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Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

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Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#271

Post by reaperducer »

rvz wrote: post #152
stepbeek wrote: post #88

Will this have an impact of tools that depend on linux like docker on mac? Maybe android emulation? If so, then I'm super excited for it. I'm using an m1 macbook air right now and it's the first compelling mac laptop for me since 2015. It's absolutely amazing. But for any workload that uses docker, my linux desktop is streets ahead.

Last time I checked, the Android Emulator running on Apple Silicon still has issues and isn't functionally as good as running it on an Intel Mac. There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year which will most certainly be more performant and optimised than the last generation. One of the several reasons why I stayed away fr…

There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year

A tool that exists is far more useful than a tool that does not exist.

Or as they used to say in the olden days: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#272

Post by dTal »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #208
dTal wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>about 1-2 years after the new laptop model has been released, almost everything works fine It depends on the category of device and what feature you want. I recently got an X1 Tablet (the 2-in-1 version of the X1 Carbon), and it barely works on Linux; there's a veritable zoo of inscrutable bugs that render the device very annoying to use (for example, Plasma's night mode disables when you re-attach the keyboard). It…

This matches my experience with a 2-in-1 Thinkpad. Obscure bugs (WiFi driver periodically crashing when Thunderbolt is connected) still there after 2 years now. I think the best bet is going with as much of a run off the mill device as possible. In my experience a separate tablet works much better than a 2-in-1 compromise anyway. When your sole input device is a touchscreen, UX is (unsurprisingly) massively better wi…

The problem isn't the "compromise" - the problem is there is no touch-first UI on Linux. That's the point. I can detach the screen and use it as a "seperate tablet", but it still sucks.

Android, on the other hand, is strictly improved by the addition of a hardware keyboard.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#273

Post by cpmsmith »

kelnos wrote: post #163
fulafel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret to the lightweight nature of Docker is that it just uses various namespacing, cgroup etc functionality provided by Linux with no virtualized OS kernel or hw virtualization mechanisms involved. (Yep you need ARM Docker images when running on ARM of course)

Do we really expect to see many Docker images published that are compiled for ARM? Sure, I expect to see base OS images, but I'd find it hard to believe that many people are going to take the time to cross-build and publish an arm64 version of their container image alongside their x86_64 version. I guess to some extent that might be generally useful, what with things like AWS's Graviton ARM processors, but I expect i…

Anecdotally, we already do see a substantial number. Far from 100%, but many of the most popular images on Docker Hub are already multi-arch. The most notable exception is the Docker-maintained MySQL image, but Oracle maintains another which works fine on ARM.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#274

Post by thomaslord »

fulafel wrote: post #155
stepbeek wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'll still be a virtual machine? It'll just mean that there could be an ARM native virtual machine rather than one emulating x86.

The secret to the lightweight nature of Docker is that it just uses various namespacing, cgroup etc functionality provided by Linux with no virtualized OS kernel or hw virtualization mechanisms involved. (Yep you need ARM Docker images when running on ARM of course)

Wouldn't Docker still need a VM for Linux containers on any non-Linux OS? My understanding is that it uses the host's kernel, so running it on macOS would always require a VM.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#275

Post by zucker42 »

533474 wrote: post #70

Why do we still buy macs? Apple can pull the plug anytime. Kudos yo the huge undertaking but I personally think we wouldn't need this type of gargatuan effort if we just refused to buy macs without linux support. Why support such a closed system?, enlighten me...

Mac laptops are going to have some of the most advanced CPUs for a while now because Apple is buying all of TSMC's leading edge capacity.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#276

Post by anthk »

the_french wrote: post #224
peteretep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the pattern is that when you start to dig into people talking about their great experience with Linux on a laptop, you end up eventually getting them to admit that there are a lot of annoyances they’ve just resigned to living with

On some fronts it even feels like things have regressed . Trying to resize an encrypted partition is way, way too difficult. And it seems like GParted doesn't handle LUKS so you're back to manually typing block offsets on the command line. If you wanted to use a TPM to store the FDE passphrase, well, you have the patience of a saint. Compare this to Mac or Windows where you click a single button and it's all setup, i…

Get OpenBSD. FDE is dumb easy. I am not kidding.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#277

Post by rvz »

reaperducer wrote: post #271
rvz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, the Android Emulator running on Apple Silicon still has issues and isn't functionally as good as running it on an Intel Mac. There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year which will most certainly be more performant and optimised than the last generation. One of the several reasons why I stayed away fr…

There is no point in getting the M1 Macbook (which is last year's model) since they will either announce a M1X or even a M2 Macbook this year A tool that exists is far more useful than a tool that does not exist. Or as they used to say in the olden days: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

> A tool that exists is far more useful than a tool that does not exist.

A tool that already works (Intel Mac) is far more useful and much better than buying a tool that exists and doesn't work with your existing setup or requires more tweaks and more hacks for it to work. (M1 Mac).

Or as they used to say in the olden days: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

(In the case for Apple which release new product generations every year, always skip the first generation)

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#278

Post by salamandersauce »

hyakosm wrote: post #242
hobonate wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already GTK and Qt. What more do you want? > And then it still needs a centralized way to monetize the development work. I disagree: once you put money into the equation, the quality of packages will go down as programmers try to shake as much money out of the users. Compare programs like MATLAB vs GNU Octave or Photoshop vs GIMP for example. > And to get all that, you need a ton of paying users, not a bunch…

> There's already GTK and Qt. What more do you want? There's GTK2, GTK3, vanilla Qt, KDE-Qt with additional tooling... The problem in Linux is the lack of integration between these tools. The fragmentation of the GNU/Linux ecosystem forbids the possibility of an unified API like HaikuOS kits. ( https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/api/ )

Doesn't Windows have a similar problem? MFC, WPF, UWP? Plus Qt, GTK too...

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#279

Post by CraftThatBlock »

tediousdemise wrote: post #268
redm wrote: post #211

After reading articles last year on Linus insinuating it would be "unlikely" that Linux would appear on the M1 [1] [2], I drank the cool-aid and took that at face value. I guess I should have known better, just like nature, open source "finds a way". [1] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpost... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25216680 etc..

Yeah, Linus doesn’t know what he’s taking about half the time.

I think the original statement that it was "unlikely" was correct, the effort put into this project has been incredibly impressive.

As another poster has said, there's still a long ways to go for support.

Re: Initial M1 support merged into Linux SoC tree

#280

Post by chipotle_coyote »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #249
ginko wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about button clicks?

you have to hold 'option' to click on a button in a window without focus

Not Option, but Command. If you hold down Option and click in another window, the current window hides. You can also hold down Command and drag a window that doesn't have focus.

You can also switch focus to a window without raising it by holding down Control+Option and clicking the window.

At any rate, a lot of these things can be chalked up to different philosophies, I think. Personally, I really don't like focus follows mouse; when I was using FreeBSD and Linux many years ago, I would try it and then end up disabling it after a short while.

It is worth noting that Terminal has a hidden preference for focus-follows-mouse:

    defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool true
You can also change that setting, along with those of some other quirky system things, in third-party apps like TinkerTool and Onyx.
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