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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?

#31

Post by my123 »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #16
sethhochberg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, from what I understand its less "turn off secure boot features" and more "create/add a signature for your custom code to secure boot". https://mobile.twitter.com/never_released/status/13263157410... I can't find a primary source for the comment in the tweet, but it seems widely regarded as true at this point, so fingers crossed it pans out that way.

Hm, interesting. I can't seem to find my source anylonger either. The wording "kernel" does suggest to me that this is about a check a bootloader performs. If you were to boot another OS, you'd probably have a different boot loader as well. This tweet https://twitter.com/never_released/status/133243677102043545... from the same author suggests M1 is "not any more locked down than [...] Intel", so I'm not fully sure a…

The lowest security level, permissive, allows to mess with the Secure Boot policy at will.

When you use kmutil to add a custom boot entry, enrolling the hash of your executable to the Secure Boot policy is handled automatically as part of the tool.

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

#32

Post by internet2000 »

shmerl wrote: post #29
evolve2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have been saying that since the first implementation of System Integrity Protection/Gatekeeper 5 years ago. It's been long enough to the point I think your comments counts as FUD... yes they can do it, but there hasn't been any indication they would.

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

#33

Post by shmerl »

internet2000 wrote: post #32
shmerl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have been saying that since the first implementation of System Integrity Protection/Gatekeeper 5 years ago. It's been long enough to the point I think your comments counts as FUD... yes they can do it, but there hasn't been any indication they would.

I wouldn't trust Apple with anything. Lock-in is their bread and butter. Just because they didn't lock something down for some time means nothing given they are very aggressive with lock-in in other areas. You don't need FUD to know their infamous reputation.

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

#34

Post by rsynnott »

kmeisthax wrote: post #5

Wait, did Apple actually add an option for unsigned boot on M1? I remember their WWDC overview saying they were only going to have either iPhone-style latest-version-only or any-version options, and them later saying they'd only be supporting virtualization. If they have an owner override for the secure boot on M1, then that's absolutely fantastic, and I suppose puts more support around Apple's assertions that Micros…

From the very twitter thread you're replying to: https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551...

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

#35

Post by marcan_42 »

sweden wrote: post #26
marcan_42 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Just 2D" isn't really a thing, given modern GPU usage is all based on fully programmable 3D pipelines anyway. What I mean is the endless frustrating job of debugging closed source game corner cases (and often outright game bugs) is less critical here, since those games won't exist for ARM anyway. If it gets to the point where X11 and Wayland, desktop environments, common widget toolkits, browsers, media players, etc work smoothly and stably and perform well, then a lot of people will be very happy already. The long tail will always be there to chip at, and that will take years (not like vendor drivers are bug-free on any OS either!), but it's not a blocking factor to a usable desktop Linux experience. Lower-hanging fruit first.

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

#36

Post by reificator »

sweden wrote: post #26
marcan_42 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This talk was posted in another comment chain: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016

This was 3 years after the hardware release, presented on substantially more locked-down (but x86 and PC-like GPU to be fair) hardware with a demonstration of Portal 2 running in real time. Presented by the person you are replying to. I'm also assuming there was no funding involved given the requirement to build an exploit just to boot anything on the PS4.

As an unabashed cynic myself: Your cynicism as someone uninvolved with the project is outweighed by the informed opinion of someone who has demonstrated ability in the field of porting linux to other platforms.

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

#38

Post by eikenberry »

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…

> but because Apple won't help us with documentation.

No documentation is being hostile to other OSes running on their hardware.

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

#39

Post by chippiewill »

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…

I think this is a legitimate concern, but it seems less likely to me, specifically in the case of Apple hardware, for two reasons:

1. There will be far more interest in being able to run Linux on that hardware, and in being able to keep it up to date (since it'll be a daily driver).

2. Apple are probably less likely to regularly make drastic changes between hardware revisions because they will need to support multiple hardware revisions themselves (Apple are typically pretty good with supporting old hardware). Their only strong motivator would be to actively prevent people running other OSes but I don't think Apple care that much about screwing over that niche demographic - especially when they're already paying for the hardware.

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