Hector Martin Promises To Bring Linux To the M1 Chip (softpedia.com) 139
Joe2020 writes: Famous developer Hector Martin who put Linux on the PS4 now wants to port Linux to the new Apple M1, and he wants to do it with the help of crowdfunding by making it his full-time job. One can find his official pledge for support here. "Since these devices are brand new and bespoke silicon, porting Linux to run on them is a huge undertaking. Well beyond a hobby project, it is a full-time job," the developer explains.
"The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job.
Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.
"The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job.
Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.
Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)
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Could not agree more. They seem nice little platforms for portable computing – the first platform that runs quite fast, can run computations for several hours *and* I don't need an AC outlet all day? Plus a price I can afford (price per performance seems quite decent on the small M1 laptops of course they can still screw this up on the 16 inch M1 ;-) . Been waiting for this for 20 years ...
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I see no difference between this and any other "lost cause" gofundme campaigns. It is completely within Apple's rights (and habits) to mess around with this guy's work by changing firmware blobs' or verified boot behaviour just enough to break whatever he creates.
The best he can hope for (and I think he does) is that it'll be a neverending paid gig of cat and mouse games with Tim Apple. Probably followed by a cease and desist DMCA letter if he gets too close to full support.
Just a test of the Secure Enclave (Score:2)
This sounds like a worthwhile endeavor.
For Apple, its a test of their Secure Enclave that is designed to prevent this sort of thing. The execution of code not signed by Apple.
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This isn't hack, there's no exploit needed, just a selection in the firmware to allow booting of an OS not signed by Apple.
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This isn't hack, there's no exploit needed, just a selection in the firmware to allow booting of an OS not signed by Apple.
You assume Apple allows the Secure Enclave to be turned off. See iPhone, where Secure Enclave originated.
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The point is that there's nothing else like the M1 on the market. If you use linux but want M1 performance, porting is the only option.
Re: Pretty useless (Score:4, Interesting)
By the time this all happens, (10-20 years) there will be plenty of similar hardware.
Just look at the "achievement" he's supposedly famous for - porting Linux to the PS4. Never heard of the guy, never read anything about the port, and does anyone even use it?
' You buy a PS4 to play games. You buy a Mac to run Apples OS and corresponding applications.
The whole thing smells of bullshit.
Re: Pretty useless (Score:5, Interesting)
This 1000x
While Apple's M1 Macbook is probably a uniquely powerful ARM portable and interesting to someone wanting a Linux potable in terms of hardware. This project is sorta counter to what FOSS should do with situations like this.
Its one thing when people volunteer and collaborate to make it possible to run homebrew on some otherwise closed kit. Its quite another when you start creating paid positions to run a project and do the work of developing and porting stuff. Especially because by the time anything really useful to most of the people contributing money comes out of it, they will have moved on, most of those same contributors likely don't realize that and are effectively being bilked even if nobody is exactly outright lying to them.
Meanwhile some 'core team' folks get some nice paid for toys to play with and no specific commits as far as how much time they spend on the project to go with it.
Apple who has all the bits required to make the work easy an quick contributes nothing, not even specs more than likely making it a complex reversing project. Eventually if the project is successful though they get slightly wider audience of potential users/sales, while having contributed zilch and they get to doge any support obligations to boot, maybe even their own original warranties. Nobody should do charity work for one of the largest most profitable corporations on earth..
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This is actually very common in open-source projects. Quite often, projects use financial donations to fund the employment of developers for full-time development. It's not usually a fortune, but it's usually enough to not need to work elsewhere in the meantime. Reac [reactos.org]
Re: Pretty useless (Score:2)
Uh, this is the exact same model as GNU, the project that Linux relies on.
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There is nothing wrong with FOSS projects in general asking for money and hiring staff. What is wrong is when its targeted as specific system tightly control by a single corporate actor who benefits but does not contribute, and its even more wrong when that corporate interest is more or less hostile to the project.
GNU isnt like that. GNU does not target a specific vendors stuff, and it never has. Ditto with Linux, they are general use projects/products whose success, failure, and value isn't tied to the f
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"...the project that Linux relies on..."
LOL. GNU is a "project"? It is "the" project "Linux relies on"? "this" is "the exact same model as GNU"? What model is that?
There will be a second go fund me ... (Score:2)
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There's nothing illegal about the project. There's a mode available for booting an OS not signed by apple, there's no exploits needed. Unlike the iphones, their desktops are pretty open to installing anything you want.
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There's nothing illegal about the project. There's a mode available for booting an OS not signed by apple, there's no exploits needed. Unlike the iphones, their desktops are pretty open to installing anything you want.
Its not about illegality nor hacking. It will likely be about patents.
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Hector Martin regularly reverses hardware. The PS4 is the most famous. Never heard of the guy--did you hear of fail0verflow?
His main goal was not to be a PM and hire developers, that's just if he got more money than he needed to fund himself.
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M1 performance isn't that great, and the laptops themselves are mediocre.
Few USB ports, sub-par keyboard, average screen, can't upgrade the RAM, can't upgrade the SSD, can't upgrade the WiFi/Bluetooth radios, no card readers... And the M1 performance is below the level of comparable price Ryzen laptops, which also happen to come with a much better GPU.
The only area where they really excel is battery life, but do you really need 20 hours? Is 15 hours from Ryzen not enough? It's more than enough for the longe
Laptop - Performance per watt (Score:3)
"M1 performance" Are you living in a parallel universe of some sort? Get a Threadripper then. Will be much cheaper too.
Yes there are two different universes. Desktop and laptop. With laptops the metric is generally performance per watt. Especially so when discussing the M1. If you took a shot every time Apple said performance per watt during the introduction you would probably be dead from alcohol poisoning about 1/4 of the way through it.
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An M1 without Apple's software offers unknown power management capabilities, without that information "laptop v desktop" is moot.
What matters is the computer, not the processor. Without good software, who cares.
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An M1 without Apple's software offers unknown power management capabilities, without that information "laptop v desktop" is moot.
Nope. The benchmark being compared against is an M1 running macOS. The benchmark is hardly moot. :-)
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The Mac mini is $700 and normally consumes 25 watts or under, and runs near silent. A threadripper, motherboard, case, CPU, ram, and GPU is going to be a cost many times more. The threadripper system will take more space, more power, generate more heat and noise, etc.
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That Mac mini won't be anywhere near the computer either, M1 or not. If its performance that is desired, the OP's original comment, then why even consider a mini?
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Prays prediction: every if he succeeds, nobody's going to use it.
I will. In fact, I bet there are a bunch of regulars on this site that probably won't buy a Macbook until he (or someone else) succeeds.
APK is still too stupid to learn how to use FreeBSD (a real unix) when looking for a systemd-free OS Fucking poser.
I find your sig oddly relevant to your stance on this issue. In your post you say that "I people who buy Macs can buy a generic laptop for a lot less." However, if you take a generic laptop and install FreeBSD on it, multiply the time it takes to get FreeBSD working with your hardware by the amount I make per hour, then assuming that time = money, the Macbook costs me less,
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Are you actually trying to make sense to Haters? :)
LOL!
I am immediately posting that on my office wall as a reminder to myself when reading Slashdot!!!
Well done, sir!
Apple will probably deliver drivers as binaries (Score:2)
I will. In fact, I bet there are a bunch of regulars on this site that probably won't buy a Macbook until he (or someone else) succeeds.
The one who will succeed will be Apple and the necessary drivers will be binary only and you will whine, abstain and sulk. ;-)
Its more than the GPU ... (Score:2)
You're never going to make full use of the GPU without their cooperation.
Nor the Neural Engine. Nor the Image Signal Processor.
Huh (Score:2)
What the heck, I think I'm actually going to give this guy some money.
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Considering that as well. But you'll pry my 2020 16" Intel MacBook Pro from my cold dead hands. I'm quite glad I went so far as to configure it with 64GB of RAM...
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That's how I feel about my 2015 13" MacBook Pro as well. It's still running like a champ...
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That's how I feel about my 2015 13" MacBook Pro as well. It's still running like a champ...
As is my 2012 15" non-retina MacBook Pro. Just maxed-out the RAM (16 GB) and put in a new HDD (yes, HDD); and it runs great! Boots in about 12 secs, Apps launch instantly, web pages render instantly in Safari. Etc. Ready for another decade's use...
But I do lust after an ASi Mac!
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Heh, I'm fund of my 2020 16" MBP as well, but the fans ramp up at a drop of a hat. Even minor things like upgrading ITerm to the current release will ramp up the fans.
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You want to give this guy money so that you can give Apple money to make you bend over backwards to get software running on it?
Like car aftermarket upgrades, this is either worth it to you, or it is not. And they're asking for donations, not for you to step up to be the next volunteer at the Annual Russian Roulette Championships. Lighten up. People have paid the Kartrashians millions for their narcissistic stupid shit. I can certainly see a far greater waste of time and money, than porting Linux to Apple hardware.
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And I wasn't talking about Hector. I was talking about the people who are willing to donate to this. I am allowed to point out people's self-defeating stupidity.
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You are literally talking about rewarding a company to continue making it harder to for you to run your choice of software. Every dollar that goes to Apple goes towards making their products more and more closed. Making Linux work on this new hardware means people will be paying Apple to produce even more closed off hardware.
If Apple was as hell-bent going down the closed road as you assume here, then perhaps you can explain why Apple wasted millions to develop and support Boot Camp, which is designed to natively run the OS of their competitor. They also would refuse to even allow any virtualization to run. Apple has done nothing of the sort. And if you truly want to ensure that Linux gets locked out of running on new hardware, then by all means don't support any efforts to port it. That way, we can really stick it to the T
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then perhaps you can explain why Apple wasted millions to develop and support Boot Camp
Because they know they can get many millions more from people who want to convert to Apple but also don't want to ditch their investment in Windows applications that they've bought? Are you really delusional to think they created Boot Camp to embrace openness out of the goodness of their hearts? REALLY?
And if you truly want to ensure that Linux gets locked out of running on new hardware
It's already locked out. Not sending a message to Apple is what's ensuring it'll be locked out perpetually.
Yours merely comes with an extra bonus of punishing the Linux community.
This is nonsense. Linux is not punished because it wasn't ever going to be running on these new M1s i
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Making Linux work on this new hardware means people will be paying Apple to produce even more closed off hardware.
But it won't work (at least not properly). Just like the projects to run Linux on the iPhone, it's a fun thing but it's not actually useful. Yes it boots but you don't have graphics drivers, camera drivers or other device features. And the various iPhone Linux projects started back when the iPhone first came out so if you want to see where this project will be in the next decade just look at those projects.
I just can't see what the point of this is aside from a "hey look I can boot the Linux kernel on this
Think about Secure Enclave before donating (Score:2)
What the heck, I think I'm actually going to give this guy some money.
First ask yourself: Isn't the Secure Enclave supposed to prevent precisely this sort of stuff? Executing code at boot time that is not signed by Apple.
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That's actually a good question for someone who's purchased an M1 Mac - can the secure boot be turned off, as can be done on all the Intel Macs which include it?
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Yes, it's been verified you can turn off secure boot to allow an OS not signed by Apple to boot. There's a warning because it reduces security, but it's just a standard feature of the firmware.
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Yes, it's been verified you can turn off secure boot to allow an OS not signed by Apple to boot. There's a warning because it reduces security, but it's just a standard feature of the firmware.
Wow, I expected the iPhone approach.
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libhybris approach? (Score:2)
Can they load the binary graphics driver from a Darwin container similar to the way Sailfish and Ubports load Android drivers?
Running Open GL over Vulkan over Metal is already possible with Zink and MoltenVK.
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I was actually thinking something similar. I think it would make sense to use Darwin as the kernel, add a Linux compatibility layer, and then you get the best of both worlds. Let Apple do a decent amount of the work for you.
People have tried something similar before, with OpenDarwin and Pure Darwin, [puredarwin.org] but I believe both projects are inactive. Apple has released the Darwin source for years. It's too bad no one has made a successful distro based on it. I believe it's primarily because, as a hybrid kernel, there
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I was actually thinking something similar. I think it would make sense to use Darwin as the kernel, add a Linux compatibility layer, and then you get the best of both worlds.
What would be the point of that though? Maybe you can find some extreme niche where that has some amount of value but then that just ends up like OpenDarwin and PureDarwin which is an interesting experiment but not actually useful enough to be worth devoting any time to beyond the initial "can it be done".
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Well I was thinking that it could be extended so the *nix GUIs could run on them. It would allow people who don't want to run macOS to still use the hardware, like the current subset of Mac hardware users who run Linux.
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Sure but today it's an Intel processor and an AMD (or integrated Intel) GPU. This M1 SoC has some ARM processing cores (in a big.LITTLE) configuration but it also has a custom GPU and a lot of custom hardware specifically for image processing, signal processing, crypto, ML, etc... that you would have to reverse engineer and make use of to get comparable performance, it's not just an ARM port. Then when the next hardware revision comes out and they decide to add more specific processors you need to keep play
But why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I realize this is a naive question to a potentially hostile audience but I'm really curious: once virtualization on the M1 is in place (which doesn't seem like "if" so much as "when") and Docker is again functional (ditto), what's the point of running Linux on the bare metal? I can think of some abstract reasons (dislike of the MacOS UI, adherence to FSF principles, familiarity) and those are valid enough for sure, but are there functional issues that folks are encountering?
For background, I'm an old (primarily) Erlang developer and do 90% of my work in Emacs & Docker and really haven't run into any issues on MacOS. Admittedly there'll be additional scrutiny deploying code developed on ARM to Intel but it's not something that'll keep me up at night (and would be true even with Linux on ARM).
To reiterate: I'm genuinely curious and not trying to start some sort of holy war here.
because it's cool (Score:2)
that's why.
it's one of those things that is so simple it's hard to really explain it or discuss it.
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what's the point of running Linux on the bare metal?
Because why not.
Linux has been ported to an 8-bit micro [slashdot.org] through sheer brute force.
It is like running Doom on a printer, but at least this would be more useful if he pulls it off.
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Try looking at it the other way around: I have the software I like (Linux), and this port will provide another high-quality hardware option I can use.
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Try looking at it the other way around: I have the software I like (Linux), and this port will provide another high-quality hardware option I can use.
Sure but we've seen this before in countless "Linux running on a XYZ device", the result is swathes of proprietary hardware (there's a lot more than just the ARM processor in the M1 SoC) that never gets support. It will be a nice experiment but it will never really work properly and never be useful enough to justify its maintenance and development burden - just look at all the people who use a Linux-based iPhone for example (and the iPhone came out 13 years ago). The M1's speed and power efficiency doesn't
Re: But why? (Score:2)
Obsolescence (Score:2)
It's a very useful way out, once Apple deems the hardware as obsolete. They're pretty good with this, usually 7 or more years until the yearly OS upgrades stop. However, it's happened with 1st generation hardware, like the original iPad, that they don't get much of an upgrade path.
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How much RAM does Mac OS use? Because these things come with just 8GB and can't be upgraded.
Ditto for the SSD. If you buy the 256GB version how much of that space with Mac OS take up?
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I mean how much is consumed by the OS and virtualization software, and how much is left for the Linux OS to use.
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The standard isn't nearly that high! Rosetta is not an emulator!
Re: what's the point (Score:2)
Uum, and hardware designed exactly to fit the same phiosophies of "the user is literally retarded and feels i sulted if not treated that way too, so act like a condescending nanny and show him lots of shiny almost featureless interfaces that tell him what he is to want, and he wil be happy".
Seriously, the thing will lock you out left and right, and push both hands and feet into your face to prevent you from actually using the hardware, and you want to suck up to it?
I'd suggest a long therapy, mate! :D
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It'll definitely make booting a non-Apple OS difficult with the M1 Macs all having Secure Boot enabled by default. They won't even boot off an external drive unless you specifically configure them to be able to do so.
I would not be surprised if the M1 chips won't boot anything that's not signed by Apple.
Re: But why? (Score:3)
Stop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Stop it. (Score:2)
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Apple supports me just fine. The problem is your definition of the word "support".
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Learn to behave like a normal person and realize people talk about things in context, instead of spelling every fucking single detail out.
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Thank you.
I'm somebody that's used Apple products for a good long time. I started on an Apple IIgs to give you an idea of how long. But the last system I bought from them slowed down to the point of uselessness far more quickly than any other system I've had from them. I've still got some 2012 Macbooks that are working just fine, but my 2018 iMac is functionally degraded to the point I only use if for one thing in my studio now: updating my Helix firmware. And even that is nightmarishly slow.
Combine tha
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Do some research, numbnuts who remain anonymous because they don't want to know who the idiot behind the comment is.
Buy Lenovo. (Score:2)
Target group = nil? (Score:2)
I see zero target group overlap there.
- Plastic vanity people with no self-respect, wishing for simplicity, decorating themselves with shiny trinkets.
- Hacker [catb.org] geeks who don't care how things look, but expect freedom and power.
I'd prefer Linux to stay being our OS, for professional work. Not the slave to some loser's shiny "desktop" / penis crutches.
The Hilti/Makita that can take your eye out. Not the "simple" IKEA electric screwdriver "safe for kids". Because everything else already is the latter.
Re: Target group = nil? (Score:3)
One-time Donation? (Score:2)
Great idea (Score:4, Funny)
I always wanted a Linux laptop that can die a quick death by swollen battery, has terrible keyboard and less ports than a Raspberry Pi.
Apple should support him (Score:3)
This will increase the market for their hardware.
Their ARM system could become the de-facto standard for ARM desktop systems, like the IBM PC did for x86 back in the day.
I don't see any reason for them to NOT support this.
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Most interested Linux users would use the binary drivers. Much like they use binary drivers from NVIDIA, configure their PCs to dual boot Windows and Linux, etc.
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Won't happen. They locked down those systems heavily and will never open up the specification as it might allow others to repair them.
It might also open the door to running MacOS on other ARM machines, again something they don't want.
Sigh. (Score:2)
Apple could do it in an afternoon, these guys will take months and tens of thousands of dollars to even make it boot.
I don't see why that should be necessary in 2020.
compiler support for Apple Arm Silicon (Score:2)
Can gcc reliably produce executables for Apple-on-arm hardware?
(I googled, it does not seem to be well supported.)
I'm under the impression that it would be a huge battle to build a linux kernel with any other compiler.
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GCC and several linux distros support AARCH64, which is what the M1 uses. Clang/LLVM as well. So the tool chain is reasonable. It won't of course help with the unique to Apple hardware, but the basics should work.
Planned obsolesce (Score:2)
By the time this project has a 0.1 release, we will have Apple M2, and there would be *no* other manufacturer for M1 chips.
I get that this is a very nice SoC, resembling a scaled up version of the Raspberry PI with a modern CPU more RAM, and still based on same ARM architecture. That being said, even the open source SoCs required binary blobs, and special handling. And they were purposefully built.
Here Apple has no intention or need to provide the required binary blobs, nor they would care about driver comp
Hopefully with assistance from Apple (Score:2)
Many people want to see this happening, and Apple has only to gain from this. Sounds like a classical win/win situation.
Good idea. (Score:2)
A reverse engineer needs to be well-funded to resist the temptation of being hired by Apple to terminate the project.
Re: "would want to use on a daily driver device." (Score:3)
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Real (i.e. chartered) engineers
What a myopic view. You may not have noticed but the world is bigger than a few fields with extra papers in one country. Also witness your own cognitive dissonance in claiming that "chartered engineers" are the only real "engineers", yet still using the additional word "chartered" which you claim to be redundant in the very same sentence.
Re: "would want to use on a daily driver device." (Score:2)
This...
Re:But what about the apps... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that an issue?
Linux was running on ARM cpus MANY years ago, distros like debian and ubuntu have 99% of the same packages for arm as they do for x86. The vast majority of linux applications are released with source code and have already been compiled for arm by the major distributions. There's only a small niche of closed source apps that only exist for x86, primarily games.
With an appropriate runtime you can also run android apps, where arm is already the dominant architecture for android users. Games for android actually significantly outnumber games for x86 linux.
I've used linux on various alternative architectures over the years, being open source with the majority of software also being open source means linux has a much easier time running on a new architecture than windows or macos does.
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For example, running Wifi-enabled embroidery machines usually requires you to use "dot Customizer" for Android or iOS, there's no version of it for linux, macOS or Windows desktops.
Then today's your lucky day!
That iOS version of "dot customizer" should run just peachy-keen under macOS Big Sur on an M1 Mac.
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/... [apple.com]
Now what?
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I only got an M1 Mini yesterday but runs IOS apps should be read as runs some IOS apps.
A fair number of apps I use on IOS do not show up as available for the M1. E.g Music streamer, Google home for 2 examples.
If you disable system protection csrutil disable apparently that stops any ios app from running.
It does perform well, seems to be similar to an i7 performance wise in multithreaded apps it's single core performance is excellent. I tried my delld3100 dock with the mini and i was able to run 3 screens of
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Homebrew isn't ready yet but its only been a couple of weeks since the m1 macs have been available.
wiki [wikipedia.org]
Use the source, Luke! [ycombinator.com]
of MacPorts [wikipedia.org]
Understand the difference between source and binary [stackexchange.com]
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No, by small niche i mean "closed source linux apps which are only compiled for x86".. Windows apps are not relevant in this discussion since the previous post ws referencing linux software.
This article was specifically about porting linux to run on the arm macbooks.
Android apps should be fairly easy to get running on linux/arm - same cpu, same kernel, all that's missing is some of the userland components.
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Linux already runs on and fully supports ARM big.little architectures with a mix of high performance and high efficiency cores. Most such processors are designed primarily to run the linux kernel.
You are right about the other components, they would need appropriate linux drivers.
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Linux for ARM isn't an issue at all, that's readily available. The big issue is writing drivers for the proprietary GPU, security features, and other undocumented or poorly document hardware. Then there's the issue of getting it to accept your bootloader and not disable features because it isn't signed by Apple.
Re: Could you bring some real news, BeauHD? (Score:2, Funny)
What does it matter? Even with all the election fraud Trump did, he didn't win, so all is well.
*evil grin*
Re: This would only encourage people to buy apple (Score:2)
Seconded, but I doubt it. Since nobody who actually uses Linux would touch anything Apple with a ten bigfoot trnsdimensional mutagen poker.
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Err I use Apple and will continue to do so. I also use Linux and will continue to do so.
When I look beyond the prejudice on slashdot and see for myself I find:
1. Macs are not locked down at all (i.e. I can configure the machine to be fully unlocked if I wish by turning off the T2 chip) hardware/driver support is a different matter and I haven't had any problems so far.
2. Lenovo/Dell/(Insert favorite manufacture here) are always inferior in hardware terms every time I have looked
3. When you buy similar specs
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I disagree. Say buying the mac mini to run linux becomes fairly popular. That sends a message that there's a market for a nicely built, low power, high performance ARM system. The more popular it becomes the more likely some other company would sell a similar product that supports linux. Maybe from one of Dell, Lenovo, or System76.