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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?

#441

Post by black_puppydog »

kepler1 wrote: post #178
squarefoot wrote: post #94

No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap. I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform, rather to a technically superior but proprietary close one whose owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields. No thanks, I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness, n…

Now here, children, is an example of someone you should never get married to. Someone who would inconvenience you for his mistaken beliefs, and would rather spend money to make sure you get less, than give in and let it be shown he might be wrong. Your mother warned you!

Wtf? Should they rather marry you, someone who goes ahead and makes them look like somehow less of a worthy human, just because they would opt to spend their money in a way you disagree with?

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

#442

Post by ksec »

simonh wrote: post #369
ashneo76 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model, privacy intrusions, lip service to OSS, bullying right to repair in courts, tax evasions doesn't deserve any free work f…

Wow, thats some conspiracy theory. Only a teeny tiny fraction of hardware companies have any relationship with Apple whatsoever. For those that do yes their Apple work is lucrative, but for most of them like Sony or Samsung it's a minuscule fraction of their overall revenue, and even then is only for very specific components. Large swathes of their output has nothing to do with Apple. The supply chains of most PC man…

>I mean Ive got to think you must know both those points are true.

Hardware relating Comments on HN has always been fairly low quality to say the least, comparatively speaking to many other subjects. But Apple M1 sort of brings the worst out of it. My current counting right now over 10K comment suggest most have very limited understanding of Hardware tech, little on Hardware business, and quite literally zero on supply chain.

So I would not be suspired If many doesn't know.

I could count people with one hand who have to constantly comment and correcting all the wrong assumption, TSMC capacity limitation, NAND and DRAM price fixing etc etc. And now we have Apple's supply chain monopoly.

The world currently ships approx ~1.2B Smartphone every year, and Apple represent less than 20% of it. And if you include Tablet, PC and Laptop ( Which shares the same supply chain ) Apple is much closer to 10%. The premium Apple pays is not leading edge ( apart from 5nm TSMC ) but very strict quality control and capacity guarantee.

My observation into this issue, is that most software developers and tech workers are so far removed from old model ( non-tech ) of business they have very little understanding of Logistics, Supply Chain, Lead Time, Sales Channel, Distribution and Discovery ( Marketing ). And ironically enough the world best company at doing all of the above is also a tech Company called Apple.

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

#443

Post by cbozeman »

krageon wrote: post #420
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).

> and the remaining 1% is stuff that you should migrate away from or modern videogames (which arguably you should also move away from).

Would you expound on this in greater detail? I am interested in your thoughts.

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

#444

Post by whereistimbo »

cies wrote: post #434
yellowapple wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, hopefully they haven't entirely sold their hardware-company soul, in which case Linux support would only help hardware sales, even if by a little bit. Apple certainly didn't do much to interfere with people porting Linux and BSDs to their PowerPC hardware back in the day (and indeed, the Powerbook G4 sitting on my bed right now is mostly-happily running OpenBSD). However, considering Apple's behavior around i…

If you use Linux on an Apple laptop, you are less likely to use their software stores, mobile phones, tablets, headphones, etc. The integratedness of Apple's offerings depend on the control they have on both software and hardware. I think it's the integratedness that sells Apple's product.

But is amount of people that want to use Linux on an Apple laptop going to be relevant to Apple? Given most consumer would rather use preloaded OS and the state of the linux on the desktop, I don't really think it matters to Apple.

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

#445

Post by thiht »

IntelMiner wrote: post #294
thayne wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I use the CLI on a mac, I am frustrated by the absense of all the GNU extensions that aren't there when I use the core utilities, and that the version of bash is ancient . I mean I still prefer it over windows, but it is not the same experience as linux.

The last time I used a Mac I remember the absolute headfuck that was all the different ways to make it "more unixy" "Oh just use Macports!" "No macports is trash, use Homebrew!" "Homebrew sucks, use Gentoo/kMacOSX!" Of course none of them were particularly interoperable at the time and all had extremely arcane invocations and setups. It was very lipstick on a pig

I'm very happy with Homebrew. I find the model way easier than Linux packages.

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

#446

Post by mschuster91 »

amelius wrote: post #437
mschuster91 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think you understand very well how hardware design works. Most hardware designers write code just like software developers. Most of them have never used a hot air gun, and most of them can't explain in much detail how a transistor works at the physical level (they learned this once in their education, but have since forgotten, simply because they don't need to know this in their daytime jobs). Yes, once you n…

> Most hardware designers write code just like software developers.

You're talking about people doing FPGA work which is a totally different skillset than making your own PCBs - and even more lacking in people contributing to open-source projects because it is (at least in my opinion) even harder to get a grasp on, and capable FPGA development boards cost a boatload of money.

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

#447

Post by dabernathy89 »

ashneo76 wrote: post #263
squarefoot wrote: post #94

No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap. I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform, rather to a technically superior but proprietary close one whose owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields. No thanks, I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness, n…

No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model, privacy intrusions, lip service to OSS, bullying right to repair in courts, tax evasions doesn't deserve any free work f…

> A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model

Apple's mobile devices, laptops, and desktops have some of the best longevity and the best resale values in the market.

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

#448

Post by ubercow13 »

krageon wrote: post #430
nspattak wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I do not really care about apple machines (and I neither own neither plan to own in the near future) it seems that the M1 laptops have a significant advantage in power consumption over amd64 laptops. And as a linux user, this is only gets worst with linux. I agree however that from a performance perspective the M1 seems to be competitive but not much faster than existing amd64 products.

I have had 24h+ battery life on a 64bit x86_64 machine - clearly good battery life is possible already. Edit: Yes, this was with the lid open and me doing things. Not videogames, just some light coding.

On a form factor similar to a Macbook Air? I'm sure it is possible to have 24h+ battery life on a Linux laptop; if you ignore the other parameters (battery size and performance) it is meaningless.

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

#449

Post by robenkleene »

krageon wrote: post #420
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).

> the remaining 1% is stuff that you should migrate away from

I'm not following. Compiling and media editing depend on a fast platform, are you really suggesting people should avoid doing those tasks?

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

#450

Post by pmontra »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #376
pmontra wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you, because there are tradeoffs and they are very subjective. BTW I do use Windows and MacOS a few times per month, via remote desktop to run two programs of a customer that only run there. Not a complete experience but add to it some continued (Windows) or sketchy (Mac) use of those OSes from their very first release (80s / 90s). I'm trading those two nuisances, one very small, the other invisible…

You have your preferences about UI and GUI and that's ok. But 40Hz screen and non-working brightness controls are a non-starter for any but the most dedicated users. 144Hz is common on decent laptops nowadays, along with automatic brightness. To me, this trade-off is very simple.

As I wrote, it's very subjective. I've been working at 40 Hz for 2 years and I didn't notice the difference. I press windows-fn-F9/F10 instead of only fn-F9/F10, not a big deal. Automatic brightness control as on phones? I would probably disable that anyway.

By the way, brightness control didn't work in 2014, then started working, then it stopped working again. Kernel versions / NVIDIA drivers, who knows.

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