25 ms·

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it

by midrus 6y ago

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight. In my opinion, other than doing it for the sake of learning and the challenge of it, this will lead nowhere in the long term unless you get any kind of commitment or support from Apple. And I hope I'm wrong but that's very, very unlikely to happen any time soon.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I have confidence in the parallel efforts being spearheaded by Marcan. He knows what he's doing and he's working on it full time.
- midrus 6y ago
  And that's why this has no long term future. There are not that many people able to achieve this. One single person can't do it forever.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Presumably Apple isn't going to redesign their GPU architecture every generation? How much maintenance do you see this needing?
  - asveikau 6y ago
    Uhh... Linux supports a lot of hardware. Probably a lot of in-tree drivers that still get use were started as reverse engineering efforts by a small number of people. Perhaps you're meaning to say Apple will iterate the hardware faster than people can add Linux support? That's plausible. It also was the status quo of Linux on PCs for many years. (Still the case with some hardware I guess.) That hasn't killed Linux yet.
  - Jnr 6y ago
    Maybe someone else will also pick up some skills from this. He is streaming all his reversing sessions on Youtube, it is quite interesting.
hitpointdrew 6y ago
Yeah, other than an experimental exercises I don't get why anyone would ever want to do this. You will spend WAY more money for the Apple hardware, you will struggle to get things to stay consistent. If your goal is to run linux then don't buy a Mac.
- monopoledance 6y ago
  > You will spend WAY more money for the Apple hardware I think right now the new M1 machines are actually priced pretty reasonable. If they'd run Linux, I would buy them in an instant. I mean, try to match the Air with a Thinkpad, especially if you consider the screen. I think there is not even one recent AMD Thinkpad with a > FHD screen. And who wants a 2020 Intel machine? Edit: To make this clear: No Linux, no Mac for me (as I don't believe in MacOS's future at all). But even considering the horrible keyboard, I think the M1 macs are totally worth it just for the hardware. That's a first. And I am the kind of person who feels all warm and fuzzy over ejecting an ultrabay hard drive, or changing RAM/display in < 5 minutes in a laptop.
- jonfw 6y ago
  If you care about display, trackpad, and battery life, the M1 macs blow everything else out of the water, and for pretty cheap.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. However, I’m optimistic that these will be mostly usable on Linux before they’re too obsolete or outdated. The platform is so popular and iconic that it’s drawing a lot of attention from Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. That's sound advice. As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?
  - RyJones 6y ago
    I was able to install an ARM build of Ubuntu Server using the Parallels beta, and it works fine.
    - 656565656565 6y ago
      It doesn’t work fine, UI resolution restricted, sticking cursor issues, no parallel tools available
    - reacharavindh 6y ago
      Good to hear this. I am waiting for my M1 Mac, and if I can get Linux arm64 virtual machines running for development purposes, I can hack the rest.
  - sdevonoes 6y ago
    I'm also interested on this. I usually run Ubuntu via Vagrant + Virtualbox on my Mac.
- oblio 6y ago
  So the advice is to buy a second hand one 5 years from now?
simonh 6y ago
On the contrary, this could be fantastic for a headless server running on an M1 Mini to build and test ARM code before deploying to AWS Graviton. It doesn't all have to be about laptops.
- midrus 6y ago
  Agree, this could be a good use case.
- axaxs 6y ago
  While a valid use case, it feels like overkill. There are much less expensive and more stable ways to accomplish this.
- StillBored 6y ago
  For the about price of a mac mini: https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-computers/nxp-family/honeycomb/ https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-compute... You get upgradable ram, a PCIe slot for your favorite GPU/etc, and actual mainline linux support sufficient to boot most random linux distros (ok the onboard 10G+ nic might not work without patches). Its not the fastest machine around (A72s) but there are 16 of them, so it does a decent job of building ARM software, and running VMs.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    Well... for the price of a Mac Mini, and some, you get a bare motherboard with a small amount of onboard storage (64G eMMC). No RAM, no video, no power supply or case. And it's not like you can just throw an off-the-shelf GPU in, either; neither nVidia nor AMD graphics cards work on ARM devices -- so if you're expecting something you can use as a desktop, you're in for a hard time.
    - floatboth 6y ago
      Both amdgpu and nouveau work absolutely fine on ARM devices, why wouldn't they?! In fact I made the FreeBSD port of amdgpu work on my Macchiatobin :) Absolutely smooth experience btw, video output works even in UEFI (it actually runs the GOP driver from the card in QEMU), amdgpu works perfectly (played vkquake, supertuxkart, openmw, etc.)
meibo 6y ago
Even on old + modern thinkpads it feels like a lottery which hardware feature will stop working at a particular time, with the distros i've worked myself through. Ethernet, waking up from sleep mode, brightness adjustment... take your pick.
- titzer 6y ago
  I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1 carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with MD5 hashes and double, trip-checking everything. A reminder that not only software bitrots, but hardware too. Make sure not to buy a Stinkpad (or any hardware) with non-replaceable parts! (and I just bought an M1 Macbook Pro...)
  - my123 6y ago
    If you can pinpoint which pages are affected (in most cases you can), you can just add that range to the blacklist. Can work in the meantime, before you have a new machine.
    - titzer 6y ago
      There were dozens of ranges, too many to blacklist. Which made me suspect that it might actually be the memory controller. In which case, it's totally F'd. But given this I went for total data evac.
      - spockz 6y ago
        Couldn’t you just move the disk to another device and read it from there instead of risking data corruption or going through all the hassle of comparing checksums?
        6y ago
arghwhat 6y ago
Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use Thinkpads. I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn't support displayport MST), dock connectivity problems (macos freezing or crashing when connected except when it suddenly works for a day, Windows playing disconnect/reconnect sounds in a loop when the machine goes idle), and more, including just today out inexplicable crashing. Install Linux or plug all the "made for windows/macOS" hardware into a Linux box, and all the problems went away. My conclusion, supported by having been a proprietary kernel driver developer for Windows, FreeBSD and Linux, is that any hardware and driver combo tends to be a coin toss, irrespective of platform. But with Linux, drivers that would otherwise be abandoned after a project was shipped, get a chance at being fixed and improved that their proprietary counterparts can never even dream of.
- oblio 6y ago
  The thing is, many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes. So your anecdata goes against a mountain of anecdata from people using those platforms.
  - mmphosis 6y ago
    The thing is, many more people are using phone and tablets, than Windows and many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes and many more people are using desktop Linuxes, than desktop BSDs. So the anecdata goes against your mountain of anecdata that goes against a world of anecdata from people using those platforms.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Yeah, because when I use a phone or tablet I have to worry about installing my own drivers :-) Apples, oranges.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight. There are Mac desktops as well. That said, I'd say the list of mandatory components on a laptop is: - Decent GPU Drivers - Workable power management with sleep/ awake - Trackpad (this should be straight forward) The webcam, and brightness controls are stretch goals. I can't imaging the trackpad is vastly different from currently shipping ones. The Webcam might cause some significant headaches since Apple secures that fairly tightly. The onboard wifi modem is likely worthless, from what I recall, many of them are even in Windows laptops due to proprietary drivers.
- floatboth 6y ago
  Most Windows laptops thankfully use Intel Wi-Fi. Apple is unfortunately completely married to Broadcom. There are open drivers for Broadcom Wi-Fi, at least not-the-newest ones, but they do suck.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Good, sounds like things have improved a lot since I was using Linux. Sucky drivers are a starting point, last time I was on Linux as a daily driver, I had to use a PCMCIA card with a binary blob from Broadcom because the internal wireless card was dead. Hopefully with a little bit of money and some enthusiasm from the team, they'll be able to make more progress. A lot of people bitching about this being a waste of effort, but all the things they do here have follow on effects. If they improve the Broadcom drivers for the M1, much of that work will directly benefit everyone else on Broadcom.
rowanG077 6y ago
I'm not sure why you are so pessimistic. There are many community supported linux devices that work fine. The Microsoft Surface line being a prominent example. There are patches available for all recent kernels. And afaik all generations are supported. Here custom drivers have also been written.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Microsoft Surface don't use special hardware as much as Apple's laptop. Especially for M1, they uses original GPU, boot system, power management, etcetc...
na85 6y ago
>subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls Honestly this sounds exactly like my experience with linux on any laptop, including three thinkpads. Linux is a great desktop and server OS but the UX of a laptop actually demands a certain level of polish/fit-and-finish that linux desktop environments just don't have, otherwise it's constantly getting in your way.
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  Suprisely to me even, all these work work fine on Debian. Debian needed me to slide load the intel wireless drivers (a disappointing aspect I grant) but otherwise everything just worked right out of the box. Lenovo X1 Carbon 5th Generation.
rgomez 6y ago
Well about the hardware support, i.e. the Ubuntu Desktop certified hardware list is quite long [1], and I'm quite sure there are a lot more perfectly working brands/models that are just not appearing there. I've been using a Dell Inspiron model, for 8 years now not appearing in that list as a daily driver and every major distro worked perfectly out of the box, some tweak required from time to time but that's it. [1] https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop
sneak 6y ago
The first week that XNU ran on ARM, it didn't have very good hardware support either.
- Kwpolska 6y ago
  Apple has all the documentation needed to write drivers for all the custom hardware found in an iPhone (the original XNU-on-ARM device) or in an M1 Mac. The Asahi volunteers and Corellium don’t, they will need to do much more work, including reverse-engineering. So, what’s your point?
  - sneak 6y ago
    My point is that throwing up one's hands and saying "it's hopeless and it sucks!" literally the first day linux has been brought up on a new board is... premature. Yes, it will have to be RE'd. Yes, that takes time.
IOT_Apprentice 6y ago
Linux does run, and it also runs on the M1.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Agreed. Check out the state of Linux support on Intel Macs that were released in and after 2016[1], it's abysmal. Once Apple started adding non-standard hardware, Linux support never caught up. It isn't like the lack of support is Linux developers' fault. Apple doesn't provide datasheets for their hardware, and they don't cooperate with developers writing drivers for their custom hardware. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ARM SoCs that "run Linux", but that doesn't mean much because they're actually running Linux forks, and someone needs to maintain those forks, and build and release custom images for each SoC. I don't see M1 Macs diverting from that fate without significant support from Apple themselves. [1] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/ https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/
- Skunkleton 6y ago
  > that doesn't mean much because they're actually running Linux forks Many of these Arm SoCs are running linux forks because there are some terrible baked in drivers, and no spec associated with them. Still, that is a step ahead of the M1 as there are at least drivers that don't have to be decompiled and reverse engineered.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    These drivers are baked, even if there are specs for them. The thing is, that these SoCs have no PCIe or other enumerable bus. You (=your kernel) must know what hardware it is running on and which drivers to load without being able to ask the hardware, what is really present. One wrong POKE and the entire system can hang. And that is on top of the problem, how to boot in the first place. There is not such thing as UEFI on these SoCs. Every single one is a special snowflake with its own special way to boot. Hence, kernels built for specific systems, even if it is just Device Tree.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Things have gotten a lot better in ARM-land recently. It's possible to build a generic ARM kernel that will boot on a lot of hardware, as long as the bootloader passes the right device tree blob. Most device vendors don't really have a need or incentive to use this, though. A generic kernel is much larger and wastes flash space, and most vendors don't care about running anything but their OS image on it, so they of course just build a kernel specific to their hardware. But in theory it should be possible at some point to use a generic ARM Debian installer to install your own OS on a random ARM device, assuming the relevant drivers and device tree have been upstreamed.
plauribre 6y ago
Apple's poor support for Linux on Mac hardware may reverse if the company gains data center ambition for the M1. Partnering with a cloud provider (maybe Microsoft?) to deliver seamless Linux deployment on M1 would be significant...
- floatboth 6y ago
  Microsoft already has a good partner in Ampere, a company fully dedicated to servers and standards. Apple clearly doesn't seem interested. The M1 is just a scaled-up version of the iDevice SoCs. From the reverse engineering we've seen so far, it is extremely clear that not even a single step towards any standardization was taken. It's very much the ad-hoc hodgepodge of embedded crap companies build when they only care about their own complete product and don't allocate any budget towards any "refactoring" that doesn't directly benefit the end product. They use some ancient Samsung UART for debug (because the first iPhones used a Samsung SoC?), old P.A. Semi I2C controller, the Synopsys DesignWare USB 3 controller (just like some random cheap Allwinner/Rockchip/etc), and here's the fucking kicker, a custom Apple interrupt controller and a custom IOMMU too. These probably predate GICv2/3 at least. But there was no reason for them to switch to the standard Arm GIC and SMMU so they didn't >_<
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Interesting details. Is using Synopsys DesignWare problem?
    - floatboth 6y ago
      Not necessarily – well, it does work :D and at least it mostly speaks XHCI – but it does require non-standard code for reset and initialization.
linuxhiker 6y ago
I haven't run into that problem in years. As long as you are running a mainstream laptop (Asus,Acer,Dell,HP etc...) you will likely not have a problem. I will grant that you should still do a review of the hardware against supported drivers (especially around Wifi)... 9.8/10 it will just work.
kelnos 6y ago
Yup. The last Mac I ran Linux on was a 2016 MBP. And even then, audio and suspend/resume didn't work (well, suspend was fine, resume... not so much), and battery life was terrible. When I first installed it, the keyboard and touchpad required an out-of-tree driver. That driver has been upstreamed, but I hear the 2017 and onward touchbar MBPs still require and out-of-tree driver, and a similar level of things don't work. In 2019 I finally gave up and got a Dell XPS13. It's... basically perfect? The keyboard doesn't suck like recent MacBooks, though the touchpad isn't quite as nice (though really, it's perfectly fine). The only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader, but I knew that going in and didn't care. And subjectively the hardware isn't as pretty, but... oh well. On the plus side, I really do like the "soft touch" palm rest better than the harsh aluminum of the MacBook. I'm definitely interested in the Linux-on-M1 project's progress from an intellectual curiosity standpoint, but I'm expecting long-term as a user it'll be just as -- if not more -- frustrating as running Linux on any Intel MacBook from the last 5 years, which means I won't bother.
- bangonkeyboard 6y ago
  > And even then, audio and suspend/resume didn't work (well, suspend was fine, resume... not so much) The computer never woke and needed to be hard-rebooted if it was ever allowed to suspend? I ran into this after installing Linux on a MacBook, downgrading the kernel to an old LTS release eventually worked.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Yep. The issue was that the NVMe controller wouldn't wake up properly. Downgrading the kernel wouldn't have helped, as support for that NVMe controller itself had just recently been added.
- Teknoman117 6y ago
  My last Mac running Linux was a 2011 MacBook Air 13". My Linux (work) laptop is an XPS15. Now that optimus on Linux is completely transparent (merged into Xorg in April '20). Sleep doesn't seem to work well though. Fans keep spinning and it drains about 10% of the battery per hour. If anyone knows how to get around that "active sleep" mode I'd appreciate it. My personal laptop is an HP Envy X360 with a Ryzen 5 2500U. That was rough when it came out. Windows update updated the bios on the laptop which installed a new GPU firmware that wasn't supported by the Linux driver for a few months. It's been solid since kernel 5.0 came out. IMHO, the Linux experience on the AMD APUs is better than the Windows experience due to how rough the AMD windows drivers can be for the APUs. The fans are always shrieking at me under Windows but at idle they are off in Linux and the battery lasts significantly longer.
shmerl 6y ago
I don't see any reason to do it from practical standpoint, but to do it for fun - why not. If you want something working, I'd also not recommend using hardware from someone like Apple.
noizejoy 6y ago
Not all M1 chips are in laptops. I’m kind of intrigued by the potential of a cool and quiet linux server.
mehrdada 6y ago
This is a depressing thought to hear on a site titled Hacker News. Looking back at the past 20 years, I am quite confident it is just a matter of time before people get a couple drivers working fine on M1 systems (esp. considering Apple does not seem to be actively fighting this). I am sure folks will make it work considering the relative popularity of the device compared to all the esoteric devices that no one uses and Linux still supports. Sure, documentation helps, but it is overrated--people get lots of things working by reverse engineering.

by midrus 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I have confidence in the parallel efforts being spearheaded by Marcan. He knows what he's doing and he's working on it full time.

midrus 6y ago
And that's why this has no long term future. There are not that many people able to achieve this. One single person can't do it forever.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Presumably Apple isn't going to redesign their GPU architecture every generation? How much maintenance do you see this needing?
- asveikau 6y ago
  Uhh... Linux supports a lot of hardware. Probably a lot of in-tree drivers that still get use were started as reverse engineering efforts by a small number of people. Perhaps you're meaning to say Apple will iterate the hardware faster than people can add Linux support? That's plausible. It also was the status quo of Linux on PCs for many years. (Still the case with some hardware I guess.) That hasn't killed Linux yet.
- Jnr 6y ago
  Maybe someone else will also pick up some skills from this. He is streaming all his reversing sessions on Youtube, it is quite interesting.

hitpointdrew 6y ago

Yeah, other than an experimental exercises I don't get why anyone would ever want to do this. You will spend WAY more money for the Apple hardware, you will struggle to get things to stay consistent. If your goal is to run linux then don't buy a Mac.

monopoledance 6y ago
> You will spend WAY more money for the Apple hardware I think right now the new M1 machines are actually priced pretty reasonable. If they'd run Linux, I would buy them in an instant. I mean, try to match the Air with a Thinkpad, especially if you consider the screen. I think there is not even one recent AMD Thinkpad with a > FHD screen. And who wants a 2020 Intel machine? Edit: To make this clear: No Linux, no Mac for me (as I don't believe in MacOS's future at all). But even considering the horrible keyboard, I think the M1 macs are totally worth it just for the hardware. That's a first. And I am the kind of person who feels all warm and fuzzy over ejecting an ultrabay hard drive, or changing RAM/display in < 5 minutes in a laptop.
jonfw 6y ago
If you care about display, trackpad, and battery life, the M1 macs blow everything else out of the water, and for pretty cheap.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. However, I’m optimistic that these will be mostly usable on Linux before they’re too obsolete or outdated. The platform is so popular and iconic that it’s drawing a lot of attention from Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.

CharlesW 6y ago
> No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. That's sound advice. As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?
- RyJones 6y ago
  I was able to install an ARM build of Ubuntu Server using the Parallels beta, and it works fine.
  - 656565656565 6y ago
    It doesn’t work fine, UI resolution restricted, sticking cursor issues, no parallel tools available
  - reacharavindh 6y ago
    Good to hear this. I am waiting for my M1 Mac, and if I can get Linux arm64 virtual machines running for development purposes, I can hack the rest.
- sdevonoes 6y ago
  I'm also interested on this. I usually run Ubuntu via Vagrant + Virtualbox on my Mac.
oblio 6y ago
So the advice is to buy a second hand one 5 years from now?

simonh 6y ago

On the contrary, this could be fantastic for a headless server running on an M1 Mini to build and test ARM code before deploying to AWS Graviton. It doesn't all have to be about laptops.

midrus 6y ago
Agree, this could be a good use case.
axaxs 6y ago
While a valid use case, it feels like overkill. There are much less expensive and more stable ways to accomplish this.
StillBored 6y ago
For the about price of a mac mini: https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-computers/nxp-family/honeycomb/ https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-compute... You get upgradable ram, a PCIe slot for your favorite GPU/etc, and actual mainline linux support sufficient to boot most random linux distros (ok the onboard 10G+ nic might not work without patches). Its not the fastest machine around (A72s) but there are 16 of them, so it does a decent job of building ARM software, and running VMs.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  Well... for the price of a Mac Mini, and some, you get a bare motherboard with a small amount of onboard storage (64G eMMC). No RAM, no video, no power supply or case. And it's not like you can just throw an off-the-shelf GPU in, either; neither nVidia nor AMD graphics cards work on ARM devices -- so if you're expecting something you can use as a desktop, you're in for a hard time.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    Both amdgpu and nouveau work absolutely fine on ARM devices, why wouldn't they?! In fact I made the FreeBSD port of amdgpu work on my Macchiatobin :) Absolutely smooth experience btw, video output works even in UEFI (it actually runs the GOP driver from the card in QEMU), amdgpu works perfectly (played vkquake, supertuxkart, openmw, etc.)

meibo 6y ago

Even on old + modern thinkpads it feels like a lottery which hardware feature will stop working at a particular time, with the distros i've worked myself through. Ethernet, waking up from sleep mode, brightness adjustment... take your pick.

titzer 6y ago
I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1 carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with MD5 hashes and double, trip-checking everything. A reminder that not only software bitrots, but hardware too. Make sure not to buy a Stinkpad (or any hardware) with non-replaceable parts! (and I just bought an M1 Macbook Pro...)
- my123 6y ago
  If you can pinpoint which pages are affected (in most cases you can), you can just add that range to the blacklist. Can work in the meantime, before you have a new machine.
  - titzer 6y ago
    There were dozens of ranges, too many to blacklist. Which made me suspect that it might actually be the memory controller. In which case, it's totally F'd. But given this I went for total data evac.
    - spockz 6y ago
      Couldn’t you just move the disk to another device and read it from there instead of risking data corruption or going through all the hassle of comparing checksums?
      - 6y ago

arghwhat 6y ago

Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use Thinkpads. I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn't support displayport MST), dock connectivity problems (macos freezing or crashing when connected except when it suddenly works for a day, Windows playing disconnect/reconnect sounds in a loop when the machine goes idle), and more, including just today out inexplicable crashing. Install Linux or plug all the "made for windows/macOS" hardware into a Linux box, and all the problems went away. My conclusion, supported by having been a proprietary kernel driver developer for Windows, FreeBSD and Linux, is that any hardware and driver combo tends to be a coin toss, irrespective of platform. But with Linux, drivers that would otherwise be abandoned after a project was shipped, get a chance at being fixed and improved that their proprietary counterparts can never even dream of.

oblio 6y ago
The thing is, many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes. So your anecdata goes against a mountain of anecdata from people using those platforms.
- mmphosis 6y ago
  The thing is, many more people are using phone and tablets, than Windows and many more people are using Windows, than Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes and many more people are using desktop Linuxes, than desktop BSDs. So the anecdata goes against your mountain of anecdata that goes against a world of anecdata from people using those platforms.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Yeah, because when I use a phone or tablet I have to worry about installing my own drivers :-) Apples, oranges.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight. There are Mac desktops as well. That said, I'd say the list of mandatory components on a laptop is: - Decent GPU Drivers - Workable power management with sleep/ awake - Trackpad (this should be straight forward) The webcam, and brightness controls are stretch goals. I can't imaging the trackpad is vastly different from currently shipping ones. The Webcam might cause some significant headaches since Apple secures that fairly tightly. The onboard wifi modem is likely worthless, from what I recall, many of them are even in Windows laptops due to proprietary drivers.

floatboth 6y ago
Most Windows laptops thankfully use Intel Wi-Fi. Apple is unfortunately completely married to Broadcom. There are open drivers for Broadcom Wi-Fi, at least not-the-newest ones, but they do suck.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Good, sounds like things have improved a lot since I was using Linux. Sucky drivers are a starting point, last time I was on Linux as a daily driver, I had to use a PCMCIA card with a binary blob from Broadcom because the internal wireless card was dead. Hopefully with a little bit of money and some enthusiasm from the team, they'll be able to make more progress. A lot of people bitching about this being a waste of effort, but all the things they do here have follow on effects. If they improve the Broadcom drivers for the M1, much of that work will directly benefit everyone else on Broadcom.

rowanG077 6y ago

I'm not sure why you are so pessimistic. There are many community supported linux devices that work fine. The Microsoft Surface line being a prominent example. There are patches available for all recent kernels. And afaik all generations are supported. Here custom drivers have also been written.

fomine3 6y ago
Microsoft Surface don't use special hardware as much as Apple's laptop. Especially for M1, they uses original GPU, boot system, power management, etcetc...

na85 6y ago

>subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls Honestly this sounds exactly like my experience with linux on any laptop, including three thinkpads. Linux is a great desktop and server OS but the UX of a laptop actually demands a certain level of polish/fit-and-finish that linux desktop environments just don't have, otherwise it's constantly getting in your way.

kiwijamo 6y ago
Suprisely to me even, all these work work fine on Debian. Debian needed me to slide load the intel wireless drivers (a disappointing aspect I grant) but otherwise everything just worked right out of the box. Lenovo X1 Carbon 5th Generation.

rgomez 6y ago

Well about the hardware support, i.e. the Ubuntu Desktop certified hardware list is quite long [1], and I'm quite sure there are a lot more perfectly working brands/models that are just not appearing there. I've been using a Dell Inspiron model, for 8 years now not appearing in that list as a daily driver and every major distro worked perfectly out of the box, some tweak required from time to time but that's it. [1] https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop

sneak 6y ago

The first week that XNU ran on ARM, it didn't have very good hardware support either.

Kwpolska 6y ago
Apple has all the documentation needed to write drivers for all the custom hardware found in an iPhone (the original XNU-on-ARM device) or in an M1 Mac. The Asahi volunteers and Corellium don’t, they will need to do much more work, including reverse-engineering. So, what’s your point?
- sneak 6y ago
  My point is that throwing up one's hands and saying "it's hopeless and it sucks!" literally the first day linux has been brought up on a new board is... premature. Yes, it will have to be RE'd. Yes, that takes time.

IOT_Apprentice 6y ago

Linux does run, and it also runs on the M1.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Agreed. Check out the state of Linux support on Intel Macs that were released in and after 2016[1], it's abysmal. Once Apple started adding non-standard hardware, Linux support never caught up. It isn't like the lack of support is Linux developers' fault. Apple doesn't provide datasheets for their hardware, and they don't cooperate with developers writing drivers for their custom hardware. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ARM SoCs that "run Linux", but that doesn't mean much because they're actually running Linux forks, and someone needs to maintain those forks, and build and release custom images for each SoC. I don't see M1 Macs diverting from that fate without significant support from Apple themselves. [1] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/ https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/

Skunkleton 6y ago
> that doesn't mean much because they're actually running Linux forks Many of these Arm SoCs are running linux forks because there are some terrible baked in drivers, and no spec associated with them. Still, that is a step ahead of the M1 as there are at least drivers that don't have to be decompiled and reverse engineered.
- vetinari 6y ago
  These drivers are baked, even if there are specs for them. The thing is, that these SoCs have no PCIe or other enumerable bus. You (=your kernel) must know what hardware it is running on and which drivers to load without being able to ask the hardware, what is really present. One wrong POKE and the entire system can hang. And that is on top of the problem, how to boot in the first place. There is not such thing as UEFI on these SoCs. Every single one is a special snowflake with its own special way to boot. Hence, kernels built for specific systems, even if it is just Device Tree.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Things have gotten a lot better in ARM-land recently. It's possible to build a generic ARM kernel that will boot on a lot of hardware, as long as the bootloader passes the right device tree blob. Most device vendors don't really have a need or incentive to use this, though. A generic kernel is much larger and wastes flash space, and most vendors don't care about running anything but their OS image on it, so they of course just build a kernel specific to their hardware. But in theory it should be possible at some point to use a generic ARM Debian installer to install your own OS on a random ARM device, assuming the relevant drivers and device tree have been upstreamed.

plauribre 6y ago

Apple's poor support for Linux on Mac hardware may reverse if the company gains data center ambition for the M1. Partnering with a cloud provider (maybe Microsoft?) to deliver seamless Linux deployment on M1 would be significant...

floatboth 6y ago
Microsoft already has a good partner in Ampere, a company fully dedicated to servers and standards. Apple clearly doesn't seem interested. The M1 is just a scaled-up version of the iDevice SoCs. From the reverse engineering we've seen so far, it is extremely clear that not even a single step towards any standardization was taken. It's very much the ad-hoc hodgepodge of embedded crap companies build when they only care about their own complete product and don't allocate any budget towards any "refactoring" that doesn't directly benefit the end product. They use some ancient Samsung UART for debug (because the first iPhones used a Samsung SoC?), old P.A. Semi I2C controller, the Synopsys DesignWare USB 3 controller (just like some random cheap Allwinner/Rockchip/etc), and here's the fucking kicker, a custom Apple interrupt controller and a custom IOMMU too. These probably predate GICv2/3 at least. But there was no reason for them to switch to the standard Arm GIC and SMMU so they didn't >_<
- fomine3 6y ago
  Interesting details. Is using Synopsys DesignWare problem?
  - floatboth 6y ago
    Not necessarily – well, it does work :D and at least it mostly speaks XHCI – but it does require non-standard code for reset and initialization.

linuxhiker 6y ago

I haven't run into that problem in years. As long as you are running a mainstream laptop (Asus,Acer,Dell,HP etc...) you will likely not have a problem. I will grant that you should still do a review of the hardware against supported drivers (especially around Wifi)... 9.8/10 it will just work.

kelnos 6y ago

Yup. The last Mac I ran Linux on was a 2016 MBP. And even then, audio and suspend/resume didn't work (well, suspend was fine, resume... not so much), and battery life was terrible. When I first installed it, the keyboard and touchpad required an out-of-tree driver. That driver has been upstreamed, but I hear the 2017 and onward touchbar MBPs still require and out-of-tree driver, and a similar level of things don't work. In 2019 I finally gave up and got a Dell XPS13. It's... basically perfect? The keyboard doesn't suck like recent MacBooks, though the touchpad isn't quite as nice (though really, it's perfectly fine). The only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader, but I knew that going in and didn't care. And subjectively the hardware isn't as pretty, but... oh well. On the plus side, I really do like the "soft touch" palm rest better than the harsh aluminum of the MacBook. I'm definitely interested in the Linux-on-M1 project's progress from an intellectual curiosity standpoint, but I'm expecting long-term as a user it'll be just as -- if not more -- frustrating as running Linux on any Intel MacBook from the last 5 years, which means I won't bother.

bangonkeyboard 6y ago
> And even then, audio and suspend/resume didn't work (well, suspend was fine, resume... not so much) The computer never woke and needed to be hard-rebooted if it was ever allowed to suspend? I ran into this after installing Linux on a MacBook, downgrading the kernel to an old LTS release eventually worked.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Yep. The issue was that the NVMe controller wouldn't wake up properly. Downgrading the kernel wouldn't have helped, as support for that NVMe controller itself had just recently been added.
Teknoman117 6y ago
My last Mac running Linux was a 2011 MacBook Air 13". My Linux (work) laptop is an XPS15. Now that optimus on Linux is completely transparent (merged into Xorg in April '20). Sleep doesn't seem to work well though. Fans keep spinning and it drains about 10% of the battery per hour. If anyone knows how to get around that "active sleep" mode I'd appreciate it. My personal laptop is an HP Envy X360 with a Ryzen 5 2500U. That was rough when it came out. Windows update updated the bios on the laptop which installed a new GPU firmware that wasn't supported by the Linux driver for a few months. It's been solid since kernel 5.0 came out. IMHO, the Linux experience on the AMD APUs is better than the Windows experience due to how rough the AMD windows drivers can be for the APUs. The fans are always shrieking at me under Windows but at idle they are off in Linux and the battery lasts significantly longer.

shmerl 6y ago

I don't see any reason to do it from practical standpoint, but to do it for fun - why not. If you want something working, I'd also not recommend using hardware from someone like Apple.

noizejoy 6y ago

Not all M1 chips are in laptops. I’m kind of intrigued by the potential of a cool and quiet linux server.

mehrdada 6y ago

This is a depressing thought to hear on a site titled Hacker News. Looking back at the past 20 years, I am quite confident it is just a matter of time before people get a couple drivers working fine on M1 systems (esp. considering Apple does not seem to be actively fighting this). I am sure folks will make it work considering the relative popularity of the device compared to all the esoteric devices that no one uses and Linux still supports. Sure, documentation helps, but it is overrated--people get lots of things working by reverse engineering.