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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?

#411

Post by lmm »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #246
Someone wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Git repo at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu . Note that that is 2 years behind. You can get a newer source dump from https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-6153.141.1/ . So, open source, but development isn’t done in the open. You can’t really expect you’ll be able to see recent commit messages or even just regular source dumps.

The development methodology has nothing to do with whether something is FOSS or not. If you're complaining that you want to see daily updates, that's a completely different thing than claiming it's not FOSS (as OP did).

FOSS means being able to develop it the same way they do. That ought to mean being able to see to VCS history, bug trackers and so on - their own developers would use those things when developing.

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

#413

Post by simonh »

fsflover wrote: post #397
simonh wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of having the right to repair a phone that, 3 years after it's crowd funding campaign, now has 5 year old hardware, still can't reliably make calls and has a sub 2 hour battery life?

It can reliably make calls [0] and has a decent battery life [1] (even though it cannot sleep yet!). If you have more concerns, you can check the community FAQ [2]. Concerning the old hardware, it's the most powerful phone which can run latest Linux kernel and the only one recommended by the FSF [3]. Specs is not the whole story in smartphones [4]. [0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Cellul... […

Can make calls sometimes and being reliable are I suppose a matter of experience and opinion.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/librem-5-review-the-lin...

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

#414

Post by MaxBarraclough »

mschuster91 wrote: post #394
amelius wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be forgetting about the powerful EDA software that will help with the design and its verification.

Which isn't free (and easy to use!) either. And I forgot about another thing too: the supply of people. While everyone and their dog can attend some six weeks coding bootcamp or teach themselves using free and open resources and can then start contributing to open source code, dealing with hardware requires a good education in fundamental physics, good amounts of money for components and tooling (a good soldering iro…

> everyone and their dog can attend some six weeks coding bootcamp or teach themselves using free and open resources and can then start contributing to open source code

Perhaps this was intended to be hyperbolic, but no, you can't become a kernel developer, say, in six weeks. You can learn to dabble in web development in that time, but you'll barely have taken the first step toward being a serious software engineer.

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

#415

Post by Dylan16807 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #298
ngcc_hk wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is revenue. Guess margins is the main question.

That’s pretty easy to ballpark. Everything Apple does targets a whole package 25-30% margin. If the services aren’t generating that margin, the hardware is making it up. Last I heard the iPhone is on that margin target, as are all or nearly all macs. So it’s pretty reasonable to assume the services are pretty close in line.

> whole package margin

> If the services aren’t generating that margin, the hardware is making it up.

I really don't like that way of looking at profits.

Going by that standard, if you sell a thousand dollar device with $260 in margin and no software, everything is great.

But then if you add on $600 in software to increase your margin to $330, that's bad somehow?

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

#416

Post by Summershard »

aspyct wrote: post #402
aruggirello wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pretty much develop software for Windows on other platforms too. Cross compilation is supported in several languages, and when you can't - you can usually compile stuff under Wine, or even ReactOS. So while obviously you need a computer, you don't strictly need Windows.

Yes you do need Windows. Wine is great, but there's no way I'll publicly release a windows application that hasn't been tested on an actual windows install.

Microsoft gives virtual images of their OS for free for development. You can work on any platform and test on VMs.

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

#417

Post by krageon »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #224

No, because it is already a unix OS. I imagine this is unpopular in HN, but what matters to me is just running on a good solid unix. I don't really care if it is a unix or Linux. What I want is shell scripting, pipes, forks, make, python, awk, grep, find, du, df, etc... Most anything that doesn't come pre-installed can be built from source. This wasn't true in the early days of OS X, but now the only things I find th…

It's unpopular because it's not good or solid, unless you don't care about openness and privacy. In which case you're not really worth thinking about in the context of Linux distros. There is plenty of closed software that compromises your privacy around.

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

#419

Post by fsflover »

simonh wrote: post #413
fsflover wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can reliably make calls [0] and has a decent battery life [1] (even though it cannot sleep yet!). If you have more concerns, you can check the community FAQ [2]. Concerning the old hardware, it's the most powerful phone which can run latest Linux kernel and the only one recommended by the FSF [3]. Specs is not the whole story in smartphones [4]. [0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Cellul... […

Can make calls sometimes and being reliable are I suppose a matter of experience and opinion. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/librem-5-review-the-lin...

This is not a review of the mass production batch (Evergreen). Please stop spreading FUD. Evergreen started shipping in November. Some people received theirs recently:

https://forums.puri.sm/t/received-my-librem-5-evergreen/1087...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/jzj6s1/i_have_recei...

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

#420

Post by krageon »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #162

Most of the solutions in this thread are simply not viable. Stuff like the Pinebook and Raspberry Pi are several magnitudes away from Apple's M1 SoC. No amount of hackerish imitation will bridge that gap, the laws of physics are not kind to consumer product hardware hackers. It is very obvious that most of the people commenting here has never held a soldering iron, nor taken a single computer architecture class. The…

Your argument against an open platform is "more open hardware is slower", as if that matters somehow. 99% of what you use in a day doesn't depend on a fast platform, and the remaining 1% is stuff that you should migrate away from or modern videogames (which arguably you should also move away from).
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