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Ubuntu successfully virtualized on M1
- wffurr 6y agoThat forum thread is a cesspool of toxicity. The original tweet is a better link: https://mobile.twitter.com/KhaosT/status/1328936063990190085 https://mobile.twitter.com/KhaosT/status/1328936063990190085
- Cloudef 6y agoWhats the point of these submissions? ARM has been around forever and yes theres software for it.
- sys_64738 6y agoIt's the bread and butter of hacking new hardware to the point that it can boot Linux in some form. I think there's great prestige knowing that everything can boot Linux eventually as it means it has a shelf life after the company owning the proprietary solution has thrown it away. Given how Apple treats iPads and iPhones, I wouldn't be surprised if these M1 Macs have a much shorter usability period than Intel Macs.
- jeromenerf 6y agoiPhones are quite well supported in my experience. I have a 6 and a se, both running the latest OS. My wife uses old MacBook Pro and air, pre retina, yet i5, running Debian stable, Firefox, zoom and some VMware horizon client for remote work. Stable, usable, just great. In my experience, intel macs weren’t supported as long as the iPads and iPhones but they are for sure easier to upcycle to something else. They are just fancy PCs.
- sgerenser 6y agoDo you mean the 6s? I don’t think the iPhone 6 can run iOS 14. Which is unfortunate but the support that phone had was still far better than almost every Android phone.
- jeromenerf 6y agoIndeed 6s plus. It was replaced under warranty because of the battery drain issue a while back.
- miles 6y ago> I have a 6 and a se, both running the latest OS. The iPhone 6 does not run the latest version of iOS (14) nor the previous version (13): https://osxdaily.com/2019/06/04/ios-13-compatible-iphone-ipad/ https://osxdaily.com/2019/06/04/ios-13-compatible-iphone-ipa...
- nakovet 6y agoThis is industry revolution happening before your eyes. Excluding smartphones/tablets, X86 has been the defacto computer architecture of personal computers. Microsoft tried an ARM processor but the tradeoffs were evident and it was considered half baked, leading to poor reviews. For quite some time in our industry the main limitation has been clock speeds, nowadays the main limitation is temperature control. Apple launched an ARM chipset that remains as cool as 50C when intel reaches 95C, this will forever change the industry of personal computing. That's why people are raving about it.
- forgotpwd16 6y agoI ain't keeping up with hardware but from I can remember Surface Pro X that came out last year was received positively, packed enough power, worked fine but wasn't trending for some reason. Thus the real question is, though there are ARM laptops since mid-2010s why is Apple taking once again credit for making a "revolution"?
- mikhailt 6y agoSurface Pro X is a great hardware device but it is definitely not a great software experience. Same problems with the old Surface RT with the ARM chip, backward compat with existing software made the whole experience difficult for almost all folks. As for SPX with Windows 10 on ARM, you can't use any 64bit app and existing x86 32-bit apps were incredibly slow and not reliable (look at photoshop for an example). 64-bit emulation support is coming next year[^1]. Many of their development tools are not native either, some folks are still waiting for MS to ship Visual Studio to ARM [^2], .NET 5 was just shipped a week ago with some basic ARM support but no WPF for ARM until next year. The difference here is Apple has a very fast x86 translation layer called Rosetta 2 that can run almost all Intel apps at 80% or so of the native M1 performance. Most folks don't even notice the difference. Windows 10 on ARM (SPX) had to emulate it at all time, with massive performance regressions. What Apple has done is a complete transition that includes both hardware/software to ARM at the same time. All of their apps including development tools (Xcode) were native, huge number of macOS devs already shipped native support on day 1 or within the first week and Rosetta 2 made waiting for native support okay. And that's just the software. The hardware? Super fast, long battery life, fanless in MBA, very quiet fan in MB and more. For a lot of people, it's a complete experience that worked out for them. Note, not all developers are going to be ready for this, there's no docker support, some tooling will take awhile to update but they're going at much faster pace than MS at this point. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/30/21495510/microsoft-windows-on-arm-x64-app-emulation https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/30/21495510/microsoft-window... [2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/visual-studio-on-arm-devices?view=vs-2019#:~:text=Visual%20Studio%20is%20only%20supported%20on%20devices%20using,emulation%20on%20ARM%2C%20which%20Visual%20Studio%20can%20run https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/visual....
- _ph_ 6y agoThis is Hacker News. If getting Linux running for the first time on a completely new cpu/soc running just with the help of the barebones API from Apple isn't hacking, I don't know. When Parallels ships their ready-done product, it gets much less exciting, but for now it is pretty interesting.
- lupinglade 6y agoAnyone can do this easily, the API is super simple but the resulting VM isn’t all that useful. The title implies someone got it working without Apple’s closed source APIs. That is not the case.
- osy 6y agoThis is based off of Apple’s new Virtualization.framework introduced in Big Sur that lets you spin a Linux VM with half a dozen lines of code. The technology is still in its infancy (minimal emulated devices; not sure if there’s even a framebuffer) and I’d wait for something like Docker running on Hypervisor.framework (lower level APIs but more mature).
- indigo747 6y agoxhyve[0] doesn't look entirely production ready, but emulates a number of devices including networking, block storage, and a framebuffer while being based on Hypervisor.framework. [0] https://github.com/machyve/xhyve https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
- cpuguy83 6y agoDocker For Mac is based on "Hyperkit" which is based on xhyve. So xhyve has a fair bit of mileage on it.
- spijdar 6y agoDoes xhyve have any support for ARM though? I remember it as being pretty x86 specific re: emulated devices and targets. A very quick glance doesn't suggest this has changed.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> The technology is still in its infancy This is definitely in the experimental phase and not something for general use. The fact that there is a simple implementation is cool.
- justincormack 6y agoFor Docker, virtualization framework is fine and provides everything we need. There is no framebuffer on hypervisor framework. There will be an arm qemu port for hypervisor framework fairly soon. I have Docker running on M1 with VF see https://twitter.com/justincormack/status/1331965304273047553 https://twitter.com/justincormack/status/1331965304273047553
- my123 6y agohttps://github.com/evansm7/vftool https://github.com/evansm7/vftool provides a simple, CLI-based implementation for this.
- boris 6y agoIt's funny how the way to get a Linux on ARM machine with decent performance might be getting a Mac Mini and running Linux as a VM. I doubt nested virtualization will work though.
- the_af 6y agoHonest question, because I genuinely don't know: aren't there any Linux distros that run decently on ARM? If not, why?
- danpeddle 6y agoManjaro ARM is great. I use it daily with sway. I haven’t tried docker, but given the widevine hack used it, presume all is ok on that front.
- lbotos 6y agoYes, many, but most ARM machines are currently "Single Board Computers" (SBC) and the performance is not M1 level. 2020 appears to very much be "year of ARM" with Graviton, and now the M1 chip looking very good. EDIT: gravitation -> graviton
- lizknope 6y agoThere are a few ARM server motherboards but most of them are either based on older hardware and/or the product lines have been discontinued. I think you mean "Graviton" which is Amazon's custom processor using ARM Neoverse cores. You can't buy one of them as your own machine but you can use it through the Amazon cloud. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
- m4rtink 6y agoMost major Linux distros run on ARM just fine, thats not the problem. Undocumented custom Apple hardware with proprietary MacOS only drivers & locked up bootloader is the problem.
- 6y ago
- AnonC 6y agoWhat I’m interested in, which may probably take years (or never happen well), is running Linux natively on these Macs after there’s no more macOS support from Apple. Typically Macs stop getting software support at around 7-9 years after first release. Hardware does tend to last longer and can serve some purposes beyond that.
- tyingq 6y agoApple started putting the T2 chip in the Macs 2 years ago. I suspect they plan on locking down the platform soon.
- DCKing 6y agoI don't really get this narrative about the T2. Apple removed the T2/integrated it into the M1 and didn't lock down things any further. If they were going to lock it down, this would have been the time for it, given there's no Bootcamp for Apple Silicon. Yet Apple specifically allows you to sign custom kernels offline on Apple Silicon Macs. People also seem to be convinced that the T2 was a "locking down" measure, while all that's really missing is a Linux driver to interface with the T2. Surely Apple doesn't care at all about actively supporting Linux (and publishing specs), but they also don't lock this down. The only support I see for the idea that Apple will "lock down Macs" is that for some reason they're irrationally hell bent on turning Macs into iPads. I don't see how that idea holds up if you inspect it closely though.
- tyingq 6y agoI'm not trying to peddle a conspiracy theory, but the slow progression "boil frogs" method is how this sort of thing is usually done. I mention the T2 because secure storage for secure boot is a pretty obvious way to implement. The percent of revenue coming from Macs continues to go down. I'm just assuming that at some point, the only (financial) reason the Mac exists is for Xcode.
- zepto 6y ago
- tyingq 6y agoNice, though that it was done quickly raises the question of why Apple hadn't tried harder to get some (even hacky) version of this together before the release.
- wmf 6y agoApple showed Parallels working months ago; it just hasn't been released yet.
- ogre_codes 6y agoPutting together something hacky isn't really Apple's way of doing things. (They occasionally release overly complex, buggy things though) As with the x86 Mac, Apple is relying on third party developers to take release full VM solutions.
- bamboleo 6y agoPerfect is the enemy of good. Apple needed to get the platform to the market and what they've done so far is everything they needed to do. They haven't even updated the whole line yet, so just give it time and let them improve the basics first (no, virtualization isn't "the basics")
- jki275 6y agoRunning Linux on a Mac does nothing for Apple. Why would they care?
- trianglem 6y agoVirtualization is so dirty. I’ve never really come around to it. I’m waiting for the day when there’s a correction for how much we rely on it now and go back to a “pure” bare metal world.
- jbirer 6y agoThis is really sad.
- hans1729 6y agoCare to elaborate?
- superkuh 6y agoWell, I'm not op, but I think it's sad that people are getting excited over hardware that can't run linux that runs linux virtualized. That's not a good thing. It's an okay, marginal thing in a bad situation. It's is not exceptional or notable. The fact that it is a notable accomplishment to get Ubuntu running just means the virtualization is, amazingly, worse (more complex and troublesome) than normal virtualization.
- bamboleo 6y agoI'm not sure of what y'all are complaining about. M1 computers literally just started being delivered last week; Being able to do something on a brand new platform is at the very least something to be pleased about. Given how good the system appears to be on all fronts it's normal that people are excited. It's not "exceptional" but it just shows that, even with a whole new CPU underneath, developers will soon be able to do everything they're used to. Give it time and someone will run Linux without virtualization on it.
- jbirer 6y agoThat is still not good. At least on the Intel Macs you could boot Linux on USB natively. Now people cheer being able to virtualize OSes and wait for a hack that will allow them to boot other software on a platform where this is discouraged and actively prevented.
- diminish 6y agogood job - Linux or Ubuntu is the killer app for apple.
- fanatic2pope 6y agoThat always makes me wonder how much they have contributed to Linux itself? I know they funded CUPS for a while, which I guess is something, but has Apple ever upstreamed any useful kernel work code or device drivers or user space libraries or apps?
- stu2b50 6y agoThey indirectly helped the space by lighting a fire under GCC's ass by funding clang development. Clang + LLVM is also useful in general for everyone, after all it's the backbone of code generation for languages like Rust.
- jki275 6y agoThey have upstreamed stuff to FreeBSD for a long time. I don't know how much or if it's used or not, but their kernel and a bunch of their other stuff is open source. opensource.apple.com
- toyg 6y agoThey famously do opensource abysmally. They just throw code over the wall, largely for pre-existing licensing reasons. The projects they “own” have mostly floundered once they reached a level Apple deemed good enough (CUPS).
- jki275 6y agoYeah, I know, you always show up to argue this. It's not their obligation to make you happy. It's not their obligation to maintain everything for you. They are under no licensing obligation to provide you anything. They don't use GPL code, they use mostly BSD licensed code, which they don't have to give you. But they do anyway. They give you code and tools they've developed and if you want to use them you can. If you don't, you don't have to.
- Keverw 6y agoApple going to ARM for the M1 is interesting, wonder how it might shift the server market... As a developer who might want to target both, wonder if any decent ARM VPSes? Scaleway had ARM Dedis but quit offering that it seems. AWS has some but seems larger servers. Wonder if anything smaller for someone to tinker with without buying a new ARM MacBook. Maybe a Pi but was hoping more cloud stuff maybe to play with?
- nunez 6y agoEven though this is a simple VM based on MacOS’s ARM virtualization framework, this combined with ssh and clever volume sharing is probably enough to make Docker on Mac work (but only with aarch64 Docker images) (export DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@ip.) I’m excited to give it a shot when I get my Air next week.
- mekster 6y agoI remember someone running a data center with bunch of Mac mini when Intel Mac mini came out to save space with its power efficiency but I guess it's another time someone might do it again when Linux can run natively flawlessly.