Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#81

Post by istingray »

sharikone wrote: post #79
acomjean wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 har…

I can also understand and respect the excitement that goes into this. In terms of the Linux meta though, it's like sneaking into a farmer's field to plant crops for them.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#82

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Angostura wrote: post #65
ntnsndr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good planning ahead for when Apple no longer supports perfectly fine old-ish machines. Both my mother and wife are now using Linux not because their computers broke but because Apple gave up on them.

Ummm, my daily driver is a 2012 iMac, still working fine and receiving updates with a replacement SSD. How old are we talking?

Officially Big Sur is unsupported so you won't be getting updates for much longer:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211238

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#83

Post by sofixa »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #45
cguess wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old are their machines? Apple's next MacOS version supports MacBooks Pros going back to 2015. Seven years is a pretty long support cycle.

Oh my, the mobile market really skewed our perception of reasonable support cycle. What a crazy world where 7 years is a “pretty long support cycle” for personal computers. I have money to spend on computers but I still use a 10 years old laptop running windows and Linux (both supported) and with absolutely no desire to upgrade it as it runs better than when I bought it (after a ssd swap and more memory). There’s not…

> I have money to spend on computers but I still use a 10 years old laptop running windows and Linux (both supported)

For Windows that will stop in 2025(EOS for Windows 10 and Windows 11 has requirements that basically require <3-4 year old machine)

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#84

Post by eyelidlessness »

istingray wrote: post #80
eyelidlessness wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think any of that qualifies as overt hostility, especially not toward the future of Linux broadly.

- I hope we can agree that supporting bare metal Linux shouldn’t be that bar.

- T2 is about securing the OS and functionality that they do offer as part of the product and its value proposition. That it makes installing Linux more difficult doesn’t establish intent to make it more difficult. It could just as well be they don’t care. Given they’ve showcased Linux in a VM, I find the latter more likely.

- They have a track record of ignoring efforts support non-Mac OSes, but embracing them as they become viable (Bootcamp).

- Even if they outright blocked these efforts, Linux will still work on non-Apple hardware (which surely represents the majority of current installations), and in a VM on Macs. So it’s hard to see how this affects the future of Linux.

I really wish there was some effort on the part of the broader (F)OSS community to better understand the nature of the subject of their ire. Apple’s position here may warrant some criticism. I certainly wish they were more transparent and provided better documentation across the board, including their hardware. But there is a wide range of disposition between fully embracing and supporting these efforts and “overt hostility”.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#85

Post by minimaul »

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…

NUCs aren’t fanless, the newer versions tend to be 25W and have very loud and whiny fans, and in fanless cases they tend to throttle, sadly.

I replaced one with an M1 mac mini and the mac mini is faster and near silent - I have literally never heard the fan over the room’s background noise, and I’ve thrashed the thing.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#86

Post by davidbanham »

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?

That power efficiency also buys you thermal efficiency, which buys you silence. Silent small form factor PCs are available, but to get one that won’t throttle all the time is pretty spendy.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#87

Post by cmeacham98 »

commoner wrote: post #59
ufmace wrote: post #46

I don't usually like to be the one complaining about how bad Twitter is for quality tech threads like this. But wow, it seems you can no longer view any of the pictures or the rest of the thread without a Twitter account.

Nitter is a great web client for Twitter. If your browser supports extensions, you can use the Privacy Redirect extension to automatically redirect Twitter requests to Nitter: https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect And if you are on Android, you can also use the Fritter client without a Twitter account: https://github.com/jonjomckay/fritter

Anecdotally, I installed privacy redirect but had to uninstall it because every other time I got redirected to an instance that was broken or had exhausted its API limits for the day. I realize this is at least partially Twitter's fault, but sadly the UX is horrible.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#88

Post by abrookewood »

haswell wrote: post #15
darkwater wrote: post #12

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. 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…

It’s larger than a Mac mini because it’s meant to be a NAS, but I’ve been running FreeNAS on an HP MicroServer for almost a decade now and it’s been mostly great. They still make products in that line although I’m not very familiar with the newer offerings.

Yep, I have one too and it must be close to 10 years old. Still chugging along running Ubuntu LTS and serving files via ZFS.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#89

Post by scoopertrooper »

Syonyk wrote: post #71
Joeri wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the height of silliness. You don't want to use Apple products because they get their products assembled in China by Foxconn (a Taiwanese company). However, your solution is to buy "cheaper ARM stuff" such as Pine products, because you assume their factory conditions will be less dickensian despite also being manufactured in China.

You know about the bad conditions in the Foxconn factory because of the notoriety of the companies (Apple and Google) that get their products assembled there. However, it's likely that the conditions at Foxconn are better than those at the fly-by-night operators employed by Pine, which are subject to less scrutiny. Companies like Pine also have less ability (and incentive) to press for better conditions.

If you really wanted to use products with the least manufacturing footprint in China, you'd be looking at Samsung and Sony devices, but I guess they're not edgy enough for you.

Re: Bare metal Apple M1 Debian at 4K 60

#90

Post by kilburn »

Syonyk wrote: post #43
scoopertrooper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a bit extreme? What is Apple doing that is so morally wrong that you can't give them money for a quality product?

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…

As someone in a similar position to yours, let me add a couple reasons:

- Sustained push towards non-repairability of their devices. Solder/glue everything, prevent 3rd party replacements.

- Monopolistic behavior where they can get away with it. The CEO blatantly lying to congress [1].

[1] https://medium.com/hyperlinked/all-the-times-tim-cook-lied-i...

Post reply on HN