8 ms·

What 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 A

by AnonC 6y ago

What 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 ago
Apple started putting the T2 chip in the Macs 2 years ago. I suspect they plan on locking down the platform soon.
- DCKing 6y ago
  I 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 ago
    I'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
      It’s a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to improve security is of course going to follow a progression. All software development is progressive. The leap from there to a ‘boiling frog’ i.e. that this is being done so the user won’t notice a hidden agenda, is a conspiracy theory.
      - tyingq 6y ago
        I suppose, if you consider any speculation to be a conspiracy theory.
        zepto 6y ago
        It’s not ‘any speculation’. It is a theory that a group of people with power have a hidden agenda that is contrary to what they have public stated, despite the facts being consistent with the public claims. That is pretty much the definition a conspiracy theory.
        tyingq 6y ago
        A group of people that already understand and take great advantage of locked down platforms and services. And we're talking about a product (Mac) that was specifically much more locked down than its predecessor when it was launched.
        zepto 6y ago
        A group of people who have said that they see the Mac differently from iOS, and who have explicitly said they don’t plan to lock it down. For you to be right, this must be a planned deception. That is a conspiracy theory. It seems like you actually know this and are just trying to argue that that you’re right that there is a conspiracy. For what it’s worth - I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with that. Conspiracies are sometimes real. I’d just rather be open about what we are saying.
        6y ago
- est31 6y ago
  With their M1 based devices, they now explicitly added support for you to authorize alternative kernels to boot from (on your local machine).
  - headeffects 6y ago
    Is this better than the previous T2 Intel Macs for Linux support?
    - est31 6y ago
      Previously you weren't able to do that, but you were able to disable booting without signature checks. I'm mainly basing this info off this sole tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/never_released/status/1326315741080150016 https://mobile.twitter.com/never_released/status/13263157410...
nextos 6y ago
Me too. Interestingly 2 MacBooks from the Intel era were amongst the best machines ever, objectively, for Linux. The MacBook 2,1 is almost unique in being supported by Coreboot and Libreboot. Furthermore, because it had an Atheros wireless card, you didn't need any blobs at all. Only two old Thinkpads are comparable, among x86_64 machines. The MacBook Air 11 Late 2012, which was used as a daily runner by Linus for a number of years, was a pure Intel machine. Except for a weak Broadcom card, it was flawless with a stock kernel. Plus, it was silent, small and fast. The only comparable machine in terms of silent operation, cost and Linux support was IMHO the Xiaomi Notebook 12.5, which was released quite recently. The problem with ARM Macs is not just secure boot. The secure enclave chip already gave serious trouble when trying to run Linux on their last Intel machines, as e.g. the keyboard doesn't show up as a standard USB device. So I don't have high hopes.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  Completely open is cool, but it’s a high bar to pass. A lower bar might be, can I just install Ubuntu and use it as a daily driver? At least up through the mid-2015 this is the case.
  - nextos 6y ago
    Oh yes, I'm happy with that. The problem is that might be even hard to achieve with the T2 chip. It's sad because the new MacBook Air seems superior to all competitors and the price is quite fair after academic discount. Also, Apple makes it easy to buy any keyboard distribution from any location, which is really cool. With many brands, I need to hack the system and shop from NL to get a US ANSI keyboard here in EU.
    - dddw 6y ago
      Standard layout for dutch macs is ISO. Although English-US with ANSI is available
      - nextos 6y ago
ogre_codes 6y ago
Yeah, in particular the Mac mini has a lot of curb appeal as a 10+ year micro server. Considering it's plugged in and the fan should only spin up occasionally, it should last a long long time. I'm pretty sure we'll have Linux running on it by then. Perhaps just CLI only.
- rovr138 6y ago
  My 2011 Mac Mini is running under the TV, serving files, running some small docker containers. It works fine for that workload. I just use VNC into it to manage anything. Another little machine that does what it needs. It's quiet and doesn't need much.
- thekyle 6y ago
  Why not just use an Intel NUC?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Last I checked, a well configured NUC was nearly as expensive as a Mac mini and almost certainly slower than this. Depends largely on what you are looking for though. From the sounds of it the NUC also has a loud fan? (For some reason I thought they were fanless).
    - thekyle 6y ago
      Yeah, both the Mac Mini and NUC have fans. The Intel NUC will definitely be slower and hotter (thus louder), but I still think it's a better choice if you specifically want to run Linux on it.
zepto 6y ago
What would native support provide that virtualization does not?
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Performance, a teensie bit of insulation from long-dead software rot, and the warm fuzzies you can only get from running a free software stack.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I’m guessing there won’t be a significant performance advantage, not insulation from rot. The likelyhood that Apple’s drivers at EOL outclass the driver support the community can provide seems high. On the other hand, I agree with the last point. There is an aesthetic dimension that can’t be ignored.
    - oliwarner 6y ago
      The community does a pretty decent job of supporting other Apple hardware; often vastly outperforming default MacOS (or Windows in many tests). Graphics is a particularly soft target, eg: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos1015-win10-ubuntu&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos101... I know —and apologies for the originally unintended, but retrospectively way-overused pun— I've compared an Apple to an orange there, and I realise it's very different hardware... But it's also not. It mostly depends on access. If developers can shim in a loader, and it doesn't require soldering, it'll be popular and get attention. These chips look too great to ignore. Not my downvote, btw. Hopefully they'll toss an opinion in too.
      - zepto 6y ago
        That’s very good to know - I have an iMac 5K 27” that is only a year or so away from losing support from Apple, which will become a Linux machine at that point.
- mhh__ 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Google234 6y ago
The laptop works without updates.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  It might keep working for a while, but Macs depend on external services to function properly. What if Apple replaces OCSP in a future release of OS11 and turns off their existing OCSP service?
- coldtea 6y ago
  Is the OS secure abandoned without 2-3 years of updates to any new issues discovered?
  - Google234 6y ago
    You expect a consumer device to be support for more than 9 years? That’s not practical.
donor20 6y ago
And 7-9 years is a fantastic support lifetime and yes, I know some folks who still use their 9 year old macbooks such as grandparents etc without major issue. You have new android phones that ship with software 1.5 years old and NEVER get updated.
- rovr138 6y ago
  I'm typing this on a 2011 MacBook Air. I don't use this as my daily driver, but I use for lightweight day to day things.
- serf 6y ago
  7 to 9 years is fantastic, but not really that out of the ordinary for this industry as far as I can tell? My 2011 model Lenovo came from the factory with a 2012 copy of Windows 8. Lenovo released BIOS and driver updates to the 2011 machine at the end of 2019 and continue to do so. Windows 8 is EOL in 2023 with free upgrade paths to 8.1 which has a further out EOL date, meaning that the OS is still supported by both companies, as well. Admittedly, however, your Android example is dead-on. Android seems to have always struggled with software updates; I blame version fragmentation along with very cheap (free in most cases) licensing costs, which spur on lower-quality vendors to take on the product.
- andrea_sdl 6y ago
  I agree but I'll tell you (as an apple fan in the ecosystem) that sometimes this kind of "let's abandon the old things" has some drawbacks. For example, the changes in the https behaviour and support for the websites, made an old mac useless because safari didn't support the new TLS versions and there weren't any decent alternative for an old system like that (we're talking about a 2004 mac if I recall correctly, intel 32bit, so yeah, I know it's old in many ways). The only solutions was to install linux and it worked. So, even though I'm fully committed to the ecosystem and I love each and every apple product I still do think that having to trash a machine after 10 years isn't so good considering that those machines are usually still capable to work daily.
motoboi 6y ago
I don't know why you believe it can never happen well, as linux already run in ARM processors for some time now. Obviously it would take another canonical to do grunt driver creating work. But I suppose that if we don't see a quick response from intel or AMD, this hardware will take off and people will write the drivers.
- danudey 6y ago
  It's not just a question of driver support. Apple is doing a lot of custom stuff with their architecture that might not have an analogue on current ARM systems, meaning that it might require not just new or updated drivers, but effectively a completely new architecture variant added to Linux before you can even boot. Also, with the T2 chip in Intel Macs, there was a lot of nonstandard behavior[1], like the keyboard not being just a standard USB device. Linux can run on ARM processors, but it's the architecture that can make a huge difference. Heck, even Apple's Lightning-to-HDMI adapter has an ARM chip in it[2], but that doesn't mean you can boot it to Linux very easily. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25221804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25221804 [2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4055758/why-does-apples-lightning-to-hdmi-adapter-have-an-arm-computer-inside https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4055758/why-does-apples-li...
  - als0 6y ago
    > but effectively a completely new architecture variant added to Linux before you can even boot. This sounds wrong. At most it may need a custom bootloader, which can then load a regular arm64 kernel plus the required drivers for Apple specific peripherals.
djsumdog 6y ago
Older macs could run Linux pretty well. I even had Gentoo running on an ancient PPC mac yonks ago. A few years back, I got Linux working (sorta) on a MacBook 14,3 https://battlepenguin.com/tech/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/ With all the security on the newer Apple chips, I wonder if we'll ever see Linux boot on these things natively, much less get actual hardware driver support.
coldtea 6y ago
>What I’m interested in, which may probably take years (or never happen well) Probably wont take that long. Apple gives instructions to disable strict boot check and boot from any OS. The rest are the drivers. For graphics, they can start just using a framebuffer...
sally1620 6y ago
These M1 Macs are more like iPads than Intel Macs. Jail breaking them would be the first step, but after that one would need a ton of reverse engineering to write all the drivers for all the little custom HW built into M1 SoC. I have never heard of an iPad running Linux (and iPads been around for a long time), so chances of M1 running Linux natively is slim.

by AnonC 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago

Apple started putting the T2 chip in the Macs 2 years ago. I suspect they plan on locking down the platform soon.

DCKing 6y ago
I 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 ago
  I'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
    It’s a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to improve security is of course going to follow a progression. All software development is progressive. The leap from there to a ‘boiling frog’ i.e. that this is being done so the user won’t notice a hidden agenda, is a conspiracy theory.
    - tyingq 6y ago
      I suppose, if you consider any speculation to be a conspiracy theory.
      - zepto 6y ago
        It’s not ‘any speculation’. It is a theory that a group of people with power have a hidden agenda that is contrary to what they have public stated, despite the facts being consistent with the public claims. That is pretty much the definition a conspiracy theory.
        tyingq 6y ago
        A group of people that already understand and take great advantage of locked down platforms and services. And we're talking about a product (Mac) that was specifically much more locked down than its predecessor when it was launched.
        zepto 6y ago
        A group of people who have said that they see the Mac differently from iOS, and who have explicitly said they don’t plan to lock it down. For you to be right, this must be a planned deception. That is a conspiracy theory. It seems like you actually know this and are just trying to argue that that you’re right that there is a conspiracy. For what it’s worth - I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with that. Conspiracies are sometimes real. I’d just rather be open about what we are saying.
        6y ago
est31 6y ago
With their M1 based devices, they now explicitly added support for you to authorize alternative kernels to boot from (on your local machine).
- headeffects 6y ago
  Is this better than the previous T2 Intel Macs for Linux support?
  - est31 6y ago
    Previously you weren't able to do that, but you were able to disable booting without signature checks. I'm mainly basing this info off this sole tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/never_released/status/1326315741080150016 https://mobile.twitter.com/never_released/status/13263157410...

nextos 6y ago

Me too. Interestingly 2 MacBooks from the Intel era were amongst the best machines ever, objectively, for Linux. The MacBook 2,1 is almost unique in being supported by Coreboot and Libreboot. Furthermore, because it had an Atheros wireless card, you didn't need any blobs at all. Only two old Thinkpads are comparable, among x86_64 machines. The MacBook Air 11 Late 2012, which was used as a daily runner by Linus for a number of years, was a pure Intel machine. Except for a weak Broadcom card, it was flawless with a stock kernel. Plus, it was silent, small and fast. The only comparable machine in terms of silent operation, cost and Linux support was IMHO the Xiaomi Notebook 12.5, which was released quite recently. The problem with ARM Macs is not just secure boot. The secure enclave chip already gave serious trouble when trying to run Linux on their last Intel machines, as e.g. the keyboard doesn't show up as a standard USB device. So I don't have high hopes.

marmaduke 6y ago
Completely open is cool, but it’s a high bar to pass. A lower bar might be, can I just install Ubuntu and use it as a daily driver? At least up through the mid-2015 this is the case.
- nextos 6y ago
  Oh yes, I'm happy with that. The problem is that might be even hard to achieve with the T2 chip. It's sad because the new MacBook Air seems superior to all competitors and the price is quite fair after academic discount. Also, Apple makes it easy to buy any keyboard distribution from any location, which is really cool. With many brands, I need to hack the system and shop from NL to get a US ANSI keyboard here in EU.
  - dddw 6y ago
    Standard layout for dutch macs is ISO. Although English-US with ANSI is available
    - nextos 6y ago

ogre_codes 6y ago

Yeah, in particular the Mac mini has a lot of curb appeal as a 10+ year micro server. Considering it's plugged in and the fan should only spin up occasionally, it should last a long long time. I'm pretty sure we'll have Linux running on it by then. Perhaps just CLI only.

rovr138 6y ago
My 2011 Mac Mini is running under the TV, serving files, running some small docker containers. It works fine for that workload. I just use VNC into it to manage anything. Another little machine that does what it needs. It's quiet and doesn't need much.
thekyle 6y ago
Why not just use an Intel NUC?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Last I checked, a well configured NUC was nearly as expensive as a Mac mini and almost certainly slower than this. Depends largely on what you are looking for though. From the sounds of it the NUC also has a loud fan? (For some reason I thought they were fanless).
  - thekyle 6y ago
    Yeah, both the Mac Mini and NUC have fans. The Intel NUC will definitely be slower and hotter (thus louder), but I still think it's a better choice if you specifically want to run Linux on it.

zepto 6y ago

What would native support provide that virtualization does not?

oliwarner 6y ago
Performance, a teensie bit of insulation from long-dead software rot, and the warm fuzzies you can only get from running a free software stack.
- zepto 6y ago
  I’m guessing there won’t be a significant performance advantage, not insulation from rot. The likelyhood that Apple’s drivers at EOL outclass the driver support the community can provide seems high. On the other hand, I agree with the last point. There is an aesthetic dimension that can’t be ignored.
  - oliwarner 6y ago
    The community does a pretty decent job of supporting other Apple hardware; often vastly outperforming default MacOS (or Windows in many tests). Graphics is a particularly soft target, eg: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos1015-win10-ubuntu&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos101... I know —and apologies for the originally unintended, but retrospectively way-overused pun— I've compared an Apple to an orange there, and I realise it's very different hardware... But it's also not. It mostly depends on access. If developers can shim in a loader, and it doesn't require soldering, it'll be popular and get attention. These chips look too great to ignore. Not my downvote, btw. Hopefully they'll toss an opinion in too.
    - zepto 6y ago
      That’s very good to know - I have an iMac 5K 27” that is only a year or so away from losing support from Apple, which will become a Linux machine at that point.
mhh__ 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Google234 6y ago

The laptop works without updates.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
It might keep working for a while, but Macs depend on external services to function properly. What if Apple replaces OCSP in a future release of OS11 and turns off their existing OCSP service?
coldtea 6y ago
Is the OS secure abandoned without 2-3 years of updates to any new issues discovered?
- Google234 6y ago
  You expect a consumer device to be support for more than 9 years? That’s not practical.

donor20 6y ago

And 7-9 years is a fantastic support lifetime and yes, I know some folks who still use their 9 year old macbooks such as grandparents etc without major issue. You have new android phones that ship with software 1.5 years old and NEVER get updated.

rovr138 6y ago
I'm typing this on a 2011 MacBook Air. I don't use this as my daily driver, but I use for lightweight day to day things.
serf 6y ago
7 to 9 years is fantastic, but not really that out of the ordinary for this industry as far as I can tell? My 2011 model Lenovo came from the factory with a 2012 copy of Windows 8. Lenovo released BIOS and driver updates to the 2011 machine at the end of 2019 and continue to do so. Windows 8 is EOL in 2023 with free upgrade paths to 8.1 which has a further out EOL date, meaning that the OS is still supported by both companies, as well. Admittedly, however, your Android example is dead-on. Android seems to have always struggled with software updates; I blame version fragmentation along with very cheap (free in most cases) licensing costs, which spur on lower-quality vendors to take on the product.
andrea_sdl 6y ago
I agree but I'll tell you (as an apple fan in the ecosystem) that sometimes this kind of "let's abandon the old things" has some drawbacks. For example, the changes in the https behaviour and support for the websites, made an old mac useless because safari didn't support the new TLS versions and there weren't any decent alternative for an old system like that (we're talking about a 2004 mac if I recall correctly, intel 32bit, so yeah, I know it's old in many ways). The only solutions was to install linux and it worked. So, even though I'm fully committed to the ecosystem and I love each and every apple product I still do think that having to trash a machine after 10 years isn't so good considering that those machines are usually still capable to work daily.

motoboi 6y ago

I don't know why you believe it can never happen well, as linux already run in ARM processors for some time now. Obviously it would take another canonical to do grunt driver creating work. But I suppose that if we don't see a quick response from intel or AMD, this hardware will take off and people will write the drivers.

danudey 6y ago
It's not just a question of driver support. Apple is doing a lot of custom stuff with their architecture that might not have an analogue on current ARM systems, meaning that it might require not just new or updated drivers, but effectively a completely new architecture variant added to Linux before you can even boot. Also, with the T2 chip in Intel Macs, there was a lot of nonstandard behavior[1], like the keyboard not being just a standard USB device. Linux can run on ARM processors, but it's the architecture that can make a huge difference. Heck, even Apple's Lightning-to-HDMI adapter has an ARM chip in it[2], but that doesn't mean you can boot it to Linux very easily. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25221804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25221804 [2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4055758/why-does-apples-lightning-to-hdmi-adapter-have-an-arm-computer-inside https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4055758/why-does-apples-li...
- als0 6y ago
  > but effectively a completely new architecture variant added to Linux before you can even boot. This sounds wrong. At most it may need a custom bootloader, which can then load a regular arm64 kernel plus the required drivers for Apple specific peripherals.

djsumdog 6y ago

Older macs could run Linux pretty well. I even had Gentoo running on an ancient PPC mac yonks ago. A few years back, I got Linux working (sorta) on a MacBook 14,3 https://battlepenguin.com/tech/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/ With all the security on the newer Apple chips, I wonder if we'll ever see Linux boot on these things natively, much less get actual hardware driver support.

coldtea 6y ago

>What I’m interested in, which may probably take years (or never happen well) Probably wont take that long. Apple gives instructions to disable strict boot check and boot from any OS. The rest are the drivers. For graphics, they can start just using a framebuffer...

sally1620 6y ago

These M1 Macs are more like iPads than Intel Macs. Jail breaking them would be the first step, but after that one would need a ton of reverse engineering to write all the drivers for all the little custom HW built into M1 SoC. I have never heard of an iPad running Linux (and iPads been around for a long time), so chances of M1 running Linux natively is slim.