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Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

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Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#91

Post by caskstrength »

rkangel wrote: post #77
caskstrength wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m so worried this project will get 95% of the way there, and then all the fun issues will run out and the M1 will be just another MacBook with WiFi, Bluetooth and sleep issues. You are right to be worried. Getting all the nitty-gritty details about modern hardware without access to documentation is impossible. In the end this will somewhat work but will almost certainly have worse performance than MacOS with high…

If they can reverse engineer a whole undocumented display controller and GPU, then a fingerprint scanner is easy. The barriers to these 'minor' things is motivated people to do it, not anything technical. This is something that can be helped with money. Fundamentally like many engineering things, it's a Pareto principle thing. You can have a "basically working" device but it's a surprising amount of (potentially dull…

> If they can reverse engineer a whole undocumented display controller and GPU

Who says they reverse engineered whole of it? Making it display images is easier compared to making it work fast, support video decode, power saving, etc. Nouveau has been around for long time and never transitioned from former to latter state.

> then a fingerprint scanner is easy.

Yes, but it is not the point I was making.

> The barriers to these 'minor' things is motivated people to do it, not anything technical. This is something that can be helped with money.

I've been working on Linux kernel for some time now and I stand by my opinion that the main barrier to do it is technical. You can disagree though.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#92

Post by AshamedCaptain »

marcan_42 wrote: post #84
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that you'd be lucky if there are only Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and sleep issues. Considering that the GPU is completely properietary, without specs, and only used in a couple models, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see any driver in a working state for it. I mean, etnaviv and the like do exist, but it's definitely NOT in the same state as say intel or amd. And if there's any type of roadblock (say signed fi…

There aren't any roadblocks; we already have the signed firmware situation worked out, and Alyssa's Mesa driver is passing >90% of the GLES2 tests under macOS (Apple kernel, open userspace not using Metal). What's left is the kernel side driver. Your "highly unlikely" is my "I'm aiming for an accelerated desktop by the end of the year" ;)

Sure, and you will succeed where countless others have miserably failed because ... ?

The PowerVR driver is the oldest of the bunch, has been a FSF priority project for like _a decade_ and has produced exactly 0 usable results (but a lot of prototypes!), and the hardware was of such popularity that it is the one used by Apple before they looted Imgtech. So why expect a usable driver when tens of people have failed on literally more popular hardware? What's different this time? The planets are better aligned?

For the people who expect to ever have a RE'd driver that is on the level of Intel or AMD's, just go and use any of the existing RE'd drivers on your favourite ARM platform, and check for yourself. Try Etnaviv on a Purism for a couple days. If you think the AMD drivers are crashy, or slow, or use a lot of power..

And ironically poster was complaining about potentially unstable Wi-Fi, which is several orders of magnitude easier to RE than a GPU.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#93

Post by zamadatix »

DonHopkins wrote: post #81
diragon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently probably because M1 is absurdly better than the competition. They will certainly draw users away from Linux unless either this porting effort gets done, or unless other ARM options that support Linux better become available.

But the point is that Apple's software that runs on the M1 is absurdly better than the competition, especially on the M1, because both the macOS software and the M1 hardware were designed to work together hand-in-hand fast and efficiently. So even if you could get all the hardware drivers working properly, Linux/Gnome still will lose out to macOS because that hardware simply wasn't designed for that software, and tha…

The "it was all designed by Apple so can't be outperformed in parts" has got to be a trope at this point.

If that's the case why is Chrome able to put benchmark Safari on my M1?

Not to mention the OS shouldn't be the bottleneck for anything performance related in a desktop type system anyways.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#94

Post by h4x0r12345 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #46
diragon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently probably because M1 is absurdly better than the competition. They will certainly draw users away from Linux unless either this porting effort gets done, or unless other ARM options that support Linux better become available.

Recent Ryzen chips perform better than M1 chips.

The M1 significantly outperforms Ryzen when measured by performance/watt and single-core performance

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#95

Post by Y_Y »

nixpulvis wrote: post #47
watermelon0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people it's a nice challenge to tackle. Additionally, M1 is currently best? platform when comparing performance with power usage, and (at least MBA) comes in a great form factor. AFAIK there is no comparable device that has decent support for Linux.

> For some people it's a nice challenge to tackle. So is killing a tiger, but you don't see any stripes on my wall.

Well sticking the skin on your wall is just tacky. I normally just wait until people ask about the clawmarks and then feign reluctance as I explain.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#96

Post by h4x0r12345 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #47
watermelon0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people it's a nice challenge to tackle. Additionally, M1 is currently best? platform when comparing performance with power usage, and (at least MBA) comes in a great form factor. AFAIK there is no comparable device that has decent support for Linux.

> For some people it's a nice challenge to tackle. So is killing a tiger, but you don't see any stripes on my wall.

With your anti-intellectual mindset, Linux and BSD would never had made any progress. Linux now runs on countless platforms and all of it has been reverse engineered and hacked from the beginning. Getting Linux working on the M1 is a worthwhile challenge for the most talented hackers, which you are definitely not one of.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#97

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

p4bl0 wrote: post #43
diragon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently probably because M1 is absurdly better than the competition. They will certainly draw users away from Linux unless either this porting effort gets done, or unless other ARM options that support Linux better become available.

> They will certainly draw users away from Linux And the beauty of non commercial software is that we don't actually have to care about that. If people choose performance increase over freedom, you can't really chose for them. Now I'm not saying that we should not port free software to the M1. I'm saying that the good reason to do so is because the people porting it want to have it there, rather than thinking in term…

> And the beauty of non commercial software is that we don't actually have to care about that.

If that's really true, then why are so many so intent on increasing Linux Desktop adoption? Popularity means more people working on it, more people making software for it, more hardware having drivers, etc.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#98

Post by neilalexander »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #92
marcan_42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any roadblocks; we already have the signed firmware situation worked out, and Alyssa's Mesa driver is passing >90% of the GLES2 tests under macOS (Apple kernel, open userspace not using Metal). What's left is the kernel side driver. Your "highly unlikely" is my "I'm aiming for an accelerated desktop by the end of the year" ;)

Sure, and you will succeed where countless others have miserably failed because ... ? The PowerVR driver is the oldest of the bunch, has been a FSF priority project for like _a decade_ and has produced exactly 0 usable results (but a lot of prototypes!), and the hardware was of such popularity that it is the one used by Apple before they looted Imgtech. So why expect a usable driver when tens of people have failed on…

I am really not sure what your problem is. You are bitter because, what, they're actually managing it this time? This entire project so far has been an absolutely incredible exercise in reverse engineering, with excellent results, from a whole range of people. It should be applauded.

Re: Gnome Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal

#100

Post by AshamedCaptain »

neilalexander wrote: post #98
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and you will succeed where countless others have miserably failed because ... ? The PowerVR driver is the oldest of the bunch, has been a FSF priority project for like _a decade_ and has produced exactly 0 usable results (but a lot of prototypes!), and the hardware was of such popularity that it is the one used by Apple before they looted Imgtech. So why expect a usable driver when tens of people have failed on…

I am really not sure what your problem is. You are bitter because, what, they're actually managing it this time? This entire project so far has been an absolutely incredible exercise in reverse engineering, with excellent results, from a whole range of people. It should be applauded.

Bitter? I am just warning that it's highly unlikely that they will be succesful, and that even the meaning of succesful does not mean exactly what the poster has in mind if he thinks "Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or sleep problems" are relevant. The problems that you are to expect are in an entirely different league, it will not be "yet another slightly non-functional x86 laptop" like the previous Macs. We are talking about a graphics card with fully RE drivers and if it is actually usable it would be a _FIRST_ in the community -- so yes, I'm skeptical. Even Larabel agrees with me:

> the elephant in the room will be the custom Apple graphics hardware and the significant resources there needed to bring up a new driver stack for Apple M1 without any support or documentation from Apple. The reverse-engineering is more complicated there than the likes of other ARM SoCs where at least there is generally closed-source Linux blobs to plug into and slowly replace. Even in those other ARM cases like with Panfrost, V3DV, Freedreno, and Etnaviv it's been a multi-year effort and that is with having a better starting point than Linux on the M1.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-A...

And it is not like people weren't trying "hard enough" before.

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