Linux is not “ready to run” on Apple Silicon, but give it time(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Linux is not “ready to run” on Apple Silicon, but give it time
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/linux-is-not-exactly-ready-to-run-on-apple-silicon-but-give-it-time/
70 comments
Sometimes I briefly get out of my bubble and realize that the vast majority of the world population - even the first, highly educated world - still trusts their entire digital lives to a black box controlled by either 1 of 2 US companies.
I mean, the fact that we have a widely available alternative makes the picture slightly less bleak, but still. How many politically-inclined persons rave endlessly about freedom and sovereignty while making no effort on such an important front? The Linux usage numbers are so far from where they should be.
I mean, the fact that we have a widely available alternative makes the picture slightly less bleak, but still. How many politically-inclined persons rave endlessly about freedom and sovereignty while making no effort on such an important front? The Linux usage numbers are so far from where they should be.
That implies that using linux doesn't have you still beholden to a black box which is controlled by 2 US companies, when most likely you're still using an X86 Intel or AMD processor. But let's say you're using some ARM chip instead. Now your black box was built by TSMC or Samsung instead. It's black boxes all the way down.
> It's black boxes all the way down
Essentially the entirety of modern humanity is built on black boxes. I'd like to find one person who knows exactly what and where every single component on their motherboard is and why it is there, the precise transistor layout of every chip from the GPU and CPU down to the tiniest microcontrollers, and every single instruction that is running on their computers at any time.
Sure, you can run Linux, but it still is running on a closed-source CPU. For all we know (unlikely as it is), Intel-AMD CPUs could have a backdoor saying 'hey, send the instruction and data cache to the network controller and to this IP address'. These CPUs still have proprietary microcode.
Essentially the entirety of modern humanity is built on black boxes. I'd like to find one person who knows exactly what and where every single component on their motherboard is and why it is there, the precise transistor layout of every chip from the GPU and CPU down to the tiniest microcontrollers, and every single instruction that is running on their computers at any time.
Sure, you can run Linux, but it still is running on a closed-source CPU. For all we know (unlikely as it is), Intel-AMD CPUs could have a backdoor saying 'hey, send the instruction and data cache to the network controller and to this IP address'. These CPUs still have proprietary microcode.
That is what is really appealing about some of those retro computer kits where you get a ziplock bag full of parts and PCB and need to solder them together. I feel like I'll understand the hardware on a new level. I hope the Commander X16 ends up offering this option.
Valid point which I expected to come up, but the difference is that AFAIK exfiltrating precise data with such a setup would be challenging, while the software stack is so messy that it's orders of magnitude easier to stealthily compromise.
I've been using Asahi Linux since the alpha was released March 18th 2022. Because I used an M1 Mac Mini and many of the features (WiFi/HDMI) were ready then, it became my daily driver a few weeks after that.
Today, I run Asahi Linux on a M1 Ultra Mac Studio using Sway (https://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/stuff/AsahiSwayM1Ul...), and 100% of the features I use are there in Asahi kernels and userspace (sound/Bluetooth/audio/HDMI/USB/10G Ethernet/WiFi/GPU driver).
In short, it's the fastest RISC Linux workstation you'll find, and has been rock solid in every way. In fact, it's so fast, it messes up the timing of K3s (you just have to remember to put resource limits on each pod to prevent the CrashLoopBackOffs).
Today, I run Asahi Linux on a M1 Ultra Mac Studio using Sway (https://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/stuff/AsahiSwayM1Ul...), and 100% of the features I use are there in Asahi kernels and userspace (sound/Bluetooth/audio/HDMI/USB/10G Ethernet/WiFi/GPU driver).
In short, it's the fastest RISC Linux workstation you'll find, and has been rock solid in every way. In fact, it's so fast, it messes up the timing of K3s (you just have to remember to put resource limits on each pod to prevent the CrashLoopBackOffs).
Use the accelerated GPU at all? I've been watching the progress with async, batching, and related. But I've not seen any benchmark numbers or any idea of performance.
I haven't benchmarked the GPU in any way because I'm not a gamer. However, as soon as the GPU driver was available I installed it and immediately noticed that all desktop graphics and video were fast/smooth as you'd expect on macOS/Windows. I did open the only game I had installed (Extreme Tux Racer, which ran poorly before), and it also ran fast/smooth.
Nice. Any ML inference or training by chance?
This is backwards. Apple Silicon is not ready to run anything except Mac OS.
100%
Not sure why people are blaming various software projects for the breakage that was introduced by apple.
Not sure why people are blaming various software projects for the breakage that was introduced by apple.
That is nonsense. It's like blaming the roads for a car maker mistakes.
I would give you that Apple is not third party friendly, but how many hardware vendors are making hard modifications so third party software runs on their hardware?
I would give you that Apple is not third party friendly, but how many hardware vendors are making hard modifications so third party software runs on their hardware?
Not friendly? It's more than that. The processors themselves may be great but the computers are not. The hardware takes short cuts and fails to implement compatible versions of long existing hardware standards because Macs don't need to since everything is proprietary and vertically integrated.
It's more like making roads that don't have the normal line markings on them and occasionally have gaps in the parts of the road apple cars don't normally drive on, etc.
It's more like making roads that don't have the normal line markings on them and occasionally have gaps in the parts of the road apple cars don't normally drive on, etc.
As per one of the Asahi linux developers, apple did a great job with allowing third-party OSs to also be installable, made in a way that it is also secure.
Which "hardware standards"? Isn't the M1 an Armv8.5-A? What are we asking for here?
I would like to know of a single software vendor, that is not Microsoft, who may have influenced the design choices of a hardware vendor.
Because it's not like Linus himself randomly walks into Intel offices to tell them how to get things done.
I would like to know of a single software vendor, that is not Microsoft, who may have influenced the design choices of a hardware vendor.
Because it's not like Linus himself randomly walks into Intel offices to tell them how to get things done.
Apple aren't completely compliant with the Arm spec.
Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while.
Linus did use to work for transmeta, at least.
Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while.
Linus did use to work for transmeta, at least.
> Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs).
Haven't ever heard of this.
> Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while
Which is a design choice. ECMAscript is a standard, and the instruction seems to be a way of making certain conversions faster. From the release document [0]:
"Armv8.3-A adds instructions that convert a double-precision floating-point number to a signed 32-bit integer with round towards zero. Where the integer result is outside the range of a signed 32-bit integer (DP float supports integer precision up to 53 bits), the value stored as the result is the integer conversion modulo 232, taking the same sign as the input float."
It is not unusual for hardware vendors to include instructions that would make certain common operations faster. That does not mean that software vendors, and in this context, compiler engineers, dictate CPU design choices.
[0] https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...
Haven't ever heard of this.
> Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while
Which is a design choice. ECMAscript is a standard, and the instruction seems to be a way of making certain conversions faster. From the release document [0]:
"Armv8.3-A adds instructions that convert a double-precision floating-point number to a signed 32-bit integer with round towards zero. Where the integer result is outside the range of a signed 32-bit integer (DP float supports integer precision up to 53 bits), the value stored as the result is the integer conversion modulo 232, taking the same sign as the input float."
It is not unusual for hardware vendors to include instructions that would make certain common operations faster. That does not mean that software vendors, and in this context, compiler engineers, dictate CPU design choices.
[0] https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...
As far as I'm aware they are strictly a superset- everything required to run a standard ARM binary is there- but there are extra instructions available as well, which shouldn't require any extra coding for Linux to ignore and run as normal.
If the roads required secret incantations to ensure you don't teleport back to where you started, then your comparison would be fair.
Most hardware manufacturers suck in that regard too. That in itself doesn't make Apple any better.
Most hardware manufacturers suck in that regard too. That in itself doesn't make Apple any better.
Are you talking about chip errata/issues that rise to the level of interfering with getting a kernel working? There have been some issues including security issues, but from what I've read to date, no real deal-breakers; and it's not like Intel and AMD parts don't have errata and things kernel developers have to work around too.
It's not backwards. The M1 chip isn't changing. Asahi Linux, and the mainline Linux kernel, is changing to improve its M1 support.
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I don’t get why anyone would want to run Linux on Apple hardware. Apple hardware is very expensive and you could buy a faster Intel or AND machine for less money.
Who would buy a Mac and put Linux on it?
What am I not understanding?
Who would buy a Mac and put Linux on it?
What am I not understanding?
There is no other equivalent PC laptop that is as fast, with such great battery life, power draw, quiet and lack of heat, and hidpi display, and all the equivalents in terms of performance and portability are just as expensive. The apple silicon machines are best in class right now, with no real competition. Surely this will change, but with Apple's kind of exclusive access to so much TSMC production (because of the massive volume of iphone chips, which are basically the same as M1 chips), it's going to take massive investment by intel or AMD to catch up in the price/power/performance category. You can definitely get an AMD Threadripper that gives you more computing power than an M1 Max, but not as quiet, as cool, or as cheap. (I'm typing this on a work-provided linux machine with a 32 core threadripper pro 5975WX that costs $3299 just for the processor, not even the rest of the PC, which is more than my personal M1 Max Mac Studio and when all 64 threads get going on this thing it's loud enough to hear it from the other room, even with "bequiet" fans).
"Surely this will change"
I'm no mac fanatic, but arguably no good competitors came out for the 2012-era macbook pro (the retina thingy, like I said, not a zealot) in terms of hardware quality. Yeah the CPUs eventually got faster, and Apple drank their koolaid with the bad keyboards and ribbon.
The laptop industry never really responded to that, and I don't really see the ARM competition from AMD/Intel... just excuses about "well they were on the next generation of process".
Like, what process jump previous to this for x86 produced such dramatic gains in efficiency and power? Oh right, certainly none in the last 20 years.
I do hope an ARM M-killer is being worked on. But the absolute silence means it is far away. If it was even a year away there would be rumblings in the downstream Windows/Microsoft market, hardware OEMs, compilers, etc.
Anyone heard anything?
Also, holy crap, $3000 for a processor? That you bought for personal use?
I'm no mac fanatic, but arguably no good competitors came out for the 2012-era macbook pro (the retina thingy, like I said, not a zealot) in terms of hardware quality. Yeah the CPUs eventually got faster, and Apple drank their koolaid with the bad keyboards and ribbon.
The laptop industry never really responded to that, and I don't really see the ARM competition from AMD/Intel... just excuses about "well they were on the next generation of process".
Like, what process jump previous to this for x86 produced such dramatic gains in efficiency and power? Oh right, certainly none in the last 20 years.
I do hope an ARM M-killer is being worked on. But the absolute silence means it is far away. If it was even a year away there would be rumblings in the downstream Windows/Microsoft market, hardware OEMs, compilers, etc.
Anyone heard anything?
Also, holy crap, $3000 for a processor? That you bought for personal use?
> Also, holy crap, $3000 for a processor? That you bought for personal use?
My company got it for me, standard issue here (working on a very compute instensive backend that we run locally)
My company got it for me, standard issue here (working on a very compute instensive backend that we run locally)
???
A 7950X is 50% faster than an M1 Ultra and it only costs 550 or so.
A 7950X is 50% faster than an M1 Ultra and it only costs 550 or so.
Yes, sure, at somethings. The 7950x does really well at some cache friendly workloads. But it also burns way more power and generally lives in a large ATX case with at least 7 fans (2 intake, 1 exhaust, 1 power supply, 2 on the GPU, and one for the chipset).
It also has 1/8th the memory bandwidth, a MUCH slower iGPU, and takes much more power.
Sure you can add a nice GPU, which helps for GPU workloads, but if it's from the current gen it's at least another $800 and 300 watts.
The M1 Ultra in comparison has the fastest iGPU out, competitive (depending on workload) with some of the mid range GPUs, but generally good enough for things except for gaming. The apple studio is small, quiet, sips power, and has a single large fan that under most workloads is silent.
It also has 1/8th the memory bandwidth, a MUCH slower iGPU, and takes much more power.
Sure you can add a nice GPU, which helps for GPU workloads, but if it's from the current gen it's at least another $800 and 300 watts.
The M1 Ultra in comparison has the fastest iGPU out, competitive (depending on workload) with some of the mid range GPUs, but generally good enough for things except for gaming. The apple studio is small, quiet, sips power, and has a single large fan that under most workloads is silent.
You can cap a 7950X to 105W, and put it in a mini-ITX case, if that's what you really want. Though an ATX case consumes not that much space in the grand scheme of things compared to eg a couple of large monitors.
A 3070 goes for under $500 these days and is a very capable GPU, certainly significantly more powerful than a PS5. It's apparently around 50% faster than the M1 Ultra's GPU at OpenCL and gives you access to the CUDA ecosystem.
The Mac hardware is a great piece of engineering, but for many workstation use cases the latest x86 beats it handily in both performance and price.
A 3070 goes for under $500 these days and is a very capable GPU, certainly significantly more powerful than a PS5. It's apparently around 50% faster than the M1 Ultra's GPU at OpenCL and gives you access to the CUDA ecosystem.
The Mac hardware is a great piece of engineering, but for many workstation use cases the latest x86 beats it handily in both performance and price.
Depends on your use case. Sure you can cap a 7950X at 105 watts and fit a RTX 3070 in the case, but it's not going to be particularly small or quiet.
The RTX3070 is physically large, does have a nice 448GB/sec or bandwidth, but only for 8GB ram, and of course only for things that can run on a GPU. The 7950X is limited for 83GB/sec (at least without overclocking), which is 5GB/sec per core. The M1 max is 400GB/sec and the M1 Ultra is 800GB/sec, granted the CPUs can only use approximately 50% of that, but as a bonus the GPU can access all of ram, not just 8GB.
So even a MiniITX + 3070 is going to be physically large, power intensive, and hard to get silent, at least until you start getting pretty exotic and expensive with water cooling.
PyTorch and related are supporting Apple's CPU, GPU, and AMX I believe. Benchmarks vary of course. One interesting development is I've just started seeing support for Apple's neural engine and on the models benchmarks it was something along the lines of 7x as fast as the M1's GPU. Something to keep an eye on.
But if gaming framerate per $ is your goal I'd definitely get the 7950x, it's going to love the RTX3070, is cache friendly, and won't care that the 7950x has a 80GB/sec memory interface.
The RTX3070 is physically large, does have a nice 448GB/sec or bandwidth, but only for 8GB ram, and of course only for things that can run on a GPU. The 7950X is limited for 83GB/sec (at least without overclocking), which is 5GB/sec per core. The M1 max is 400GB/sec and the M1 Ultra is 800GB/sec, granted the CPUs can only use approximately 50% of that, but as a bonus the GPU can access all of ram, not just 8GB.
So even a MiniITX + 3070 is going to be physically large, power intensive, and hard to get silent, at least until you start getting pretty exotic and expensive with water cooling.
PyTorch and related are supporting Apple's CPU, GPU, and AMX I believe. Benchmarks vary of course. One interesting development is I've just started seeing support for Apple's neural engine and on the models benchmarks it was something along the lines of 7x as fast as the M1's GPU. Something to keep an eye on.
But if gaming framerate per $ is your goal I'd definitely get the 7950x, it's going to love the RTX3070, is cache friendly, and won't care that the 7950x has a 80GB/sec memory interface.
My point is just that while the M1 Ultra Mac Studio certainly hits a great point in the design space, there are many other points that will serve consumers and production users better and that the actual statement I was responding to:
> it's going to take massive investment by intel or AMD to catch up in the price/power/performance category
in the context of desktop workstations is simply untrue. The post compared a Mac Studio to a Threadripper that retails for over $3000, but my point was that it's not a fair comparison: a high-end consumer part that retails for less than 20% of the price also beats the Mac Studio at many use cases, such as code compilation.
There's this weird thing I see where a lot of people think, probably due to Apple's marketing, that Apple Silicon hardware is not just "strictly better" but a gargantuan leap beyond x86. That just isn't true, now that AMD is on a comparable process node. Apple Silicon is better at some things and worse at others, which is great -- competition is good! -- and completely normal.
> it's going to take massive investment by intel or AMD to catch up in the price/power/performance category
in the context of desktop workstations is simply untrue. The post compared a Mac Studio to a Threadripper that retails for over $3000, but my point was that it's not a fair comparison: a high-end consumer part that retails for less than 20% of the price also beats the Mac Studio at many use cases, such as code compilation.
There's this weird thing I see where a lot of people think, probably due to Apple's marketing, that Apple Silicon hardware is not just "strictly better" but a gargantuan leap beyond x86. That just isn't true, now that AMD is on a comparable process node. Apple Silicon is better at some things and worse at others, which is great -- competition is good! -- and completely normal.
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I've used a lot of laptops over the last 30 years going back through generations of ThinkPads running Linux and Windows, some HP boxes, PowerBook Duo and G4, and probably some I've forgotten. I now have a "midnight" M2 MacBook Air, 512Gb flash and 16Gb RAM, and it is, hands-down, the best laptop I've ever had. It's far faster than my 8-core Mac Pro. I run VS Code, OpenOffice, tons of tabs in Firefox, and terminals. I can even run Stable Diffusion on it using the "Diffusion Bee" packaged version. I think your bias about expensive and "faster... for less money" is out of date. Some of us appreciate things like length of time we can use it before having to recharge, and this thing leaves other devices far behind.
Hear, hear. M2 MBA 16/512GB here after buying Thinkpads exclusively since 2010 and even modding to get 51NB X62 and T70 boards installed into X61 and T61 Thinkpads. The mba wipes the floor with them all and I wish it was close. I want to go back to my trackpoint but don't want to deal with the fan noise, heat, battery life, or battery loss while suspended.
Depending on which model you are looking at, you cannot get a faster Intel or AMD machine. Also not for less money. The Apple ARM hardware is amazing. Running Linux natively on a fast RISC machine should make many people excited. Also a good long-term alternative when Apple stops supporting new releases of macOS on these machines.
While I like macOS as a "desktop" OS, I run also Linux on my Macs. So far in a VM, which obviously is very convenient. But I am certainly looking forward to installing Asahi.
While I like macOS as a "desktop" OS, I run also Linux on my Macs. So far in a VM, which obviously is very convenient. But I am certainly looking forward to installing Asahi.
That's a very untrue set of statements.
Apple charges an absurd amount for tiny little features that real computers have in spades. Like RAM going for $200+ increments per 8GB, or $200+ increments per 512GB of SSD storage. That's almost offensive pricing if you know actual hardware costs. Why? Because Apple "Silicon" computers are not modular.
For a top end Apple M2 you're spending $2500 just to get feature parity with a $1000 PC and even then you're maxing out at a pathetic 2TB of storage and only 24GB of ram. If you built a $2500 PC it would absolutely, unequivocally, blow the highest end M2 out of the water in both performance (especially after thermal throttling on the M2) and ability to do computer task (ie, having more space than a Dell computer from 2006 which Apple M1/M2 products cannot).
Apple charges an absurd amount for tiny little features that real computers have in spades. Like RAM going for $200+ increments per 8GB, or $200+ increments per 512GB of SSD storage. That's almost offensive pricing if you know actual hardware costs. Why? Because Apple "Silicon" computers are not modular.
For a top end Apple M2 you're spending $2500 just to get feature parity with a $1000 PC and even then you're maxing out at a pathetic 2TB of storage and only 24GB of ram. If you built a $2500 PC it would absolutely, unequivocally, blow the highest end M2 out of the water in both performance (especially after thermal throttling on the M2) and ability to do computer task (ie, having more space than a Dell computer from 2006 which Apple M1/M2 products cannot).
Just to take on one of your points: the RAM you are talking about is not truly comparable. Sure, you can add DIMMs to a PC motherboard. M2 "unified" memory bandwidth to the on-chip RAM, LPDDR5-6400, exceeds 100Gb/sec. That's incredible bandwidth. So yes, there's a cost tradeoff, and the lack of modularity means the upgrade path is "get a new device." That's frustrating. That's actually been true of high end PCs for decades, given the constant churn in socket standards and power requirements, but fans of building their own PCs generally don't like to acknowledge it.
The criticism of the onboard flash is more valid - it's costly and if you don't get the dual bank setup, paying yes, a big premium like I did for a 512Gb version, performance isn't great. https://www.theverge.com/23220299/apple-macbook-air-m2-slow-... The lack of an upgrade path is, again, not great, but ask yourself honestly, aside from some ThinkPads which really were nicely upgreadable in the past, how many laptops are upgradeable and what can you upgrade?
Your bias ("Apple charges an absurd amount," for "tiny little features that real computers have in spades") is showing and it isn't pretty. Show us the modular laptop with comparable performance or shut up; you're stuck in the nineties.
Go on - find me a PC laptop that performs better than an M2 and let's look at prices, weight, and battery life. Oh, and modularity.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_ranking-best_mobile_proces...
Or even show us your PC build that is comparable to the Mac Studio and let's talk about how big, noisy, and power-hungry it is; these are things that people who want to use real computers in real offices and studios care about, more than PC hot-rodders who, let's face it, are mostly gamers bragging to each other about their frame rates rather than professionals using computers as tools.
The criticism of the onboard flash is more valid - it's costly and if you don't get the dual bank setup, paying yes, a big premium like I did for a 512Gb version, performance isn't great. https://www.theverge.com/23220299/apple-macbook-air-m2-slow-... The lack of an upgrade path is, again, not great, but ask yourself honestly, aside from some ThinkPads which really were nicely upgreadable in the past, how many laptops are upgradeable and what can you upgrade?
Your bias ("Apple charges an absurd amount," for "tiny little features that real computers have in spades") is showing and it isn't pretty. Show us the modular laptop with comparable performance or shut up; you're stuck in the nineties.
Go on - find me a PC laptop that performs better than an M2 and let's look at prices, weight, and battery life. Oh, and modularity.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_ranking-best_mobile_proces...
Or even show us your PC build that is comparable to the Mac Studio and let's talk about how big, noisy, and power-hungry it is; these are things that people who want to use real computers in real offices and studios care about, more than PC hot-rodders who, let's face it, are mostly gamers bragging to each other about their frame rates rather than professionals using computers as tools.
A 7950X capped to 65W is around 40% faster than an M1 Ultra. Capped to 105W it's almost 50% ahead (according to CPUMark).
For a workstation there is no comparison in terms of either performance or price. (Mac does have the high-bandwidth unified memory going for it which can make a difference in some situations.)
For a workstation there is no comparison in terms of either performance or price. (Mac does have the high-bandwidth unified memory going for it which can make a difference in some situations.)
Yes, there are configurations where a PC is a way better machine for the money, especially where Apple doesn't offer a directly comparable alternative. However, that doesn't mean, this applies in general, especially with laptops rather Apple is ahead of the game. So it varies by category and configuration.
It will be interesting to see whether Apple can continue with M3s, etc. I think they are facing pretty hard process limitations and I'm not sure that adding parallelism will get them huge gains on normal workloads, so they may be stuck at a plateau for a while, but we'll see.
I think most folks here are advocating for MacBooks, which you absolutely could not build or buy an equivalent of in the 1000$ range. Desktops are a different class of hardware altogether.
When the parent post spoke about "faster" I compared the CPUs. The Apple CPUs are very competetive the the top end x86 CPUs, especially in laptops.
> You could buy a faster Intel or AND machine for less money
Yes, but Apple has a great combination of high performance (laptop-wise), long battery life and high portability. Before I had the Zenbook series where you had the high end with the i-5 chips that died in 2-3 hours, or the low end that lived 5-6 hours but could barely play a video in 1080p (IIRC, from memory).
With the Air for example I have it all; very long battery life, pretty high performance (more than enough for what I use it), super portable, and a great keyboard+trackpad. The only thing I'm missing is Linux :)
Yes, but Apple has a great combination of high performance (laptop-wise), long battery life and high portability. Before I had the Zenbook series where you had the high end with the i-5 chips that died in 2-3 hours, or the low end that lived 5-6 hours but could barely play a video in 1080p (IIRC, from memory).
With the Air for example I have it all; very long battery life, pretty high performance (more than enough for what I use it), super portable, and a great keyboard+trackpad. The only thing I'm missing is Linux :)
1. Why can’t I run both?
2. Per watt they have some of the best performance
3. Overall some of the best battery life
4. Only real option if you want to run ARM
5. Most important - just because. That’s what geeks and hackers do.
2. Per watt they have some of the best performance
3. Overall some of the best battery life
4. Only real option if you want to run ARM
5. Most important - just because. That’s what geeks and hackers do.
Apple's hardware (unless you want a hackable Thinkpad that weights 5x as much and sounds like a jet engine in exchange for being slower) is so much better than basically any alternative it's not even funny anymore.
There's probably a laptop out there that's as nice as a piece of art than a MacBook but the internals are probably crap in comparison.
There's probably a laptop out there that's as nice as a piece of art than a MacBook but the internals are probably crap in comparison.
I’ve been running Linux on MacBook Pro’s for years and the main benefits are: high quality display, excellent trackpad, solid build quality. Yes they are more expensive than other laptops but the display and trackpad especially are 2 things you interact with constantly. I haven’t done it on the new M laptops but the thing most people cite there is a super low power / quiet device. Main downside presently is the soldered ram and SSD. But still I’m planning to get a Mac to run Linux on it once things are more stabilized.
> I've been running Linux on Macbook Pro's for years
> I haven't done it on the new M laptops
From these two comments, I am guessing you are running on pre-touchbar (2016) Macbook Pro's, because the touchbar models before the M1/M2 were absolutely horrendous for running Linux. You can see a table of features that do or do not work still on those models[0], notably wifi -- perhaps the most critical feature for a laptop to be useful as a mobile device.
The pre-2016/pre-touchbar Macs are such nice pieces of hardware despite their age, but it gets me wondering why not invest in another hardware platform that supports Linux well, is modern but has high quality hardware?
Some examples I can think of are the XPS and the Thinkpad Carbon.
[0] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
> I haven't done it on the new M laptops
From these two comments, I am guessing you are running on pre-touchbar (2016) Macbook Pro's, because the touchbar models before the M1/M2 were absolutely horrendous for running Linux. You can see a table of features that do or do not work still on those models[0], notably wifi -- perhaps the most critical feature for a laptop to be useful as a mobile device.
The pre-2016/pre-touchbar Macs are such nice pieces of hardware despite their age, but it gets me wondering why not invest in another hardware platform that supports Linux well, is modern but has high quality hardware?
Some examples I can think of are the XPS and the Thinkpad Carbon.
[0] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
The one I used the longest was from 2012 and WiFi worked just fine. I do remember it taking a bit of googling to get it working back then but I think it mostly just works with like Ubuntu 18. maybe I got lucky with my particular WiFi chip or something.
>And founder Linus Torvalds himself is particularly eager to see Linux running on his favorite portable hardware, going so far as to issue a kernel in August 2022 from an M2 MacBook Air.
For me it's because it seems like Apple hardware has a significant edge on battery performance. Assuming for the sake of discussion that Linux doesn't inhibit this, it would mean my laptop does the "mobility" part much better than if it was Intel/etc.
Frankly i'm not even sure i want to buy Apple. Not a big fan these days. But those Apple cores just seem so damn battery efficient.
The number one thing i want from a laptop is to be able to use it on my lap, disconnected from a wall for as long as possible. With reasonable performance.. ie turning a CPU down to 3% doesn't count hah.
I'm kinda split these days on if i buy Apple or buy a Linux and repair friendly laptop (Framework laptop, maybe one of the System 76, etc). A fully working Linux (NixOS for me) installation on an M1/M2 laptop would make this an even more difficult decision.
Frankly i'm not even sure i want to buy Apple. Not a big fan these days. But those Apple cores just seem so damn battery efficient.
The number one thing i want from a laptop is to be able to use it on my lap, disconnected from a wall for as long as possible. With reasonable performance.. ie turning a CPU down to 3% doesn't count hah.
I'm kinda split these days on if i buy Apple or buy a Linux and repair friendly laptop (Framework laptop, maybe one of the System 76, etc). A fully working Linux (NixOS for me) installation on an M1/M2 laptop would make this an even more difficult decision.
>The number one thing i want from a laptop is to be able to use it on my lap, disconnected from a wall for as long as possible. With reasonable performance.. ie turning a CPU down to 3% doesn't count hah.
macbook air (m1 or m2) fits the bill. Long battery life, no noise, rarely any heat.
macbook air (m1 or m2) fits the bill. Long battery life, no noise, rarely any heat.
Unfortunately, that’s a big assumption. Zero slight to the Asahi team (they’ve done amazing work) but there’s considerably more to do to get anywhere near what macOS gets with battery life.
>Who would buy a Mac and put Linux on it?
Some people might buy a mac and put linux on it to help out asahi linux with testing/troubleshooting etc, or because they like the hardware more than what other brands offer. Others in this comment section are running Asahi Linux as their daily driver apparently. There really isn't an ARM machine on the market like an M1/M2.
> you could buy a faster Intel or AND machine
Genuine question, what intel or AMD chip is better than the M1 or M2? Are you referring to desktops, laptops, or both?
I get that you can buy/build a very good machine for less money than brand new Mac, but is the performance really as good as the m1 or m2?
Some people might buy a mac and put linux on it to help out asahi linux with testing/troubleshooting etc, or because they like the hardware more than what other brands offer. Others in this comment section are running Asahi Linux as their daily driver apparently. There really isn't an ARM machine on the market like an M1/M2.
> you could buy a faster Intel or AND machine
Genuine question, what intel or AMD chip is better than the M1 or M2? Are you referring to desktops, laptops, or both?
I get that you can buy/build a very good machine for less money than brand new Mac, but is the performance really as good as the m1 or m2?
You can easily get better performance than Apple's chips. The catch is that the power consumption will be bad and your battery life will suck. People aren't buying M1/M2 laptops because of raw performance.
Apple makes nice hardware. Nice case (milled aluminum), nice heatsinks/airflow, and killer memory systems. Not a fan of their OS though.
Generally the competition from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia generally has much less memory bandwidth (2 to 4 times less), much larger, and full of pitfalls. Oh you bought the wrong GPU that's catching on fire? Or the GPU with the fans that die or whine? Or a system with a iGPU severely hamstrung by a 128 bit wide memory interface? Or the motherboards with active cooling muffin fans that die/squeak/whine? Oh you bought brand X motherboard which was good last year but terrible this year? Even the PC case designs are terrible. Why do GPUs form a cube with minimal airflow on nearly every standard desktop chassis in existence?
AMD/Intel desktops remind me of non-tesla EVs where often the suspension, drive train, battery, in car entertainment, traction control and similar departments don't talk, compete for resources, and minimize shared designs. PC airflow is engineered for each device separately. Even simple things like front to back airflow can not be assumed. Some GPUs don't exhaust air, just stir it. Others intake air (fighting front to back airflow). Others exhaust air ... often sucking in hot air from the CPU side. Sadly the hottest component (generally the GPU) has the worst airflow, while the CPU at 1/3rd the power often has 2x the airflow in a normal ATX case. Why do motherboard chipsets depend on tiny high rpm fans that make more noise/vibration than airflow? Why do high performance M.2 cards often require heat sinks ... that violate the size specifications for the M2? Why are dimms often perpendicular with the airflow? Why does even a small PC case require 5 or more fans instead of just 1?
Except for gaming a Mac Mini with a M2 Pro or a Mac Studio M1 Max seems plenty fast, likely to last a long time, silent, and plenty fast for a wide variety of purposes while being substantially quieter, smaller, and lower power than it's PC competition. Personally I'm waiting for apple to bring out a Mac Studio with the M2 max. I'd love to see something arm or x86-64 that would make a nice quiet, fast, small, power efficient desktop with good memory bandwidth to support a decent iGPU. Sadly I'm not expecting anything. It's possible AMD will sell a small/cheaper version of the MI300 or Nvidia will sell a smaller/cheaper version of the Grace+Hopper, but that seems like years away.
Generally the competition from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia generally has much less memory bandwidth (2 to 4 times less), much larger, and full of pitfalls. Oh you bought the wrong GPU that's catching on fire? Or the GPU with the fans that die or whine? Or a system with a iGPU severely hamstrung by a 128 bit wide memory interface? Or the motherboards with active cooling muffin fans that die/squeak/whine? Oh you bought brand X motherboard which was good last year but terrible this year? Even the PC case designs are terrible. Why do GPUs form a cube with minimal airflow on nearly every standard desktop chassis in existence?
AMD/Intel desktops remind me of non-tesla EVs where often the suspension, drive train, battery, in car entertainment, traction control and similar departments don't talk, compete for resources, and minimize shared designs. PC airflow is engineered for each device separately. Even simple things like front to back airflow can not be assumed. Some GPUs don't exhaust air, just stir it. Others intake air (fighting front to back airflow). Others exhaust air ... often sucking in hot air from the CPU side. Sadly the hottest component (generally the GPU) has the worst airflow, while the CPU at 1/3rd the power often has 2x the airflow in a normal ATX case. Why do motherboard chipsets depend on tiny high rpm fans that make more noise/vibration than airflow? Why do high performance M.2 cards often require heat sinks ... that violate the size specifications for the M2? Why are dimms often perpendicular with the airflow? Why does even a small PC case require 5 or more fans instead of just 1?
Except for gaming a Mac Mini with a M2 Pro or a Mac Studio M1 Max seems plenty fast, likely to last a long time, silent, and plenty fast for a wide variety of purposes while being substantially quieter, smaller, and lower power than it's PC competition. Personally I'm waiting for apple to bring out a Mac Studio with the M2 max. I'd love to see something arm or x86-64 that would make a nice quiet, fast, small, power efficient desktop with good memory bandwidth to support a decent iGPU. Sadly I'm not expecting anything. It's possible AMD will sell a small/cheaper version of the MI300 or Nvidia will sell a smaller/cheaper version of the Grace+Hopper, but that seems like years away.
>AMD/Intel desktops remind me of non-tesla EVs where...
>... while the CPU at 1/3rd the power often has 2x the airflow in a normal ATX case.
That's the problem: the ATX standard. It's almost 30 years old at this point. It was never designed for modern GPUs or good thermal performance, it was just a step up from the creaky old IBM PC-AT standard that came before. The only way to get a desktop PC designed for good airflow and proper thermal management is to abandon the ATX standard and do something custom and proprietary, like the small-form-factor or workstation corporate desktops from Dell. But that means you need to buy the entire system at once (just like buying a laptop), and not put it together from parts like in the 1990s. And it's impossible to have a new open standard because no huge players are stepping up to make such a standard and then force everyone else to use it, and it's impossible for the industry as a whole to sit down and make a standard together that doesn't suck.
That's the problem: the ATX standard. It's almost 30 years old at this point. It was never designed for modern GPUs or good thermal performance, it was just a step up from the creaky old IBM PC-AT standard that came before. The only way to get a desktop PC designed for good airflow and proper thermal management is to abandon the ATX standard and do something custom and proprietary, like the small-form-factor or workstation corporate desktops from Dell. But that means you need to buy the entire system at once (just like buying a laptop), and not put it together from parts like in the 1990s. And it's impossible to have a new open standard because no huge players are stepping up to make such a standard and then force everyone else to use it, and it's impossible for the industry as a whole to sit down and make a standard together that doesn't suck.
Agreed. Sadly Intel didn't make the NUC a standard. There are decent SFF around, but sadly they all use 128 bit memory interfaces which is severely limiting for an iGPU.
Sadly Apple can build low power small systems with 2x, 4x, and 8x the memory bandwidth, but nobody else seems interested.
Sadly Apple can build low power small systems with 2x, 4x, and 8x the memory bandwidth, but nobody else seems interested.
>Sadly Intel didn't make the NUC a standard.
They didn't? Admittedly I don't know that much about it, but the Wikipedia page is very thorough. I don't remember IBM making the PC-AT a standard either; it became a de-facto standard because everyone just copied it, and the ISA bus was open. I don't see what's stopping anyone else from copying Intel's NUC form factor.
The difference between the 80s/90s and now is that there isn't a single 800lb gorilla for everyone to copy, and for some reason other companies just don't care to take the stuff Intel has done and copy that. According to the Wikipedia article, Gigabyte made their own version of NUC that was similar but not the same, so of course parts aren't going to be compatible; when companies are doing this instead of just copying a single big competitor, then there's no de-facto standard, just a bunch of competing and incompatible standards.
They didn't? Admittedly I don't know that much about it, but the Wikipedia page is very thorough. I don't remember IBM making the PC-AT a standard either; it became a de-facto standard because everyone just copied it, and the ISA bus was open. I don't see what's stopping anyone else from copying Intel's NUC form factor.
The difference between the 80s/90s and now is that there isn't a single 800lb gorilla for everyone to copy, and for some reason other companies just don't care to take the stuff Intel has done and copy that. According to the Wikipedia article, Gigabyte made their own version of NUC that was similar but not the same, so of course parts aren't going to be compatible; when companies are doing this instead of just copying a single big competitor, then there's no de-facto standard, just a bunch of competing and incompatible standards.
> > Sadly Intel didn’t make the NUC a standard.
> They didn’t?
Correct, they did not. They did with ATX and BTX (but BTX was dropped before it caught on broadly, in a focus shift.)
> I don’t remember IBM making the PC-AT a standard either
Yeah, but you are the one who brought IBM up, so what?
> It became a de-facto standard because everyone just copied it,
Yeah, its not the 1980s, and there isn’t one manufacturer that is both as dominant as IBM and as unconcerned with protecting itself from cloning as as IBM was until the PS/2.
> The difference between the 80s/90s and now is that there isn’t a single 800lb gorilla for everyone to copy, and for some reason other companies just don’t care to take the stuff Intel has done and copy that.
There wasn’t an 800lb gorilla to copy in the 1990s, either, because IBM went proprietary with the PS/2. The =difference between the 1990s/2000s and today is that Intel (or someone else similarly situated; Nvidia could plausibly do it) isn’t actively promoting form factor standards, the way it did with ATX (from 1995) and BTX (from 2004, but stopped being actively promoted in a few years because Intel temporarily shifted business focus to low power designs, and BTX was centered around improved airflow for high power applications.)
Correct, they did not. They did with ATX and BTX (but BTX was dropped before it caught on broadly, in a focus shift.)
> I don’t remember IBM making the PC-AT a standard either
Yeah, but you are the one who brought IBM up, so what?
> It became a de-facto standard because everyone just copied it,
Yeah, its not the 1980s, and there isn’t one manufacturer that is both as dominant as IBM and as unconcerned with protecting itself from cloning as as IBM was until the PS/2.
> The difference between the 80s/90s and now is that there isn’t a single 800lb gorilla for everyone to copy, and for some reason other companies just don’t care to take the stuff Intel has done and copy that.
There wasn’t an 800lb gorilla to copy in the 1990s, either, because IBM went proprietary with the PS/2. The =difference between the 1990s/2000s and today is that Intel (or someone else similarly situated; Nvidia could plausibly do it) isn’t actively promoting form factor standards, the way it did with ATX (from 1995) and BTX (from 2004, but stopped being actively promoted in a few years because Intel temporarily shifted business focus to low power designs, and BTX was centered around improved airflow for high power applications.)
Ok, but again I don't see what's keeping anyone else from simply copying Intel's NUC standard and making it a de-facto standard. Why would Intel even have a problem with this? Their goal is to sell chips ultimately.
Doesn't Linus Torvalds run Linux on Mac hardware? He basically adores apple's laptops, which I can't blame him for.
Not that I've used it for any real work, I literally have only been doing test builds and boots and now the actual release tagging. But I'm trying to make sure that the next time I travel, I can travel with this as a laptop and finally dogfooding the arm64 side too.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...
There is literally no other laptop on the market that are anywhere near Apple silicons’ performance-efficiency point, and those that are somewhat closish are often even more expensive.
You can say plenty of things about apple but they do make great hardware more often than not.
You can say plenty of things about apple but they do make great hardware more often than not.
Lots of employers give a choice between a Macbook or a predetermined configuration & model x86 business laptop. For some kinds of dev work x86 incompatiblity doesn't cause that much hassle.
People consider things other than pure speed and cost when buying a computer.
I'm looking forward to it. It would be great if they got into the cloud hosting space and compete with Microsoft, Google, and AWS. A fully functional ARM Linux that can run on Apple hardware makes that a possibility and is better for the environment. Fewer chips for the same work at lower power means less mining and less strain on energy infrastructure, and less cooling too.
I wonder if apple would ever consider sponsoring Asahi Linux or (marginally less likely) including a boot camp utility again for installing and dual booting Asahi. Kind of echoing WSL.
Feels like it would be good antitrust brownie points for something unlikely to upset their desktop OS market share for the general public.
(Sub-0.1% chance given their track record, I know.)
Feels like it would be good antitrust brownie points for something unlikely to upset their desktop OS market share for the general public.
(Sub-0.1% chance given their track record, I know.)
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This article is addressing misleading comments that made it sound like everything for apple silicon was merged into upstream kernels. It's not. You're still going to need to use Asahi kernels and userspace bits for a while.