day out between x86 and ARM, and have only run into hard blockers on a library or tool a handful of times. The solve was generally pretty straightforward to either use an ARM-compatible alternative, or to cross-compile it myself. - We've done this many many times before and it's not that bad. I know I'm not the only one old…

But back in those very heterogeneous days (don’t forget go throw in Alpha and MIPS!) - computers running more exotic processors like SPARC were workstation-class and their manufacturers were responsive to requests from the SE community - so while I share your lack of concern about heterogeneity - I am concerned that Apple won’t be making their ARM platform the best for developer workloads (at least, non-iOS, non-macO…

As a life long Mac user my next machine is going to be a windows box. It's not so much hatred for Apple that's driving me. It just seems that Microsoft has a huge financial incentive now to play nicely with Linux due to their cloud business being pretty success and Apple with their iOS hegemony does not. The product decisions each company is making seem to reflect that. Also $4k buys a lot more windows box than it does apple.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#253

Post by jki275 »

jmull wrote: post #209

> Should I get an ARM Mac? ...if you use virtualization often, I wouldn't recommend it. I use virtualization continuously, but not for anything that needs to be as fast as possible. I won’t hesitate to get an ARM Mac once I can run x64 Windows VMs on it. (Presumably VMWare Fusion or Parallels, and for once I won’t feel ripped off by the upgrade pricing.) Docker on Mac doesn’t work that well today, so I don’t have any…

There is no reason to expect that virtualbox, parallels or Vmware will emulate x86-64 to run a guest OS. None of them does any emulation today, they are virtualization platforms.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#254

Post by jki275 »

armagon wrote: post #35
user5994461 wrote: post #5

Didn't think of that. If running Docker is 10 times slower on ARM and virtual box doesn't support the architecture at all, this might indeed end developers using Mac.

I've been developing on a Mac for years, and I've never needed to use Docker or virtualisation to do it. (I've been doing game development, and now web front end development. I'm sure the major game engines and browsers will be ported to run on ARM chips (although it may take a while)). Honest question: What sort of development regularly requires using docker or virtualized OSes?

Embedded.

Almost all the compiler toolchains for embedded devices will not run under anything but some esoteric specific version of Linux or Windows.

I generally write code on Mac native (C or C++), then put it into a VM configured with all the right tools and such to build and install.

Usually that VM is a copy of the VM I use for CI/CD with gitlab.

I don't know how common that use case is, but I know everybody I know who does embedded work does it that way or something like it.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#256

Post by olyjohn »

meddlepal wrote: post #130
mbreese wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Because it gives techies the nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. > The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks. It doesn't have to be the best nix environment. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a good one. It just…

Exactly what advantage does macOS shitty Unix environment have over Windows 10 w/ WSL2?

Everything WSL2 does has already been do-able with Windows for at least 10 years. It’s a VM with some file system sharing. You might as well just ask what advantage does MacOS have over Windows. WSL hasn’t changed anything really.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#257

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

adrianpike wrote: post #228
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But back in those very heterogeneous days (don’t forget go throw in Alpha and MIPS!) - computers running more exotic processors like SPARC were workstation-class and their manufacturers were responsive to requests from the SE community - so while I share your lack of concern about heterogeneity - I am concerned that Apple won’t be making their ARM platform the best for developer workloads (at least, non-iOS, non-macO…

Yep, I think we're of one mind here. I'm not worried about the ARM architecture shift, but the whole direction of the platform makes me expect I won't be using a Macbook as my primary dev machine much longer. Interestingly enough - for personal hacks (mostly cross-compiling Golang to ARM, natch) I'm actually using WSL lately, and it's definitely good enough. Not perfect, but nothing much is.

> Not perfect, but nothing much is.

Has anyone ported Plan9 to ARM yet?

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#258

Post by grzm »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #257
adrianpike wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I think we're of one mind here. I'm not worried about the ARM architecture shift, but the whole direction of the platform makes me expect I won't be using a Macbook as my primary dev machine much longer. Interestingly enough - for personal hacks (mostly cross-compiling Golang to ARM, natch) I'm actually using WSL lately, and it's definitely good enough. Not perfect, but nothing much is.

> Not perfect, but nothing much is. Has anyone ported Plan9 to ARM yet?

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

> Platforms: x86 / Vx32, x86-64, MIPS, DEC Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM

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