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Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air (realworldtech.com)
119 points by michielt on Nov 22, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 122 comments



Honestly, I don't think anyone is holding their breath for the day that corporations like Apple and Microsoft give the world the Linux that they deserve.

Imagine if these power brokers didn't exist and a whole generation of children grew up on Linux rather than Mac/PC. Huge opportunity cost for society in my opinion.


I was discussing this with someone yesterday. A materials engineering PhD candidate, who took an engineering coding class during undergrad, but found everything so complicated that she never looked back and actually learned how to write a script. She's not alone, and it's frustrating to see the number of otherwise highly-educated people who seem handicapped in certain tasks because corporate vendors like Microsoft, Mathworks, and (maybe to a lesser degree) Apple create a situation where they're unaware that there's a free, native paradigm where writing a little bit of code isn't a pain in the butt.

I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking back, it's the exact same problem that resulted in a company I used to work for doing 100s of GB of data processing in Excel, because writing Excel macros was more accessible than writing a bash script to append two .csv files.

I think a lot of kids would probably really be attracted to it as well. Linux gives you control over your computing environment, in a world where children rarely have any autonomy. I don't think every one of them needs to grow up to be a professional developer, but computer literacy seems like a hugely valuable skill.


I never understood why Microsoft never pushed VBScript harder, and didn’t include a basic IDE for it. After all every copy of Windows for decades has come with it and it’s very powerful. They do seem to be rectifying that with PowerShell though.

I think it’s unfair hitting the Mac on this front though. Automator is an incredibly easy to use desktop automation tool, and of course you’ve got Bash, Ruby and Python right there just the same as on Linux. They have also invested heavily in work flow automation tooling for iOS.


For many of the smaller, just-make-it-easier tasks, I definitely agree with you regarding the greater accessibility on Mac. It's certainly not in exactly the same bucket as Windows. I think the thing I had in my head was the lack of deeper accessibility in Apple products. On Linux, there's a really neat transition that can happen, where (imho, often by accident) you switch from just being a user of your computing environment to being its owner, which I think is a gateway to higher levels of technical engagement. Apple's approach seems sort of like a high-pass filter; you can only go so far in that environment before you start running into barriers. For the general population, I agree that it's probably not a high priority, but I think the trade-off in terms of gateway potential is worth acknowledging.


I am in strong agreement with this. I feel like it is selling kids short to not give them exposure to the Linux environment that underlies our modern world.

To me, it really comes down to empowerment of others. If you are not taught how the world works from first principles (in this case the world of computing), then you are forever relegated to live in someone else's world and live within their paradigm of thinking. In this case, the only justification is market capture for these Enterprises, which hasn't materially advanced society and societal issues as far as I can tell.


> I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking back, it's the exact same problem that resulted in a company I used to work for doing 100s of GB of data processing in Excel, because writing Excel macros was more accessible than writing a bash script to append two .csv files.

I mean, Linux specifically isn't really necessary for this. Back in the early-mid 00s, OS X got me into terminal usage and "real" programming via its free (as in beer), full-octane bundled dev tools and included Ruby installation.

In fact, at the point that I got into these things with OS X, I had already tinkered with a Linux variant (Yellow Dog) and had given up before getting too far because I didn't have the knowhow to make the OS as a whole work properly, and worse, the internet resources needed to fill this knowledge gap didn't make themselves obvious.


I can agree with this, which is why I added the "(to a lesser degree) Apple" caveat. I think, especially now, it seems they're moving in a less hacker-friendly direction in terms ability to progress from write-a-script to build-you-own-environment, but certainly is better than Windows. I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.


> I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.

Yeah, this was over 15 years ago. Yellow Dog was basically Red Hat PowerPC edition, so imagine Red Hat circa 2002.

Things have certainly gotten easier since then though, no question.


> Honestly, I don't think anyone is holding their breath for the day that corporations like Apple and Microsoft give the world the Linux that they deserve.

I don’t understand this comment. What are you expecting Apple, Microsoft to do? They’re not charities, they make competing OS’s for profit. Why would anyone be waiting for them to bring Linux?


I am referring to the ability for consumers who purchase a hardware product with these Corporation's operating system installed to be able to dual boot, or replace the OS with a Linux distribution.

I believe this is both in line with free-market enterprise as well as core values such as individual liberty and property ownership. Anti-competitive and predatory practices should not be justified by people such as yourself under the guise of "competing for profit".


We had this with Netbooks - remember those? You could choose between a barely running Windows XP or a well running Linux back then. People mostly bought the Windows version because that's what they knew and where the illegal copy of software X from their neighbour ran.

A similar thing happened with the city of Munich trying to convert their systems to Linux. The workers complained that OpenOffice/LibreOffice didn't work like their (most probably illegal) copies of Word and Excel at home and thus they couldn't work with it. When that didn't help, they complained about "missing software" and other strange reasons about why they absolutely couldn't work with Linux. So they rolled back to Windows and Office and started sending our tax money to Microsoft again. [1] (Also Microsoft promised to move their German HQ to Munich to bring wealth into town. But that's toooootally unrelated.)

At least, they're trying again... [2]

Point is, as long as 90% of all jobs and schools have you work in Windows, why should people start buying Linux PCs for themselves?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...


I think that is changing, though. G-Suite and the online versions of Office (Office365, I think?) are gaining a lot of traction in the business world. Live collaboration with other people is a huge benefit, and being a webapp saves the IT department many headaches.

Although that's less "Linux as a viable OS" and more "Google Chrome as a viable OS".


Lenovo and Dell both sell laptops with Linux installed. Dell ships XPS "developer edition" machines with Ubuntu and Lenovo offers Fedora on a bunch of machines.

However, I don't think selling such machines to the general public will happen soon, because there's not much of a market for it. Most users hate it when the interface of a single application changes; switching operating systems is probably a non-starter.


You can run and boot Linux on both macs[0] and pc's[1] and have been able to do so continuously for more than a decade.

[0]https://www.google.com/search?q=boot+mac+into+linux

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=boot+pc+into+linux


Not really on macs. Sure, the system boots, but due to lack of documentation, hardware support has to be reverse engineered. For wifi, the recent Intel MBP boards have broken firmware which just does not work with Linux - it's officially a wont-fix upstream since Apple doesn't care.


This might have gotten fixed recently, but last time I checked, there hasn't been a working Linux wifi driver for Macbooks starting with the first Touchbar model, which is a non-starter for most practical purposes.


Not on these new ARM Macs


Well, exactly that. As soon as there is some sort of economic advantage, they do support alternatives. Economic advantage may not mean additional direct sales, but it may mean introducing a different customer base to their product or encouraging active development. I mean, MS has now released its second iteration of 'subsystem for linux' on Windows 10.


A lot of times they aren't competing but making competing hard with lock-in (that's anti-competitive).


They don't need to do much - just document things, and make it possible to disable secure boot.


Apple does allow you to disable secure boot, yes even on the M1 Macs, and that's not even Microsoft's job.


> and that's not even Microsoft's job.

Since they're the ones who required NT-on-ARM device vendors to disable user control of secure boot, yes it is their job.


I don’t think that’s how benefiting users works. Simply removing the options people have historically found suited them better doesn’t by itself create a better world.

There’s nothing whatsoever preventing the FOSS community coming up with better solutions, if they are capable of doing so, and taking away their main competitors doesn’t seem like a good way to incentivise competitive improvement. In fact we’ve been told repeatedly and often by FOSS advocates that open will inevitably beat closed anyway.

On the back end yes this has come to pass, but mainly because big corporations like AT&T, Intel and IBM have invested hundreds of millions, probably billions in Linux. Microsoft and Apple have also invested hundreds of millions, probably billions at this point, in their desktop platforms. The independent hacker community just can’t come close to that level of disciplined, organised, focused investment of effort.

Linux on ARM is another case in point. It takes a big company with huge resources like Google to get it done in a coherent, usable way.

We need to stop thinking about companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft as obstacles. They aren’t stopping the FOSS community from doing anything. They’re just bringing their own contributions to the table. Take Apple out of the picture and OSX, iOS and M1 Macs wouldn’t exist and FOSS would be exactly where it is now anyway.


There is something to be said here about greed and only appealing to the masses' basic instincts.

In a lot of cases it makes money and people prefer it, but that doesn't equate to being good or being good for society.


What matters is actually meeting people’s needs effectively and at high quality. That’s what’s good for society.


Sort of like the fossil fuel industry?


I mean, that's how the industrial revolution started and continues to this day, so yes, fossil fuels as well.


There's nothing 'high quality' about fossil fuels


I cannot imagine punishing my children with Linux. I use it every day and love it but it's just such a rough edged by nerds for nerds OS.

If they want to get into programming and computer science then absolutely. But for the 98% of other walks of life I would give them a Mac so that the OS part of their day disappears into the background.


I did grow up on Linux. My dad put OpenSUSE on the family computer. I learned to break it and re-image the machine. I learned to work with a command-line interface. There was no power broker that stood in the way. But then, that's one man's experience, and most computers still ship with Windows, so take it for what it is.


My daughters school gives her a chrome book so she is growing up using Linux. Her fire tablet also uses linux.


That's not Linux Linux, that's Linux powered derivatives.

It's a bit like saying that people who use Android phones use Linux. Sure, the kernel may be Linux, but they don't use the desktop Linux that everyone refers to when they use the word "Linux" (bar a few exceptions)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy


For the first comment it’s a Linux powered gnu/Linux derivative. It’s fully Linux. Just like android is fully Linux.


It's not linux until you have to debug your wifi cards driver.


What advantages does Linux have for children over macOS? It’s UNIX, with the shell and all the OSS packages you could want. Very few children need to recompile the graphics stack, kernel, or drivers.


Very few Linux users too. The advantage is not locking them into a corporate environment that's getting more and more questionable and give them the oportunity to actually learn about computers.


I don’t get the impression that most people care to learn about computers, they just want things to work. In this way I’m not sure it’s much different than most other things we use in life.


You can use Wine to play a lot of games on Linux. Good luck doing that on macOS due to their refusal to support Vulkan and 32-bit. macOS doesn't offer any benefits in comparison with Linux, only disadvantages.


What is the advantage to the average person to be able to run 32 bit apps?

Most game engines are supporting the metal api, or use vulkanVK as an abstraction layer.

Have you considered implementing an office full of linux desktops? With a team of designers? Product Engineers? Salespeople on the road constantly? I'd imagine if macOS has no benefits at all, IT managers everywhere would be switching to linux desktops. Why do you think this hasn't happened? especially since linux has no disadvantage compared to macOS?


> children grew up on Linux rather than Mac/PC

You mean Mac/Windows, I think? Because PC surely can run Linux.



One thing I recall is Linus is really big on "absolutely no noise whatsoever". The passively cooled but still reasonably powerful Air seems like ideal hardware for his tastes, at least for a laptop.


Yeah, somehow I am surprised with his cooled down take on this.

With the exceptionally good ARM hardware coming in from Apple, I can't see mainstream future for other laptops which will allow OS freedom. As time goes on, Apple should be able to significantly reduce the price of entry level Macbooks. Look at iPad pricing, entry level laptops just for iPad level work on a laptop form factor don't have to cost a lot.

I always thought this will be Chromebooks, and hoped Google would be more friendly to other OSs because of their past, but it looks like it will be Macbooks that will fill that space.


What incentive would Apple have to do that? For the most part their products have only gone up in price (as with the yearly iPhone releases). I'd expect exactly the opposite instead (e.g. thinner-bezel macbooks with face ID). A cheaper ARM Macbook would cannibalise their iPad sales.

Laptops with OS freedom have always been a more niche thing, same as dual booting on a desktop machine. Short of selling laptops with no OS at all, most people are going to stick with the default install.


>their products have only gone up in price (as with the yearly iPhone releases)

Hmm, not sure I agree with that. The iPhone 12 mini base price is $699 with 64GB. iPhone 3GS in 2009 with 8 GB was $599, or $727 in inflation adjusted 2020 dollars. Never mind the incredible increases in data rate, speed, display quality, and other capabilities.

Or, take the iPhone SE, an incredible phone compared to the 3GS and it has a base price of $399 with 64GB. 200 dollars less before inflation.

Apple has introduced premium models at higher prices but that leads to an incorrect comparison. It's just not reasonable to point to a 2009 iPhone and a 2020 iPhone Pro and suggest some sort of relevant price comparison.

In actual or inflation adjusted dollars it costs much less to own an iPhone today than it did a decade ago and you get a lot more phone.

I agree that we shouldn't expect a cheaper laptop, but I don't think it is because they care about cannibalizing their own sales. They set margin goals for each product and have demonstrated an unwillingness to discount below those goals solely to pursue market share.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone


Kinda, if you compare small screen price, which is kinda fair.

Yet look what competition is able to do with $300 budget - 5G, 120 fps screens (although lesser quality), similar (or better) cameras, similar performance, bigger batteries (similar life tho).


> Yet look what competition is able to do with $300 budget

And few or no software updates or patches, and full abandonment of a device after at most two years of support.

Meanwhile my kids have hand-me-down iPhone 6s models that are working well, running the latest, fully-patched software after five years of service.

There’s a lot of value in an iPhone besides the hardware specs.


At $300 the manufacturer has to make serious trade offs. I’m sure there are models at that price point with great cameras, or 120hz, or 5g, or longer battery life (actual size of the battery is irrelevant, battery life is the important metric). Is there a model with all of those features at $300? I’m not aware of one. Especially performance, since most Android phones can’t beat the 2 year old iPhone XS.


> A cheaper ARM Macbook would cannibalise their iPad sales.

I was thinking of it more like. Here's your PC in tablet form for iPad, here's your PC in laptop form for a entry level Macbook. They can keep the internals same for both. Most users are fine with web browser, mail client, photo editor etc. which an iPad internal laptop should very well run.

> Laptops with OS freedom have always been a more niche thing, same as dual booting on a desktop machine. Short of selling laptops with no OS at all, most people are going to stick with the default install.

True, but everything being x86 or x86_64 allowed us to run other OSs and that community kept the threat of a different OS alive for other users. If no one can run other software on these laptops, that fear will go away completely.


How long before the thermal throttling kicks in? I guess if that's the case probably only a performance issue for me when not at home with a laptop cooler underneath.


About 8.5 minutes of full load it starts to throttle. At about 30 minutes the throttling peaks.

Although, even when throttling it's only at 80% power. For native apps that's still faster than the mobile i9 in the 16in mbp.


Independent tests show 5-8min of full load before it throttles, which really is quite impressive.


I believe I saw some estimates that it starts throttling after 8 minutes under load? But I can’t remember the details, unfortunately.


If this next page is accurate, then Apple is not the only one offering an expensive light laptop without a fan:

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/6520-fanless-ultrabooks/


Well, if that page is accurate, it paints a depressing picture for the competition.

The CPUs listed in those laptops? Either the same or a slower version of the processors used in the Macbook. You know, that fanless 12 inch Intel thing which everyone complained about because it was too slow (and the keyboard was the worst butterfly one ever made, but.)

Taken with the grain of salt as they ought to be, the Geekbench score for the M1 Air is 2.3 times higher single-core, 4.9 times higher multi-core than the most expensive MacBook with a i7-7Y75, one of the "Kaby Lake Core Y"s in that list.

The only newer processor there is from 8th gen Amber Lake, which seems to be the only newer "fanless" CPU from Intel.

(the 9th gen "Y" designs were, apparently, only ever used in the (fan-including) 2020 macbook air)


> Torvalds, of course, can already have an ARM based Linux

> laptop if he wants one—for example, the Pinebook Pro. The

> unspoken part here is that he'd like a high-performance

> ARM based laptop, rather than a budget-friendly but

> extremely performance constrained design such as one finds

> in the Pinebook Pro, the Raspberry Pi, or a legion of

> other inexpensive gadgets.

I believe he currently uses an AMD threadripper setup - there would be nothing stopping him using something like the PineBook Pro as a "dumb terminal" and having his builds done off-machine. It would mean that he is dependent on an internet connection, but it wouldn't have to be a fast one as he would only need to send deltas to the build process. (This would be on top of other mechanisms like CI.)

The PineBook Pro has quite a reasonable keyboard, is quite light and gets decent battery. He could reasonably use it all day without issue. Re-flashing it can be as simple as throwing a new SD card into it, which could also help in terms of security whilst traveling (re-flash it when you get to your location).

I would very much tell him and other people to seriously consider such a machine.


> I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time.

I wonder if the Pinebook Pro would suit some Linux laptop use cases? Its an ARM laptop for $200, no fan, that ships with Manjaro Linux installed.


As someone happily tinkering on a Pinephone, I just don't think the RK3399 is going to satiate Linus's hunger for performance. I think there's some implied subtext "that is actually fast enough for my needs".

He's currently running a 32 core Ryzen desktop CPU, an upgrade he consciously chose over a lesser chip for its improved build speeds. He's also lamented poor screen quality and resolutions before, and I imagine the PBP's would not impress him.

The Air is notable because its processor can run build jobs (like compiling the Linux kernel) in stellar times. While the RK3399 has dual A72s and should be ... better than, say, the pinephone, I'd imagine it's closer to 2010~ish core 2 duos in performance.


The issue is that you really start feel the performance limitations of a cheap ARM SoC. Especially if you do a bunch of C compiling like Torvalds would.


C compiles in a flash on today's hardware. It's only when you have a BIG C codebase (the kernel counts as big), or a medium-sized C++ codebase, that things slow down.


C++ code that uses templates heavily is painful to compile, using 6 GiB of RAM is possible even for a "make -j1" build. It's kind of funny that a VPS with little RAM can build a full Linux kernel with all the modules and drivers, yet cannot build a small webserver. For big projects, the final linking process also eats enormous amount of RAM, it's possible for a small system to survive all the build and gets killed during the final linking.


One could just cross-compile remotely?


Sometimes, it's just valuable to have a local environment so you can use develop and test conveniently "at home" while using the same computer. It's why there are ARM workstations.

For example, Linus Torvalds said [0],

> Some people think that "the cloud" means that the instruction set doesn't matter. Develop at home, deploy in the cloud.

> That's bullshit. If you develop on x86, then you're going to want to deploy on x86, because you'll be able to run what you test "at home" (and by "at home" I don't mean literally in your home, but in your work environment).

> Which means that you'll happily pay a bit more for x86 cloud hosting, simply because it matches what you can test on your own local setup, and the errors you get will translate better.

> This is true even if what you mostly do is something ostensibly cross-platform like just run perl scripts or whatever. Simply because you'll want to have as similar an environment as possible,

> Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff).

> Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market?

> It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over.

> Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago.

> Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it.

And,

> And the only way that changes is if you end up saying "look, you can deploy more cheaply on an ARM box, and here's the development box you can do your work on".

> Actual hardware for developers is hugely important. I seriously claim that this is why the PC took over, and why everything else died.

> So you can pooh-pooh it all you want, and say "just cross-build", but as long as you do that, you're going to be a tiny minority, and you don't see the big picture, and you're ignoring actual real history.

> And btw, calling this an "unixoid" mindset is just showing what a total disconnect to reality you have, and how stupid your argument is. Unix lost. Yes, it lives on in the shape of Linux, but Unix lost not just to Linux, but to Windows. In fact, arguably it lost to windows first.

> Why? Same exact reason, just on the software side. In both cases. Where did you find developers? You found them on Windows and on Linux, because that's what developers had access to. When those workloads grew up to be "real" workloads, they continued to be run on Windows and Linux, they weren't moved over to Unix platforms even if that would have been fairly easy in the Linux case. No, that was just unnecessary and pointless work. Just continue to deploy on the same platform.

> Exact same issue on the software side as with the hardware. Cross-development is pointless and stupid when the alternative is to just develop and deploy on the same platform. Yes, you can do it, but you generally would like to avoid it if at all possible.

> End result: cross-development is mainly done for platforms that are so weak as to make it pointless to develop on them. Nobody does native development in the embedded space. But whenever the target is powerful enough to support native development, there's a huge pressure to do it that way, because the cross-development model is so relatively painful.

[0] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost...


same niche as old thinkpads maybe?


I'm really not holding out much hope that Linux will natively run on these M1s, even if we get it to boot there's all the driver issues for the integrated GPU, audio, wifi etc.

I'd imagine there is a lot of power management stuff on there too.


The bootloader and drivers aren't the only problems holding Linux back from being ported to these SoCs, it's that Apple's ARM SoCs have the same challenges all ARM SoCs have when it comes to Linux ports.

ARM servers are similar to x86 machines in that they use UEFI and have enumerable buses for hardware discovery.

ARM SoCs use custom bootloaders, and lack enumerable buses. Hardware configurations are almost always unique between ARM SoCs, and each of those configurations need their own Linux port.

Here's an idea of just some of the work that is required to port Linux to each individual ARM SoC[1].

[1] https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf


Bootcamp only really worked because Apple did the work. I'm sure they could do the same for Linux, but it would be harder because there's less commoditized hardware and possibly less demand because fewer people run Linux on their laptops than Windows.


There's also just less reason to run Linux for most consumers. Bootcamp was valuable because there's a lot of legacy, proprietary software and drivers that some people must use, which bootcamp gives them access to on the same device.

On the other hand, notable software on Linux are all FOSS. If there was sufficient demand there's nothing stopping someone from making a MacOS compatible release. And indeed, most FOSS developer tools do have MacOS binaries.


> If there was sufficient demand there's nothing stopping someone from making a MacOS compatible release

That assumes that it's something that can reasonably be ported. Granted, that does cover most software, but there are exceptions that for whatever reason are difficult to port. Docker is the poster child for this since it uses Linux kernel primitives; the way it runs "on" Darwin is to run Linux in a VM.


Docker's never been quite as portable as imagined because of this. I wonder if this will make people rethink it as a model for containerization.

Interestingly, FreeBSD has native Docker support because it has a Linux compatibility layer that adds/maps/implements(?) Linux system calls so it FreeBSD can run Linux binaries. Looks like FreeBSD Docker support is also broken right now.


The annoying thing is that it should be that portable - docker is modular enough that you should be able to replace containerd/runc with a jail-based version and everything just works, and the OCI image format outright talks about features to make the system OS-agnostic. It's just that nobody's bothered to actually implement it:(


The bootloader isn't a problem, Apple even gave instructions on how to do it.

Drivers are a problem. Somehow doubt Apple is going to document those.


Is anyone working on this right now? I would be interested to follow the development.



René Rebe has some thoughts about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NglGEnSJdU

TL;DW (the essence and consequence of that thread): This is not going to happen unless Apple publishes documentation so that drivers can be developed.

ARM laptops are already here though, look at the Pinebook Pro and ARM Chromebooks that are out there. The new Surface Pro X at least has an EFI and the drivers are somewhat there instead of not at all. It would be an order or magnitude less work to get that running Linux properly instead of the M1.

My opinion: I'm not expecting to see usable Linux on M1 devices any time soon. Apple are nicer about this than they are usually however - they want to prove that their new platform can be taken seriously and do general purpose computing - it looks like they lightly hinted at cooperating with Microsoft about Windows on ARM (though it may just be deflection).

They are pretty certainly not going to develop any drivers for anyone else, but I think there's a (low) chance we'll see documentation that will allow others to do so.


The main point:

> I don't have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that don't want to help.


Full support for Linux on the M1 may not come for a long time. If ever.

I am confident smart heads could get Linux to boot in it, according to one comment someone already has.

But getting everything working and getting the best out of all parts of the M1 will take work. Esp. if Apple does not release detailed specs and drivers. (open source yeah right). Dynamically adjusting which cores to use high performance or energy saver for one.

I look forward to having a Linux compiler that knows how to make the best use of the 16 Neural Engine cores in conjunctions with the rest of the chip.


So it seems that what could be problematic is not getting it to boot but rather how to get proper graphics support. How difficult would it be to reverse engineer the GPU?


Do we even know how to access the GPU? On x86-based systems there would be a standard bus (PCI/AGP/PCIe) to enumerate the the graphics device, but my impression is ARM doesn't have such things.

A lot of the recent improvement in graphics on Linux has come from manufacturers deciding to become cooperative rather than there being more people reverse-engineering graphics drivers. (Broadcom is contributing support for the Pi 4; AMD added its drivers to upstream; nVidia releases binary drivers to support enterprise customers.)


ARM does, in fact, use standard buses, PCIe on most high/medium end parts -- although, some low end chips just use a built-in USB controller or SPI/I2C for all peripherals.

What isn't always available is a way to dynamically enumerate a device's, uh, device tree. On PCs, this is usually accomplished through ACPI tables, where the bootloader (BIOS or UEFI) populates a table of data and callbacks to AML bytecode functions which the OS kernel can read and eval. [0]

So on x86, the OS finds the PCIe memory mapped addressed in the MCFG table.

On most ARM devices, this data has to be passed to the kernel at runtime, in what Linux calls a "device tree reference", compiled to a "DTB" file.

So, on a UEFI-based ARM system, it should be possible to just insert, say, an AMD graphics card onto the PCIe bus and get a working GPU.

[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm64/acpi_object_usa...


PCI and USB bus standards include dynamic enumeration but ARM SOCs normally only use them as external interfaces.

IP blocks inside the SOC itself usually just expose their registers on an AXI bus with no enumeration support at all, this is most likely the case with the M1 gpu.


If the reverse engineered Nvidia GPU drivers are any indication, very difficult

They're functional for very basic desktop stuff but 3D performance is abysmal


A big reason for the abysmal performance is however that nvidia has intentionally locked down the performance for code that doesn't have the right credentials. We don't know if Apple have done something similar.


I assume you mean reclocking support, it is possible to reclock the older Kepler architecture on open source drivers but it still underperforms

Kepler is anywhere from 2x to 10x faster on the proprietary driver here: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-n...


Not what you'd expect from a macbook. Perhaps it's in Apple's interest to let it happen though!


I wish it were so. Apple has no reason to allow other operating systems on its devices because macOS and iOS are gateways to their massive array of paid services.



And WiFi, audio, ... Basically what's problematic is proper (or any) hardware support.


One potential solution is to run a virtualized Linux in macOS.


It's still a PoverVR GPU with serial numbers filed off.


Apple has been designing their own GPUs for a while.


It's a Ship of Theseus situation.


I wonder if we have confirmation from an M1 owner (that is familiar with Apple stuff) that there's no way of booting from external media from the "bios"

Of course, then you would need to get on the whole trouble of initializing video/T2/etc but it could be doable


I don't own an M1 device, but it's been confirmed that boot security can be disabled entirely. I'm pretty sure that booting from external devices works fine once security has been disabled.

It's a bit different from Intel based Macs though. It used to be you'd hold Option while booting to be presented with an EFI boot disk picker, but now you hold down the power button to be greeted by a micro-macOS boot options menu.


Can you install Linux on the Surface Pro X?


Yes; and from what I've seen in Apple's support documentation, you can install linux on the new M1 machines.

I think the broader point is that the support isn't very good. Its not specifically disallowed by Apple or Microsoft, but the manufacturers, tertiary driver providers, and community just haven't put a lot of time into making it great. I expect the situation will improve, but its unlikely we'll see any support from Apple or Microsoft, which absolutely should be a concern when picking these devices for Linux.


It certainly runs WSL2 quite nicely, so it's not too much of a leap to have a usable system without that hypervisor layer. I don't know what hardware features it would miss out on though running natively.


There seem to be people working on it at least:

https://github.com/Sonicadvance1/linux/issues/27


I have dual boated mac and linux for some time.

They main thing about running linux on mac are the drivers. All the touch pad are design to use with macOS.

Using mac is a also new way of using user interface with multi-touch and scroll.


Does there exist soc any that would be suitable for a powerful arm laptop that can run Linux? How does for example the nvidia xavier soc stack up against the apple m1?


With about 1/4 of the single-core performance, per geekbench. (Only one xavier benchmarked, but considering even the highest-end non-Apple arm chips are a bit over 1/2 of the single those are probably realistic numbers).


Nvidia Orin (coming next year) might be usable for a larger laptop but no one will have the courage to build it.


Not much of a point in running Linux on Apple hardware, macOS is still by far the better option here. Linux needs a lot of work to be able to compete with macOS.


Can it boot Linux? I assume Apple would have these devices boot locked by now. Though you can run Linux quite comfortably in Virtual box nowadays.


If Linus wants to have an Arm laptop to run Linux, I wonder why didn’t he consider a Chromebook.


Chromebooks are often a nice, relatively inexpensive and hackable x86 or arm device, but there's nothing that interesting about their hardware other than not so locked down (there's dev mode allowing anything and you can overwrite the firmware even). The new apple arm has fascinatingly good performance, and long battery life and the Air has no fan, so there's a lot to like there.


They're not good for compiling the kernel on a regular basis


maybe we don't need the GPU drivers? for embedded applications in robotics that crave single threaded speed, the performance/watt would be a welcome improvement over embedded i7's


It should be a requirement for all computing devices to be Linux-compatible once the company making them gets to a certain size


Apple goes all out reinventing the desktop processor, and all anyone wants to do is cut them down for not pre-porting Linux to it. So much bigoted hate and entitlement on display here.


Apple is a baron of customer hostility and anti-competitive practices. Customer lock-in, closed platforms, corrosion of right to own or repair, forced obsolescence. That's how they do business. Is there some point where how you do business becomes the product, and the intended product (e.g. reinvention of the desktop processor) becomes just a byproduct? We've a cultural inclination to focus on the what, and forget the how. But it's short-term thinking. I for one am tired of Apple's how.


Then don’t buy one. Not sure why anyone would be tired of a product they could ignore. Unless Apple and Microsoft are oppressive because they won’t collapse and build Linux laptops. It makes no sense. Just go run Linux on some ancient Thinkpad.


Haven't you read my comment? It's not the product per-se that's the problem. It's the lobbying, the market abuse, the anti-competitive practices.


I sure did read it. That's how you vote in this system, with your currency.


[flagged]


Well, for one he created Linux and Git, two softwares which have been something I(and I am guessing most on HN) have loved since I first used them and earn my livelihood from.

The other thing being, he is pretty blunt on issues and provides a very good perspective. Considering the fact that he has headed a project which is so influential(servers, Android etc), I would want to know his opinion on this topic at least as it concerns future of OSs.


Why do we care what anyone thinks? He's been a pretty reliable tech taste maker throughout my life. I'll keep listening to his guidance.


Because he's been working on a 25 year old project that has fundamentally shaped a lot of what modern computing is today?


On that specific subject I agree. I still remember him "promoting" the Chrome books, it was bizarre...


Why wouldn't we?


Linus has incredible knowledge about the lower levels of the computing stack (CPU architectures, etc), and so I, for one, am very interested in knowing what he thinks about those things. But regarding his other opinions in general... yeah, I'm with you.


dude doesn't even program anymore (these are words from his own mouth) so no he doesn't, what he does is micro manage commits.


Who is “we”?




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