NixOS on M1

#1

Post by exists » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 3:03 AM UTC

Re: NixOS on M1

#2

Post by jjtheblunt » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 3:58 AM UTC

From the page:

This is mostly a restructuring of work many others have already done, and it wouldn't have been possible without them. Important parts of the Linux on M1 experience include:

    Asahi Linux's m1n1 bootloader/hypervisor
    Asahi Linux's kernel patches
    Mark Kettenis' U-boot port
    Janne Grunau's kernel config

Re: NixOS on M1

#3

Post by saurabhnanda » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

For the uninitiated, what's the issue with getting nix to work on M1?

Re: NixOS on M1

#4

Post by easygenes » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

saurabhnanda wrote: post #3

For the uninitiated, what's the issue with getting nix to work on M1?

The biggest issue is that M1 is undocumented Apple Silicon. It has to be fully reverse engineered, primarily by the Asahi Linux team.

Other Linux distros will have to piggyback off the work of Asahi, and I think that generally they're avoiding jumping in yet because the hardware support is not very mature.

Re: NixOS on M1

#5

Post by Gigachad » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

easygenes wrote: post #4

saurabhnanda wrote: post #3

For the uninitiated, what's the issue with getting nix to work on M1?

The biggest issue is that M1 is undocumented Apple Silicon. It has to be fully reverse engineered, primarily by the Asahi Linux team. Other Linux distros will have to piggyback off the work of Asahi, and I think that generally they're avoiding jumping in yet because the hardware support is not very mature.

Presumably everything from asahi will get merged in to mainline Linux and distros will just work.

The end goal of the project is to not require their own distribution/repos.

Re: NixOS on M1

#6

Post by viraptor » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

It looks like the kernel uses the upstream tags which is great. Marcan was previously annoyed with distros which yolo-ed the git commit they used and essentially ran an untested development version.

Re: NixOS on M1

#7

Post by rowanG077 » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

Tracking this closely honestly. Once external screens work I will switch to Apple hardware. But I hear that USB/TB is a total nightmare to RE and implement.

Very happy I won't need to do the nixos stuff myself!

Re: NixOS on M1

#8

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

The reverse engineering work that went in to this is absolutely top notch, I've read some of the articles and can barely follow them, the leaps of intuition are so large they almost feel like parallel construction at times.

Here's to hoping they get it to work. And wouldn't it be nice if Apple just for once helped out and opened up their hardware.

Re: NixOS on M1

#9

Post by Chmouel » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

I tried that last week, and for me the dealbreaker was the touchpad... It may not really important for other people but not being able to use the f keys directly on the laptop is annoying....

Re: NixOS on M1

#10

Post by fragmede » Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 7:08 AM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #7

Tracking this closely honestly. Once external screens work I will switch to Apple hardware. But I hear that USB/TB is a total nightmare to RE and implement. Very happy I won't need to do the nixos stuff myself!

It will be fascinating to see if they can get the hardware to support multiple displays under Linux on devices given that Apple doesn't support it.