I am so happy to see the quick progress of Linux on the ARM-Macs. In the 80ies and 90ies, there were several competing processor architectures on the market, but for the last 20 years for PCs it was x86 only. With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender, actually surpassing the current x86 offerings in many aspects. And that is, why competition between architectures is so important. And of course just interesting from a software development perspective.
With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users. Thanks to the great work by Alyssa, GPU acceleration should be close too.
Then lets see when Linus gets himself a Mac, he already indicated that he would be interested to do so as long as he doesn't have to port Linux himself.
> With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users.
While the option of running Linux on one of these M1 chips is intriguing to many of us, I have a hard time seeing that this will bring these machines to a "far wider audience" than MacOS users. It does open up some niches, and in particular it could mean that people will still be able to make use of these laptops after Apple stops supporting them. But we're pretty much a rounding error for the duopoly that owns the desktop OS market.
I do share your admiration for the accomplishments of Alyssa and all of those who are porting an open source operating system to a new hardware design with little help from the manufacturer.
The size of the audience is moot, but the benefit to me, a software developer, is sizeable.
I have remained a Mac user through the most recent several major OS X/OSX/MacOs/macOS changes with increasing reluctance as Apple increases its ownership of my hardware. I "own" an M1 Mac. I would like the freedom to run a free OS with free drivers on it. I watch Asahi Linux and the associated work closely. I donate and I hope.
Macs have huge penetration into the developer market. I could see a lot of devs whacking Linux on their M1 Macs to enjoy benefits like being able to run containers outside of a virtual machine.
If Apple waited 6 months and released a significantly cheaper 16 inch M1 Pro Mac with a non-XDR screen and in the old form factor (to save money on tooling), similar how they do with the iPhone SE line, then they'd make so much damn money from devs jumping on board.
I run a small Linux compute cluster for a research institute with a ~8 kW budget. If it ran m1s, I’d have 5x more cores to work with (and the cores would be faster). How niche is this?
I would love to be able to run Nuke, so definitely one of those niches. There's not much *nix only software that can't be run on macOS, but there's definitely lots of macOS software not able to run on *nix. Being 1 reboot away from using whichever is needed is dream a little dream territory.
I agree with this sentiment. Overall, we should be praising projects like frame.work over proprietary and hard to port systems like the M1. I'm hoping some day the frame.work laptops will have a mainboard available similar to the M1, but I'd rather have repairable than not.
This project would open things up if it did something novel.
IMO a Linux distribution is the perfect base as a metaverse client for the entire internet.
Ditch the window manager that only acts like a desktop metaphor and login to a 3D capable viewport. Toggle between 2D and 3D representations, virtually load websites. Like applying AR to cyberspace. Natively relying on that ML friendly GPU.
Something like Godot as the window manager process (controls abstracted behind a traditional default UX or something) and hacking away at its scene tree format. Update UX state to be a 2D UI if needed.
Store the contents of a file as a hash to regenerate it like procedural game engines do would improve security if the users login unlocks things. /home need not be a traditional filesystem at all.
There are a lot of ideas going unexplored due to the money being thrown at business as usual problems.
20 years ago IBM PowerPC was still a contender too. With Apple no less.
The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years.
But I miss it too. The 90s with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC. I still have several of those here at home :) Computers have become boring and it's nice ARM is shaking things up.
I wonder if M1 will ever be fully supported though. With full unrestricted video, 3D and AI acceleration. There seems to be a lot of Apple secret sauce in these processors.
Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture.
I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched.
We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.
> With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender, actually surpassing the current x86 offerings in many aspects
It's absolutely NOT a real contender for widespread use until you can buy a mini-itx, microatx or regular ATX motherboard from any one of the well known dozen Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and an individual CPU to socket into it. Or at least a selection of motherboards with CPUs soldered onto them from same vendors.
The hardware availability is basically a walled garden.
I don't think whether you can buy it in a form factor though is a good indicator of "contender of widespread use." It ignores any technical merits and what the chip can actually do. Can it enable someone to check email, watch youtube, and check social media? Yes. Can it render graphics? Yes.If you put someone infront of a Macbook with an M1, can they accomplish everything hey can on an intel machine? Yes.
Now, is it probably priced out of being a real contender for widespread use? Most likely. Is it offered is configurations that suite everyone? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean it can't accomplish the same or similar tasks. If someone can sit at a computer and accomplish all of their normal tasks, then for the most part, it is a contender for widespread use, it is just a cost factor.
- Layerscape LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex A72 (up to 2GHz)
- up to 64GB DDR4 dual channel 3200MT/s
- 4 x SATA 3.0
- 1 x PCIe x8 Gen 3.0, open slot (can support x16)
- 4 x SFP+ ports (10GbE each)
- 3 x USB 3.0 & 3 x USB 2.0
- GPIO header
- 170mm x 170mm standard Mini ITX form factor
Isn't that much harder with architectures without a BIOS equivalent? The components on the motherboard have to be told how to talk to each other. Swapping out the CPU would require some reconfiguration.
I bet Apple will sell order(s) of magnitude more MacBooks than the combined total sales of motherboards in those form factors, so your definition of widespread is surprising to me.
Big problem is that you can't buy M1 cpu like you can e.g. i9.
I think Apple should be forced to open up their platform so other manufacturers could make laptops or desktops with that CPU.
Yeah it's LLVMpipe, it's basically doing everything in software and Plasma uses quite a bit OpenGL for animations and compositing. A lighter WM like Fluxbox could maybe be easier on the CPU. In any case, looking back at Nouveau, writing decent drivers for a GPU nobody has specs of is definitely challenging. Only time can tell.
Working off inprecise documentation or reverse engineering everything is nothing new in the Linux world. At least on the M1 drivers seem to be able to exert full control over the card, compared to newer Nvidia cards where firmware signed by Nvidia is required to boost the card to a reasonable clock frequency!
I think by default glxgears has vsync enabled. But it's trivially possible to disable it with an env var. Considering the CPU usage I assume that is what was done. 60% CPU usage for running glxgears at 120Hz seems excessive.
I'm running Monterey now, and nothing has changed for me between Catalina and Monterey. The security changes (like kernel extensions, some paths, etc) and deprecations (32-bit apps), that broke some of the software/devices I had, were already present in Catalina. What damning difference do you see in Big Sur and Monterey?
I've been watching macran's stream on youtube in the last couple of days, where he had to fix a lot of stuff so this notebook can come to life. If you are intrested in ARM/bootloader/linux/drivers, I highly recommend the stream recordings.
Are there any comparable non-Apple laptops which are well supported by Linux? I'd hate to pay the Apple tax, only to run Linux on the bare metal. Plus, I'm assuming "Apple care" goes out the window once you wipe out MacOS?
I'm not aware of any machines with comparable performance/efficiency from any other vendor.
Apple officially supports running your own kernels on these machines. This isn't a jailbreak, it's an official feature of the hardware and firmware design that Apple added, and which their EULA allows you to use in this way.
These machines are also not brickable, you can always do a DFU restore from macOS or (soon; Monterey needs some stuff I already figured out but haven't implemented yet, but it works for older versions on the M1s) Linux using idevicerestore, no matter how much you wipe or screw up.
(That said, I wouldn't recommend wiping macOS at this stage; we expect most users to have a dual-boot setup.)
I used to rant about paying so much extra for Apple hardware and call it the "Apple tax" too, but the truth is, no one else makes good laptops. You're paying for more than simply the brand.
I spent a fortune on a Lenovo X1 Extreme, and the thing bricked itself three times in 14 months, the last of which was outside the warranty window, and it's now basically impossible to get repaired (I couldn't even get anyone to look at it, and Lenovo is no help at all). Even if it weren't bricked, the shitty plastic case is already getting loose (the display hinge is loose/wobbly and squeaky); the speakers sound terrible; it's loud; it gets unbearably hot.
Dell laptops are pretty good with Linux, but the build quality is similarly poor. Linux-first laptops like System 76's are clunky and inferior.
It's really hard to beat MacBooks on a hardware level. I'd love to run Linux on one.
This has been my fear as well when looking at other laptops.
In terms of hardware and build quality, apple is crushing it with m1 mpb.
However, I just received my framework laptop and am totally excited by it. The build quality is pretty good compared to my 2019 15” intel mbp.
It feels like a hunk of metal, similar to mbp. I love the size, the monitor is great, keyboard is much better, and all the parts are replaceable. Running arch with zero issues so far (although i havent tried bluetooth or fingerprint reader yet).
The battery doesnt seem great (8hr real use) and the speakers are not even close to my mbp.
Other than those two items (both of which are fixable with battery pack + headphones) I find the offerings very similar.
From my experience - a notable percent of all Dell laptops (especially Precision and Latitude series) has a decent Linux support. I have never been an owner of laptop from System76 or any other brand that is targeting Linux users. However, I am really interested in getting a Framework Laptop [0] for myself, which looks nice and I have already read good opinions about it.
After running ubuntu on a Dell XPS 15 with varying degrees of success the last four years, I placed an order for a Framework laptop that will be shipping this month. I don't expect the build quality to match that of apple, or even dell, but I've read linux support is good, and will only get better with more dedicated people on the platform.
It's a different aesthetic, but t- and p-series thinkpads are well supported by various linux distros and the experience is considerably smoother (and with better battery life) than 5-10 years ago.
WiFi already works, but the existing patch (which was written by Corellium as part of their throwaway M1 Linux PR stunt earlier this year) needs a complete rewrite, among other things because the way it handles firmware is completely backwards. I know how I want to do it, just need to spend a day or so on that one, maybe another day on hooking up firmware copying into the installer :)
For this demo it's not. It's doing CPU rendering, which the M1 is apparently fast enough to do while providing decent UI performance (albeit while using 60% all-core CPU to do it).
> it already reverse engineered in a certain level?
I don't get this. The only reason I feel Apple has an advantage compared to competition is software integration.
M1 performance in laptops is great but that's only been true for a year or so, for the last 5 years Apple laptops have been hot garbage.
As an owner of fully loaded 2018 mbp (i9/upgraded GPU, 32 GB ram) I can without a doubt say it's the worst premium device I've ever owned. The battery runs out on me after 1 hour meeting - and I have >100 cycles on it. The amount of heat and noise it produces is surreal, and that's after I opened it and cleaned up the vents (which clog easily) and added thermal pads to connect VRM to chassis (which helped significantly, prior to that the CPU would downclock so bad I couldn't use anything on my device after 15 mins in a Google meet connected to a 5k monitor).
Not to mention all the bugs I had to go through with it - wasn't untill 6 months after I purchased the device that I could actually use my 5k on my USBC monitor on full resolution - only started working after an OS upgrade.
And the keyboards failing being a known problem they replace out of warranty because they recognise their design sucks (luckily I use external keyboard 95% of the time).
Apple hardware was mediocre at best for the price they charge, up until M1.
In the mobile space, they are faster but as someone who switched from an iPhone to Samsung - I can't really say it matters. Phones are good and well rounded but nothing spectacular, hardware is on par with Samsung.
Again using the Mac/iOS combo is really nice so the software integration is next level, but considering their business practices I refuse to get locked in to the ecosystem, it's just too limiting.
And Linux on M1 would likely be subpar to any premium x86 device, Linux support sucked even on x86 Macs.
I understand the frustration, especially if your first impression of Apple is a MacBook Pro is in the 2016-2019 era - you've probably seen the worst MacBooks available and not the best of Apple.
There were some good things, the displays were excellent, the touchpad is still the best in class, and the size/weight were excellent.
But usb-c only was step too far, the Touch Bar wasn't the right move for a Pro audience (i), there wasn't enough room for cooling the intel chips and the keyboard situation was farcical - it's the primary interface to a Mac (can you imagine the outcry if iPhones had touch displays randomly not working, doing extra touches etc?!).
I think Apple gets a lot of leeway because the 2008-2015 MacBook Pros were probably the best laptops you could buy.
Having owned a 2009 MacBook Pro which in my opinion was the best laptop I'd ever owned and never made me question the amount of money I spent on it. The 2016 MacBook Pro was the exact opposite (mainly due to the keyboard being so bad).
I'm glad Apple have come to their senses and course corrected. I do wonder though for people that have only seen the 2016-2019 era if they will bother to try Apple again...
(i) I understand it probably would've made it too expensive to produce but I think the Touch Bar would've gone down well on a MacBook Air where I would imagine there's a lot more hunt-and-peck typists that'd appreciate and notice what's being displayed on the Touch Bar. As a touch typist I never looked down to see the Touch Bar so it was a mostly wasted on me.
This is why Apple went to their own CPUs due to the poor thermal dynamics of the recent x86 chips. The recent chips are like the PowerPC chips of 2005.
It's probably going to be a cool toy, but being able to use the hardware to its full potential and also having Linux on ARM Macs be your daily work driver is going to be a humongous challenge.
I wonder if it will ever happen outside of very limited use cases.
Honestly I use Linux on a MacBook Air 2013. 4 gigs of ram and haswell i5 and it’s an amazing machine. It’s not my work machine for compiling and running a ton of apps but it’s super solid. Great battery life. Runs chrome amazing and Stardew valley great.
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With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users. Thanks to the great work by Alyssa, GPU acceleration should be close too.
Then lets see when Linus gets himself a Mac, he already indicated that he would be interested to do so as long as he doesn't have to port Linux himself.
While the option of running Linux on one of these M1 chips is intriguing to many of us, I have a hard time seeing that this will bring these machines to a "far wider audience" than MacOS users. It does open up some niches, and in particular it could mean that people will still be able to make use of these laptops after Apple stops supporting them. But we're pretty much a rounding error for the duopoly that owns the desktop OS market.
I do share your admiration for the accomplishments of Alyssa and all of those who are porting an open source operating system to a new hardware design with little help from the manufacturer.
I have remained a Mac user through the most recent several major OS X/OSX/MacOs/macOS changes with increasing reluctance as Apple increases its ownership of my hardware. I "own" an M1 Mac. I would like the freedom to run a free OS with free drivers on it. I watch Asahi Linux and the associated work closely. I donate and I hope.
If Apple waited 6 months and released a significantly cheaper 16 inch M1 Pro Mac with a non-XDR screen and in the old form factor (to save money on tooling), similar how they do with the iPhone SE line, then they'd make so much damn money from devs jumping on board.
A laptop that doesn't throttle down when unplugged from the wall, yet still maintains an all day battery life is hardly a niche.
Laptops are supposed to be a portable computers that work anywhere, not just luggable computers that must be plugged in to work.
We are a rounding error when it comes to casual usage; but in the pro segment and especially for coding, Linux usage seems nontrivial.
According to Wikipedia [1], Linux had 2.33% share in laprop/desktop OS. But in a SO survey 25% of programmers picked Linux.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...
I would love to be able to run Nuke, so definitely one of those niches. There's not much *nix only software that can't be run on macOS, but there's definitely lots of macOS software not able to run on *nix. Being 1 reboot away from using whichever is needed is dream a little dream territory.
This project would open things up if it did something novel.
IMO a Linux distribution is the perfect base as a metaverse client for the entire internet.
Ditch the window manager that only acts like a desktop metaphor and login to a 3D capable viewport. Toggle between 2D and 3D representations, virtually load websites. Like applying AR to cyberspace. Natively relying on that ML friendly GPU.
Something like Godot as the window manager process (controls abstracted behind a traditional default UX or something) and hacking away at its scene tree format. Update UX state to be a 2D UI if needed.
Store the contents of a file as a hash to regenerate it like procedural game engines do would improve security if the users login unlocks things. /home need not be a traditional filesystem at all.
There are a lot of ideas going unexplored due to the money being thrown at business as usual problems.
The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years.
But I miss it too. The 90s with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC. I still have several of those here at home :) Computers have become boring and it's nice ARM is shaking things up.
I wonder if M1 will ever be fully supported though. With full unrestricted video, 3D and AI acceleration. There seems to be a lot of Apple secret sauce in these processors.
And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing
https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...
Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture.
I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched.
We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.
It's absolutely NOT a real contender for widespread use until you can buy a mini-itx, microatx or regular ATX motherboard from any one of the well known dozen Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and an individual CPU to socket into it. Or at least a selection of motherboards with CPUs soldered onto them from same vendors.
The hardware availability is basically a walled garden.
Now, is it probably priced out of being a real contender for widespread use? Most likely. Is it offered is configurations that suite everyone? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean it can't accomplish the same or similar tasks. If someone can sit at a computer and accomplish all of their normal tasks, then for the most part, it is a contender for widespread use, it is just a cost factor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdRSCQfhywhttps://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h...
- Layerscape LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex A72 (up to 2GHz) - up to 64GB DDR4 dual channel 3200MT/s - 4 x SATA 3.0 - 1 x PCIe x8 Gen 3.0, open slot (can support x16) - 4 x SFP+ ports (10GbE each) - 3 x USB 3.0 & 3 x USB 2.0 - GPIO header - 170mm x 170mm standard Mini ITX form factor
Yeah, no. It's a walled ecosystem, not a 'contender' in the sense that it can't be horizontally integrated with other technologies.
iPhone is a walled garden Macs are not a walled garden.
> It's been running the glxgears demo (60% all-core CPU usage)
Looks like it'll be a while before this thing runs Linux with anywhere near acceptable performance if glxgears still runs in software at 60% CPU.
I don't trust Apple's software and "ideas" of computing at all. Just another big company with data gathering ambitions. After Catalina MacOs is a total joke. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
So let's hope that running Linux on M cips will be possible, soon.
I'm running Monterey now, and nothing has changed for me between Catalina and Monterey. The security changes (like kernel extensions, some paths, etc) and deprecations (32-bit apps), that broke some of the software/devices I had, were already present in Catalina. What damning difference do you see in Big Sur and Monterey?
Apple officially supports running your own kernels on these machines. This isn't a jailbreak, it's an official feature of the hardware and firmware design that Apple added, and which their EULA allows you to use in this way.
These machines are also not brickable, you can always do a DFU restore from macOS or (soon; Monterey needs some stuff I already figured out but haven't implemented yet, but it works for older versions on the M1s) Linux using idevicerestore, no matter how much you wipe or screw up.
(That said, I wouldn't recommend wiping macOS at this stage; we expect most users to have a dual-boot setup.)
I spent a fortune on a Lenovo X1 Extreme, and the thing bricked itself three times in 14 months, the last of which was outside the warranty window, and it's now basically impossible to get repaired (I couldn't even get anyone to look at it, and Lenovo is no help at all). Even if it weren't bricked, the shitty plastic case is already getting loose (the display hinge is loose/wobbly and squeaky); the speakers sound terrible; it's loud; it gets unbearably hot.
Dell laptops are pretty good with Linux, but the build quality is similarly poor. Linux-first laptops like System 76's are clunky and inferior.
It's really hard to beat MacBooks on a hardware level. I'd love to run Linux on one.
In terms of hardware and build quality, apple is crushing it with m1 mpb.
However, I just received my framework laptop and am totally excited by it. The build quality is pretty good compared to my 2019 15” intel mbp.
It feels like a hunk of metal, similar to mbp. I love the size, the monitor is great, keyboard is much better, and all the parts are replaceable. Running arch with zero issues so far (although i havent tried bluetooth or fingerprint reader yet).
The battery doesnt seem great (8hr real use) and the speakers are not even close to my mbp.
Other than those two items (both of which are fixable with battery pack + headphones) I find the offerings very similar.
[0]: https://frame.work/
Another one is ARM, but very under-powered: https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/.
if mbp is a 10:
monitor 9
trackpad 8
keyboard 15
case 9
ports 20
battery 6
speakers 5
I an shocked by how well the trackpad works. I havent messed with gestures yet but the precision seems on par to me.
Linux support is first class.
Im very happy with my decision. M1 mbp is definitely better overall but I would choose this laptop over it in a heartbeat.
For example, bringup of the wifi can probably happen in parallel with GPU work...
For this demo it's not. It's doing CPU rendering, which the M1 is apparently fast enough to do while providing decent UI performance (albeit while using 60% all-core CPU to do it).
> it already reverse engineered in a certain level?
It is. See:
- https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-1.html
- https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-2.html
- https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-3.html
- https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-4.html
Linux on macbooks would be an amazing dream.
M1 performance in laptops is great but that's only been true for a year or so, for the last 5 years Apple laptops have been hot garbage.
As an owner of fully loaded 2018 mbp (i9/upgraded GPU, 32 GB ram) I can without a doubt say it's the worst premium device I've ever owned. The battery runs out on me after 1 hour meeting - and I have >100 cycles on it. The amount of heat and noise it produces is surreal, and that's after I opened it and cleaned up the vents (which clog easily) and added thermal pads to connect VRM to chassis (which helped significantly, prior to that the CPU would downclock so bad I couldn't use anything on my device after 15 mins in a Google meet connected to a 5k monitor).
Not to mention all the bugs I had to go through with it - wasn't untill 6 months after I purchased the device that I could actually use my 5k on my USBC monitor on full resolution - only started working after an OS upgrade.
And the keyboards failing being a known problem they replace out of warranty because they recognise their design sucks (luckily I use external keyboard 95% of the time).
Apple hardware was mediocre at best for the price they charge, up until M1.
In the mobile space, they are faster but as someone who switched from an iPhone to Samsung - I can't really say it matters. Phones are good and well rounded but nothing spectacular, hardware is on par with Samsung.
Again using the Mac/iOS combo is really nice so the software integration is next level, but considering their business practices I refuse to get locked in to the ecosystem, it's just too limiting.
And Linux on M1 would likely be subpar to any premium x86 device, Linux support sucked even on x86 Macs.
There were some good things, the displays were excellent, the touchpad is still the best in class, and the size/weight were excellent.
But usb-c only was step too far, the Touch Bar wasn't the right move for a Pro audience (i), there wasn't enough room for cooling the intel chips and the keyboard situation was farcical - it's the primary interface to a Mac (can you imagine the outcry if iPhones had touch displays randomly not working, doing extra touches etc?!).
I think Apple gets a lot of leeway because the 2008-2015 MacBook Pros were probably the best laptops you could buy.
Having owned a 2009 MacBook Pro which in my opinion was the best laptop I'd ever owned and never made me question the amount of money I spent on it. The 2016 MacBook Pro was the exact opposite (mainly due to the keyboard being so bad).
I'm glad Apple have come to their senses and course corrected. I do wonder though for people that have only seen the 2016-2019 era if they will bother to try Apple again...
(i) I understand it probably would've made it too expensive to produce but I think the Touch Bar would've gone down well on a MacBook Air where I would imagine there's a lot more hunt-and-peck typists that'd appreciate and notice what's being displayed on the Touch Bar. As a touch typist I never looked down to see the Touch Bar so it was a mostly wasted on me.
I wonder if it will ever happen outside of very limited use cases.