Not much of a point in running Linux on Apple hardware, macOS is still by far the better option here. Linux needs a lot of work to be able to compete with macOS.
Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#72One thing I recall is Linus is really big on "absolutely no noise whatsoever". The passively cooled but still reasonably powerful Air seems like ideal hardware for his tastes, at least for a laptop.
If this next page is accurate, then Apple is not the only one offering an expensive light laptop without a fan:
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#73Apple goes all out reinventing the desktop processor, and all anyone wants to do is cut them down for not pre-porting Linux to it. So much bigoted hate and entitlement on display here.
Apple is a baron of customer hostility and anti-competitive practices. Customer lock-in, closed platforms, corrosion of right to own or repair, forced obsolescence. That's how they do business. Is there some point where how you do business becomes the product, and the intended product (e.g. reinvention of the desktop processor) becomes just a byproduct? We've a cultural inclination to focus on the what, and forget the how. But it's short-term thinking. I for one am tired of Apple's how.
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, somehow I am surprised with his cooled down take on this. With the exceptionally good ARM hardware coming in from Apple, I can't see mainstream future for other laptops which will allow OS freedom. As time goes on, Apple should be able to significantly reduce the price of entry level Macbooks. Look at iPad pricing, entry level laptops just for iPad level work on a laptop form factor don't have to cost a lot. I…
What incentive would Apple have to do that? For the most part their products have only gone up in price (as with the yearly iPhone releases). I'd expect exactly the opposite instead (e.g. thinner-bezel macbooks with face ID). A cheaper ARM Macbook would cannibalise their iPad sales. Laptops with OS freedom have always been a more niche thing, same as dual booting on a desktop machine. Short of selling laptops with no…
>their products have only gone up in price (as with the yearly iPhone releases)
Hmm, not sure I agree with that. The iPhone 12 mini base price is $699 with 64GB. iPhone 3GS in 2009 with 8 GB was $599, or $727 in inflation adjusted 2020 dollars. Never mind the incredible increases in data rate, speed, display quality, and other capabilities.
Or, take the iPhone SE, an incredible phone compared to the 3GS and it has a base price of $399 with 64GB. 200 dollars less before inflation.
Apple has introduced premium models at higher prices but that leads to an incorrect comparison. It's just not reasonable to point to a 2009 iPhone and a 2020 iPhone Pro and suggest some sort of relevant price comparison.
In actual or inflation adjusted dollars it costs much less to own an iPhone today than it did a decade ago and you get a lot more phone.
I agree that we shouldn't expect a cheaper laptop, but I don't think it is because they care about cannibalizing their own sales. They set margin goals for each product and have demonstrated an unwillingness to discount below those goals solely to pursue market share.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#75Honestly, I don't think anyone is holding their breath for the day that corporations like Apple and Microsoft give the world the Linux that they deserve. Imagine if these power brokers didn't exist and a whole generation of children grew up on Linux rather than Mac/PC. Huge opportunity cost for society in my opinion.
What advantages does Linux have for children over macOS? It’s UNIX, with the shell and all the OSS packages you could want. Very few children need to recompile the graphics stack, kernel, or drivers.
You can use Wine to play a lot of games on Linux. Good luck doing that on macOS due to their refusal to support Vulkan and 32-bit. macOS doesn't offer any benefits in comparison with Linux, only disadvantages.
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#76One thing I recall is Linus is really big on "absolutely no noise whatsoever". The passively cooled but still reasonably powerful Air seems like ideal hardware for his tastes, at least for a laptop.
If this next page is accurate, then Apple is not the only one offering an expensive light laptop without a fan: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/6520-fanless-ultrabooks/
Well, if that page is accurate, it paints a depressing picture for the competition.
The CPUs listed in those laptops? Either the same or a slower version of the processors used in the Macbook. You know, that fanless 12 inch Intel thing which everyone complained about because it was too slow (and the keyboard was the worst butterfly one ever made, but.)
Taken with the grain of salt as they ought to be, the Geekbench score for the M1 Air is 2.3 times higher single-core, 4.9 times higher multi-core than the most expensive MacBook with a i7-7Y75, one of the "Kaby Lake Core Y"s in that list.
The only newer processor there is from 8th gen Amber Lake, which seems to be the only newer "fanless" CPU from Intel.
(the 9th gen "Y" designs were, apparently, only ever used in the (fan-including) 2020 macbook air)
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking b…
I can agree with this, which is why I added the "(to a lesser degree) Apple" caveat. I think, especially now, it seems they're moving in a less hacker-friendly direction in terms ability to progress from write-a-script to build-you-own-environment, but certainly is better than Windows. I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, p…
> I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.
Yeah, this was over 15 years ago. Yellow Dog was basically Red Hat PowerPC edition, so imagine Red Hat circa 2002.
Things have certainly gotten easier since then though, no question.
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also just less reason to run Linux for most consumers. Bootcamp was valuable because there's a lot of legacy, proprietary software and drivers that some people must use, which bootcamp gives them access to on the same device. On the other hand, notable software on Linux are all FOSS. If there was sufficient demand there's nothing stopping someone from making a MacOS compatible release. And indeed, most FOSS d…
> If there was sufficient demand there's nothing stopping someone from making a MacOS compatible release That assumes that it's something that can reasonably be ported. Granted, that does cover most software, but there are exceptions that for whatever reason are difficult to port. Docker is the poster child for this since it uses Linux kernel primitives; the way it runs "on" Darwin is to run Linux in a VM.
Docker's never been quite as portable as imagined because of this. I wonder if this will make people rethink it as a model for containerization.
Interestingly, FreeBSD has native Docker support because it has a Linux compatibility layer that adds/maps/implements(?) Linux system calls so it FreeBSD can run Linux binaries. Looks like FreeBSD Docker support is also broken right now.
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#79Honestly, I don't think anyone is holding their breath for the day that corporations like Apple and Microsoft give the world the Linux that they deserve. Imagine if these power brokers didn't exist and a whole generation of children grew up on Linux rather than Mac/PC. Huge opportunity cost for society in my opinion.
I don’t think that’s how benefiting users works. Simply removing the options people have historically found suited them better doesn’t by itself create a better world.
There’s nothing whatsoever preventing the FOSS community coming up with better solutions, if they are capable of doing so, and taking away their main competitors doesn’t seem like a good way to incentivise competitive improvement. In fact we’ve been told repeatedly and often by FOSS advocates that open will inevitably beat closed anyway.
On the back end yes this has come to pass, but mainly because big corporations like AT&T, Intel and IBM have invested hundreds of millions, probably billions in Linux. Microsoft and Apple have also invested hundreds of millions, probably billions at this point, in their desktop platforms. The independent hacker community just can’t come close to that level of disciplined, organised, focused investment of effort.
Linux on ARM is another case in point. It takes a big company with huge resources like Google to get it done in a coherent, usable way.
We need to stop thinking about companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft as obstacles. They aren’t stopping the FOSS community from doing anything. They’re just bringing their own contributions to the table. Take Apple out of the picture and OSX, iOS and M1 Macs wouldn’t exist and FOSS would be exactly where it is now anyway.
Re: Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air
#80Does there exist soc any that would be suitable for a powerful arm laptop that can run Linux? How does for example the nvidia xavier soc stack up against the apple m1?
With about 1/4 of the single-core performance, per geekbench. (Only one xavier benchmarked, but considering even the highest-end non-Apple arm chips are a bit over 1/2 of the single those are probably realistic numbers).