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Apple is looking for “Linux Driver and Kernel Developers”
- phendrenad2 6y agoWow! This is exciting. I'll bet Apple is going to either release a WSL-like environment in MacOS, or release a Linux distro tuned for M1 Mac Minis (which are frequently used as mini servers).
- luke2m 6y agoIt doesn’t seem like Apple, but that would be awesome. It could be something for internal infrastructure, but the mention of ARM and SOCs seems to say otherwise...
- adamnemecek 6y agoIt might be for running tests in the cloud.
- StreamBright 6y agoIt would amazing to have Linux + Apple UI. The relatively new virtualization API makes it easier to boot up Linux on MacOS. multipass already works decently.
- type0 6y agoThis is like waiting for a donkey to lay an egg, I wouldn't get my hopes so high.
- adamcstephens 6y agoI’ll take that bet, since Apple releasing anything like WSL or Linux related seems very unlikely to me.
- slimscsi 6y agoI think this is very unlikely. I think it way more likely that apples CPU team uses linux to test chip designs, and engineering samples.
- Operyl 6y agoLooks like a lot of these were posted beginning of last year. Wonder what they’re planning.
- worg 6y agoMy bet would be better docker integration on mac (removing the need for a VM, maybe providing a Containerd.framework?)
- markhahn 6y agoIt's hard to imagine that Apple thinks they're winning much by having a weird and iconoclastic mach+bsd+extra system. It's a fairly big technical debt to carry alone, and is it giving them any differential advantage? Imagine if MacOS-Next is Linux-based. The job description mentions "you will be implementing BSP" - as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_support_package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_support_package ?
- adamcstephens 6y agoApple wants full control of the stack, and doesn’t care if it is unlike everybody else. Sometimes I think they prefer to be completely different, but likely it’s just a matter of creating things in a bubble.
- soneil 6y agoOne doesn't necessarily mean the other. For example, the Airport Extreme ran VxWorks and the Time Capsule ran NetBSD - having it running somewhere doesn't mean it's the next MacOS.
- adamnemecek 6y agoYeah it won't. Linux is kind of a clusterfuck compared with BSD.
- akvadrako 6y agoIt's about the licensing. BSD allows Apple to pick and choose what they release source for.
- saagarjha 6y agoThere are a couple of excited comments here, but this is nothing new. The position is one of silicon validation, so this job is one of getting Linux running on new Apple silicon for testing purposes during development, rather than something that they are going to ship. (I’ve heard rumors that Apple’s chips generally have Linux running on them before Darwin.)
- lykr0n 6y agoMy guess is that they're looking to adopt semi-custom hardware for their internal cloud. Do what Google/Amazon/Microsoft have been doing with their own clouds- offloading virtualization and processing functions to FGPA/ASICs