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Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

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Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#71

Post by Syonyk »

Joeri wrote: post #62
Syonyk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having thought through this extensively in my trip off Apple products: - They have doubled down on "build it in China" for everything, including labor practices that are... not ideal, at a minimum. "Dying for an iPhone" details their last decade or so of labor abuses, or at least "looking the other way while China abuses labor for them." - As a result of that, and their desire to sell into the Chinese market, they ha…

Given that you’ve researched it, what laptop brands would you recommend that aren’t made in china?

That's the problem.

There aren't any anymore. Everything is out of China.

I've been using some cheaper ARM stuff, but I can't verify Pine's supply chains either, beyond "Erratic." So unlikely to be as close to forced labor as Apple's are, especially during new product season.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#72

Post by macNchz »

ducktective wrote: post #3
mark_l_watson wrote: post #2

It always impresses the hell out of me when I see side projects like this project that I couldn’t do myself. On the economic/$$ perspective: the Linux in M1 projects are probably targeted at Mac Minis and given that when you pay for a Mac Mini you are paying for hardware and Apple software. Does this make sense economically, comparing other bare bone systems with a Mac Mini style form factor?

What is your experience about Linux on Macs in general?

Not OP, but I've used a Mac as my main computer since I was a kid in the mid 90s, and I've installed Linux on most of my Macs at some point or another since like 2002.

Every single time I've found it sufficiently cumbersome and glitchy that I moved back off of it within a few weeks. Last fall–needing a new computer, frustrated with the slow iOSification of MacOS, and anticipating months to years of compatibility issues with developer tools on the M1–I built a desktop PC and installed Ubuntu.

I figured if running Linux was as annoying as it had been on my Macs I'd just install windows and run a VM like I'd done for years on Mac, but it has been way smoother than I expected. There are still a few driver issues now and then, but I mostly just bought the newest hardware and didn't make much of an effort to ensure compatibility. I'm not sure I'll buy another Mac at this point, but if I do I'm not going to bother with Linux.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#73

Post by jraph »

jpitz wrote: post #36
OldHand2018 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, the Mac Mini M1 has a fan that never turns off. It's very quiet, but it is not 100% silent. To be fair, it is really hard to get the fan to speed up and make more noise.

Mine sits on the desk 20 inches from my head, and I've never heard it.

(50 cm)

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#74

Post by jalgos_eminator »

darkwater wrote: post #12
phire wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. But, if your requirement is for a "high performance" ARM based machine, suddenly the M1 macs become very appealing. Many of the other solutions are ARM dev boards that have a tenth of the performance and very limited RAM. There are some…

> If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. Care to elaborate, or at least some names/models and opinions? I might be in the market for a fanless home server in that form factor. I might end up just buying a Synology but I would like to run HomeAssistant on it as well (although…

Protectli. They are fanless and use 7th or 8th gen Intel laptop processors. Uses regular laptop memory and mSATA/NVMe for storage. If you run OpenWRT on them they are blazing fast, but its a regular x86 box with an HDMI port so you can run a full GUI if you want.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#75

Post by gizdan »

marcan_42 wrote: post #68
gizdan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I stupidly forget that something as stupid as a touchbar was created in the first place. Perhaps it'll be the Air in that case. Edit: worth noting that the Air is more likely to thermal throttle the Pro, which would be a major reason to go for the Pro. I support it'll be alright if it's mostly connected to a keyboard.

Go with the Air. It's not a huge difference in thermal performance as far as I can tell. We're going to support the Touch Bar to make those machines useful, but given it's likely to be dead in the next generation, it's unlikely Linux will get any kind of ecosystem for it unless someone is really dedicated. I can only promise basic function key emulation (same kind of thing you get on T2 Macs with Windows/Linux), and…

My feeling has been that linux on M1 isn't going to be stable until the next generation so I was definitely going to wait. But that's future talk. If it becomes stable, I may just do it.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#76

Post by my123 »

marcan_42 wrote: post #47
derefr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making running macOS on any other ARM CPU quite impractical without deep hacks Presuming those other 2025-era ARM CPUs have standardized virtualization extensions, macOS would probably be best run through a hardware-accelerated hybrid emulator that interprets, rather than executes, the non-supported instructions. (Think Linux-aarch64 running qemu-kvm.) “Hackintoshing” in the sense of needing to write macOS drivers…

> interprets, rather than executes, the non-supported instructions. If only ARM virtualization could do that - it would've made my life much easier when writing the m1n1 hypervisor. There is no facility for intercepting and trapping unsupported instructions in EL0/1 into EL2. The undefined instruction exception goes straight to the guest. I had to hijack this for early bringup debugging and ended up patching the gues…

Going to answer point by point:

> That said, we know at least the VMkernel is likely to work on other ARMs, though userspace might not like it if you don't have things like AMX in your CPU, or the SPRR stuff

Open-source XNU doesn't support Apple's CPU extensions, but macOS still runs just fine on it. (but no Rosetta of course)

> by passing through Metal, as I understand it

See ParavirtualizedGraphics.framework, which uses MetalSerializer.framework under the hood.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#77

Post by eyelidlessness »

arvinsim wrote: post #34
gizdan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the performance of the M1 with Linux matches the performance with macOS I honestly believe it's worth it. Apple has produced a wonderful product and personally I'm very likely to purchase a Macbook Pro M1 if Linux is stable on it.

Why not get the Air? Are you optimistic that the touchbar will be fully supported?

The touch bar is very likely to be removed in the new models (expected in October).

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#78

Post by eyelidlessness »

istingray wrote: post #60

What would happen if all the Linux developers focused on making Linux super compatible and smooth on hardware that wasn't overtly antagonistic to the future of Linux?

Overtly antagonistic is a weird way to describe “they literally showcased Linux in a VM in the announcement”.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#79

Post by sharikone »

acomjean wrote: post #70
mixmastamyk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never have all Linux devs worked on anything exclusively.

Linux and open source are always inefficient with its limited development resources. There are how many distros. Desktop systems. How many video editors? All free, and all in need of some development polish. There is no one dominant firm/distro. This is an OS that can’t agree on a way of distributing applications across distributions: flatpack, snap… It interesting That every M1 machine comes with an OS these people…

They are breaching a walled garden. And they are looking at a system with capabilities unseen before. And Apple has its prestige. I can totally understand the excitement that goes into this.

Of course it's like working in front of an armed cannon that can be fired at you at any moment. Apple can very easily perform a lock in the seriousness of which no desktop computer has ever seen before, given they control the hardware down to the transistor level.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#80

Post by istingray »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #78
istingray wrote: post #60

What would happen if all the Linux developers focused on making Linux super compatible and smooth on hardware that wasn't overtly antagonistic to the future of Linux?

Overtly antagonistic is a weird way to describe “they literally showcased Linux in a VM in the announcement”.

It's a VM. As far as I know in no way are they supporting this kind of bare metal development. Protections like T2 make it even more difficult to install Linux operating systems.
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