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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?

#531

Post by kazinator »

I would not fund this, because I would be suckered out of money by someone who not only fails to deliver, but who is surpassed by others who follow a conventional bazaar model.

Successful Linux on Apple Silicon start as something almost completely useless that only hackers want to use (gets you a Bash prompt with GCC kind of thing), not that anyone wants to use. This is perfectly fine.

Imagine if, in 1990-ish, Torvalds had announced, "I'm taking donations for making a Unix clone for 80386 PC's that everyone will want to use in production".

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

#532

Post by nordsieck »

CountSessine wrote: post #242
mbreese wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know there is a version of Windows for ARM64 already, right? It was largely hampered by the speed of the available CPUs, but it does exist. What I’m really curious about is how the ISA for the M1 is different from the CPUs Windows for ARM already supports. And as others have mentioned — I think GPU support will be more difficult, but I don’t have any data to support that. But, it’s not like alternative (and ma…

You do know there is a version of Windows for ARM64 already, right? You do know that there's no software available for it, right? Without software, arm64 Windows is not a viable operating system for an arm64 laptop. ARM Windows is as relevant as MIPS Windows or Itanium Windows without the huge ecosystem of software you get on x86. And who goes bankrupt first to build this platform? Is it the laptops makers who lose m…

> When Apple says the future is ARM, everyone knows the hardware will be coming and they'd better fire up their IDEs. There's no such confidence in ARM Windows.

Pretty critically, Apple was able to modify their chips so that they can efficiently emulate x86 code. Microsoft will not be able to do the same.

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

#533

Post by deaddodo »

chrismorgan wrote: post #327
deaddodo wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't attempted sway specifically, but I don't see why not. The OS installs with nouveau on wayland by default, and runs perfectly fine (at a ~60-70% performance level, based on Linux/Proton gaming FPS). I use GNOME on Xorg, so have no issues with the proprietary driver.

Looks like that’d be the GTX 1650 Ti? That’s of the NV160 family, and per https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html (assuming it’s up to date), that lacks all 2D and video acceleration, and power management. That sounds rather like a mediocre toy for a large fraction of users. And Wayland needs Nouveau, because the NVIDIA proprietary driver is a hostile environment that does everything its own way rather tha…

Then use the Intel card and you'll have full acceleration + wayland. Or don't buy the laptop. I was simply answering the question.

You're being unnecessarily antagonistic here. I have a modern 2020 laptop, it works for all of my needs with an nvidia GPU.

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

#534

Post by eyelidlessness »

ineedasername wrote: post #371
eyelidlessness wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't altruism, they did it because it would help sell more hardware and bring more people into the Apple ecosystem. > > If they see a similar use for Linux support, they'll do the same. If they think it will hurt them in some way, they won't. I agree and said... pretty much the same thing. I just don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell Apple will see Linux as a threat. > But I think it's fair to at lea…

You can't "nope" your way around Apple putting up a few walls around the MacOS garden just because they've left a door in one of them. If they go no further, then it's fine. But "not likely" is a bit too soon to say until they've gone a while without further limitations. That is, unless you consider something like the Mac equivalent of Project Sandcastle running on outdated hardware to be an acceptable situation, whi…

I'm pretty amused by all the "open" and "free" advocates the last few days telling me what I "can't" or "should have to" do.

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

#535

Post by lmm »

robin_reala wrote: post #423
lmm wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really doesn’t mean that. Neither Stallman’s four freedoms[1] nor Peren’s Open Source Definition[2] have anything to say about code history, bug trackers, development standards etc etc, and they’re the only commonly accepted definitions for what free and open source software is. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en [2] https://opensource.org/docs/osd

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

> In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you need to have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code.

IMO exactly the same logic applies to code history and bug trackers: you need access to those things to be able to study how the program works. A code dump is much the same thing as obfuscated source code: you can build the program from it, but you can't understand the program from it.

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

#536

Post by Zee2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286
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…

> I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform This is an idealism vs. pragmatism debate. Ideally, we’d have a solid hardware stack for Linux. Pragmatically, we have top-of-the-line metal for which there will or will not be Linux. I know which one I would fight for if I still believed in consumer-grade Linux.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat on this one.

I am just as in favor of fully open source hardware, software, the whole stack (heck, I'm a huge RISC-V nut), but I won't stick my head under the sand and pretend that I'd rather have a 10x slower, but FOS, machine.

I applaud Purism and other companies that strive to make a fully open source full stack, but I won't always have the financial freedom to purchase products that are either slower or less ergonomic than a closed alternative. It's sad, but it's pragmatism.

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

#537

Post by waheoo »

johnisgood wrote: post #456
black_puppydog wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly why these days I'm mindful to buy hardware from companies (and using components) that don't make it hard to run FLOSS. Neither actively by locking bootloader or such, nor passively by withholding documentation needed to write drivers. There are options to buy from & support manufacturers who actively help this process. Why would I put my money towards making apples hardware more attractive, when thei…

I will probably look for laptops in the foreseeable future, or maybe a new desktop. I never had a laptop before[1]. Which brand or models do you recommend for Linux? And for desktop? Like for CPU is AMD good? What about motherboard? Asus, Gigabyte, MSI? [1] OK, I do. I have a T-42 with an unknown supervisor password. :( I installed OpenBSD on it ages ago, but locked myself out.

Lenovo ThinkPad or dell for Linux is fine. Lenovo run their QA off of Ubuntu live USBs.

AMD is traditionally better for desktop GPU support but either is fine.

Particular hardware doesn't really matter these days, just check the manufacturer website / reviews. Level1 techs on YouTube cover Linux support well for various mobos.

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

#538

Post by cozzyd »

dragandj wrote: post #432
amluto wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various people have suggested to Intel that they made a mistake by not selling desktop/workstation chips with AVX-512.

They DO sell desktop chips with AVX-512. I'm writing this from one: i9-9900X.

They do now. But for a long time they didn't (I think). Or maybe they always did but were unreasonably expensive.

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

#539

Post by spacedcowboy »

lmm wrote: post #535
robin_reala wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn’t mean that. Neither Stallman’s four freedoms[1] nor Peren’s Open Source Definition[2] have anything to say about code history, bug trackers, development standards etc etc, and they’re the only commonly accepted definitions for what free and open source software is. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en [2] https://opensource.org/docs/osd

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. > In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you need to have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for…

Right, but, like, that’s just your opinion man.

FOSS means you get the source code, everything else is gravy.

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

#540

Post by chrismorgan »

deaddodo wrote: post #533
chrismorgan wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like that’d be the GTX 1650 Ti? That’s of the NV160 family, and per https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html (assuming it’s up to date), that lacks all 2D and video acceleration, and power management. That sounds rather like a mediocre toy for a large fraction of users. And Wayland needs Nouveau, because the NVIDIA proprietary driver is a hostile environment that does everything its own way rather tha…

Then use the Intel card and you'll have full acceleration + wayland. Or don't buy the laptop. I was simply answering the question. You're being unnecessarily antagonistic here. I have a modern 2020 laptop, it works for all of my needs with an nvidia GPU.

Look, the whole context here is “NVIDIA cards have bad Linux support”. And that’s just what we demonstrated from saati’s comment onwards in the example of Sway: that if you want to go Wayland, you’re stuck with bad functionality. Because graphics cards and computers are powerful enough, many people will be able to live with this crippled functionality and might not even notice it, but compare it with the story for AMD dedicated GPUs, or AMD or Intel integrated GPUs, and the point is substantiated: if you want to actually use the GPU fully, you just can’t do so properly.

(And a large portion of the problems people are talking about are with Nouveau; people that can use the proprietary driver—specifically, people using X rather than Wayland—will have a better time of it, though still worse than with GPUs of other brands.)

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