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Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a ma

by skohan 6y ago

Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a matter of one engineer taking a couple weekends to change the situation, that's surely worth interrogating.

oblio 6y ago
I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.
- aseipp 6y ago
  Eh, Nvidia shares a lot of the blame on that one though, because the signed firmware they use post-Fermi can't be legally redistributed in any way, and is embedded in the proprietary graphics driver blobs, so it can't be extracted. That firmware is required to adjust GPU clocks, which start off very low. So the choice isn't "Good proprietary drivers" vs "Less featured open drivers", it's "proprietary drivers" vs "drivers that are legally forbidden from running above 0.5% their advertised clock speed, no matter if it's otherwise fully featured".[1] In contrast, AMD and Intel have open drivers in Mesa that work very well and fully supported and AMD allows its signed VBIOS to be redistributed, so it's clearly not just a matter of chip complexity, but the position of the vendor as well. In that vein I agree with your original point, though: I suspect we'll probably never see Linux on the M1 in anything but the most superficial form that lacks all the really good stuff. You might get the 8 core CPU, SSD/RAM, some peripherials. But no Neural Engine, no GPU, video decoders or image processors, power management, security features in the T2 like attested boot or encrypted key storage, etc. The only way that'll ever change is if Apple makes it happen. [1] For reference, the open source Nouveau driver for Fermi cards, nvc0, is the 4th most well supported Mesa driver in terms of features implemented (almost 90% of all features, surpassed only by radeonsi and i915). So it's not like there's no interest in FOSS Nvidia drivers... https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/
  - oblio 6y ago
    Well, at some point you stop caring about blame and want results. If the game is rigged against you, the smart move is to stop playing. Which is obviously what developers have done, I haven't yet met someone running Linux directly on a Mac.
    - aseipp 6y ago
      The funniest thing in the world is when some dweeb explains something with surefire confidence, someone comes and says "It's not quite that simple", and the OP says "Yes it is because I say so!" with tears in their eyes as they try to hold onto the argument. Next time, please put a "I'm a giant dipshit" badge on your profile so I can avoid wasting my time, please.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Re-read the entire thread and look at the usernames again :-)
- skohan 6y ago
  A video card is many orders of magnitude more complex than a touch pad
  - oblio 6y ago
    It's not only about the touch pad. It's about the SoC and all the peripherals. It's about power management and the secure enclave. It's about the whole package. Linux rarely runs as well as Windows on hardware that doesn't go out of its way to keep it out, just ignores it. Let alone on a platform so hostile to external modifications.
aseipp 6y ago
It's mostly a matter of corporate/government politics more than technology. And those politics are not going to change unless serious political action (read: lawmaking) forces it to be so. It's in a similar vein as "right to repair" or whatever. At the end of the day, if you don't have a datasheet and the vendor gives you the finger, you're always going to be running a rat race against them, struggling to support 10 year old hardware with free alternatives, and they'll always win because they control the playing field. Further analysis of this phenomena ("what is the root cause of this attitude, and why does our society allow it?") would require actually criticizing and analyzing software development in the grander context of workforce politics over the past, say, 40 to 50 years. Spoiler alert: doing this will probably make you depressed.

by skohan 6y ago

oblio 6y ago

I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.

aseipp 6y ago
Eh, Nvidia shares a lot of the blame on that one though, because the signed firmware they use post-Fermi can't be legally redistributed in any way, and is embedded in the proprietary graphics driver blobs, so it can't be extracted. That firmware is required to adjust GPU clocks, which start off very low. So the choice isn't "Good proprietary drivers" vs "Less featured open drivers", it's "proprietary drivers" vs "drivers that are legally forbidden from running above 0.5% their advertised clock speed, no matter if it's otherwise fully featured".[1] In contrast, AMD and Intel have open drivers in Mesa that work very well and fully supported and AMD allows its signed VBIOS to be redistributed, so it's clearly not just a matter of chip complexity, but the position of the vendor as well. In that vein I agree with your original point, though: I suspect we'll probably never see Linux on the M1 in anything but the most superficial form that lacks all the really good stuff. You might get the 8 core CPU, SSD/RAM, some peripherials. But no Neural Engine, no GPU, video decoders or image processors, power management, security features in the T2 like attested boot or encrypted key storage, etc. The only way that'll ever change is if Apple makes it happen. [1] For reference, the open source Nouveau driver for Fermi cards, nvc0, is the 4th most well supported Mesa driver in terms of features implemented (almost 90% of all features, surpassed only by radeonsi and i915). So it's not like there's no interest in FOSS Nvidia drivers... https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/
- oblio 6y ago
  Well, at some point you stop caring about blame and want results. If the game is rigged against you, the smart move is to stop playing. Which is obviously what developers have done, I haven't yet met someone running Linux directly on a Mac.
  - aseipp 6y ago
    The funniest thing in the world is when some dweeb explains something with surefire confidence, someone comes and says "It's not quite that simple", and the OP says "Yes it is because I say so!" with tears in their eyes as they try to hold onto the argument. Next time, please put a "I'm a giant dipshit" badge on your profile so I can avoid wasting my time, please.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Re-read the entire thread and look at the usernames again :-)
skohan 6y ago
A video card is many orders of magnitude more complex than a touch pad
- oblio 6y ago
  It's not only about the touch pad. It's about the SoC and all the peripherals. It's about power management and the secure enclave. It's about the whole package. Linux rarely runs as well as Windows on hardware that doesn't go out of its way to keep it out, just ignores it. Let alone on a platform so hostile to external modifications.

aseipp 6y ago

It's mostly a matter of corporate/government politics more than technology. And those politics are not going to change unless serious political action (read: lawmaking) forces it to be so. It's in a similar vein as "right to repair" or whatever. At the end of the day, if you don't have a datasheet and the vendor gives you the finger, you're always going to be running a rat race against them, struggling to support 10 year old hardware with free alternatives, and they'll always win because they control the playing field. Further analysis of this phenomena ("what is the root cause of this attitude, and why does our society allow it?") would require actually criticizing and analyzing software development in the grander context of workforce politics over the past, say, 40 to 50 years. Spoiler alert: doing this will probably make you depressed.