9 ms·

It always impresses the hell out of me when I see side projects like this project that I couldn’t do myself. On the economic/$$ perspective: the Linux in M1 pr

It always impresses the hell out of me when I see side projects like this project that I couldn’t do myself. On the economic/$$ perspective: the Linux in M1 projects are probably targeted at Mac Minis and given that when you pay for a Mac Mini you are paying for hardware and Apple software. Does this make sense economically, comparing other bare bone systems with a Mac Mini style form factor?

ducktective 5y ago
What is your experience about Linux on Macs in general?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I have an old MacBook Air running Ubuntu Linux, and that is my only experience.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Not the OP, anyway I used Debian on my old Mac Mini (first model, PPC CPU) about 2007 or so as media player connected to a projector, all mounted on a wooden shelf over a door; very compact and fit nicely in the living room. I used a media player roughly similar to Kodi (can't remember the name atm) that loaded just after boot without requiring login, set up to connect automatically to my NFS NAS and present all media as browseable directories; I later also added a USB TV dongle for DVB-T TV, so it was practical enough to be used by the girlfriend who isn't much into computers. A wireless IR keyboard with sort of a trackball (actually a giant equivalent of the Thinkpad red mouse "thing") completed it. It lasted a few years though, as pretty soon I discovered that a Raspberry PI that cost about 1/25 could do almost the same things, so I gave the Mini to a relative of mine who is an architect, and never heard that awful loud "boonnnnng" sound again. I had to fiddle a bit with startup scripts, kernel recompiles etc. to bring it to useable level, today it would be probably a plain install, but was helpful and taught me a couple things. As for MacOS, I tried it, it was like a large polished, beautiful, golden cage. It has every possible comfort, but it was still a cage, and it lasted a few hours before I installed Debian over it.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  Also not the OP. I've got a Mac Mini (2014?) that I bought for a Mac/Windows contract. Contract is long over so I wiped Windows and now dual-boot MacOS and Pop!_OS (a terrible name). Works fine. The machine is tolerably fast/quiet. I'd scrub the MacOS entirely as I'm not a huge fan but still like to mess with Rocksmith now and again.
- macNchz 5y ago
  Not OP, but I've used a Mac as my main computer since I was a kid in the mid 90s, and I've installed Linux on most of my Macs at some point or another since like 2002. Every single time I've found it sufficiently cumbersome and glitchy that I moved back off of it within a few weeks. Last fall–needing a new computer, frustrated with the slow iOSification of MacOS, and anticipating months to years of compatibility issues with developer tools on the M1–I built a desktop PC and installed Ubuntu. I figured if running Linux was as annoying as it had been on my Macs I'd just install windows and run a VM like I'd done for years on Mac, but it has been way smoother than I expected. There are still a few driver issues now and then, but I mostly just bought the newest hardware and didn't make much of an effort to ensure compatibility. I'm not sure I'll buy another Mac at this point, but if I do I'm not going to bother with Linux.
mschuster91 5y ago
At least for Apple MacBooks, there is nothing in the Windows world that comes even close to them in terms of pure hardware capability. The Linux software-side support is... a bit of a mess though.
squarefoot 5y ago
I think this might be useful for those who already are into the Mac ecosystem, so they'd pay for one anyway. I personally wouldn't touch one with a 100 meters pole, not even for free, especially after the recent developments about privacy and security related to Apple.
jmnicolas 5y ago
It's not about making sense economically it's just that there are not many ARM platforms out there, so if you want a native ARM dev box, Apple is pretty much the only choice.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  That's not true at all. There's plenty of ARM platforms out there, especially in the Linux world they've been around a long time (does the Raspberry PI ring any bells? Or Nvidia Jetson? Or Freescale iMX6? Or Beaglebone Black?). Of course, they don't have M1 performance, but best in class performance was not a condition in you statement.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    You're right I should have said an arm laptop. Microsoft have (had?) one and that's pretty much it.
    - commoner 5y ago
      The Pinebook Pro is an ARM laptop designed for Linux: https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ It doesn't have the performance of a MacBook, but it's also just $220 (when it's back in stock).
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      There are some nice Chromebooks in that space
phire 5y ago
If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. But, if your requirement is for a "high performance" ARM based machine, suddenly the M1 macs become very appealing. Many of the other solutions are ARM dev boards that have a tenth of the performance and very limited RAM. There are some half decent Snapdragon based laptops, but that only gets you about 50% of the way to M1 performance.
- darkwater 5y ago
  > If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. Care to elaborate, or at least some names/models and opinions? I might be in the market for a fanless home server in that form factor. I might end up just buying a Synology but I would like to run HomeAssistant on it as well (although currently it just works fine on a Raspberry Pi4)
  - haswell 5y ago
    It’s larger than a Mac mini because it’s meant to be a NAS, but I’ve been running FreeNAS on an HP MicroServer for almost a decade now and it’s been mostly great. They still make products in that line although I’m not very familiar with the newer offerings.
    - abrookewood 5y ago
      Yep, I have one too and it must be close to 10 years old. Still chugging along running Ubuntu LTS and serving files via ZFS.
  - runjake 5y ago
    Intel NUC or any of the NUC clones produced by other PC manufacturers, like the Gigabyte Brix.
  - OldHand2018 5y ago
luke2m 5y ago
Maybe not for new hardware, but in the future, mac users get the new M7 or whatever, and want to run a Linux desktop or server on their old hardware. And if this project gets stable enough, I would want to buy an old ARM mac to use as a linux machine.
tomxor 5y ago
There is also another factor for some of us... Although practically I am interested in running Linux on an appleM1, my conscious will no longer allow me to fund the company producing it, so I can never own one.
- nisegami 5y ago
  Is buying a used M1 Mac an option?
  - pcdoodle 5y ago
    I'm in the same boat. If I need one, I'll buy it used.
    - speed_spread 5y ago
      To add to your torment, sustaining the used market provides additional incentive to those buying new since they know the hardware will preserve its value longer. You'll still be indirectly supporting the company by justifying the value of their products.
  - alfonsodev 5y ago
    I bought my M1 refurbished from Apple, so far zero problems. https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
    - derefr 5y ago
      I think the GP didn’t mean “in non-new condition”, but rather “from the secondary market, so that you aren’t giving Apple your money.” Getting a refurbished Mac from Apple still involves giving Apple money.
      - meowster 5y ago
        Also, supporting the secondary market, supports the primary market. Additionally, being seen with Apple hardware supports Apple's legitimacy.
jon-wood 5y ago
If you just want something in that sort of form factor, buy an Intel NUC which will work out of the box with any Linux you throw at it.
metahost 5y ago
Not just that but also the fact that the person is so young and so talented! It is amazing and humbling.
gizdan 5y ago
If the performance of the M1 with Linux matches the performance with macOS I honestly believe it's worth it. Apple has produced a wonderful product and personally I'm very likely to purchase a Macbook Pro M1 if Linux is stable on it.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Why not get the Air? Are you optimistic that the touchbar will be fully supported?
  - gizdan 5y ago
    Because I stupidly forget that something as stupid as a touchbar was created in the first place. Perhaps it'll be the Air in that case. Edit: worth noting that the Air is more likely to thermal throttle the Pro, which would be a major reason to go for the Pro. I support it'll be alright if it's mostly connected to a keyboard.
    - InvaderFizz 5y ago
      Rumors are that the touchbar is going away with the next generation of MBP anyways, so it may not matter. As for thermal throttle on the Air, you can spend $10 and 10 minutes installing thermal pads to bridge the CPU and the aluminum backplate. This will cause the backplate to heat up more, but nearly eliminates any thermal throttling even under sustained load.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      Go with the Air. It's not a huge difference in thermal performance as far as I can tell. We're going to support the Touch Bar to make those machines useful, but given it's likely to be dead in the next generation, it's unlikely Linux will get any kind of ecosystem for it unless someone is really dedicated. I can only promise basic function key emulation (same kind of thing you get on T2 Macs with Windows/Linux), and it will take some time since that needs a couple bespoke drivers and we have bigger fish to fry first. Then again, you could also wait for the next generation. As long as M1X didn't redo the GPU, which seems unlikely, I don't expect support for that chip to lag much behind M1.
ntnsndr 5y ago
It's good planning ahead for when Apple no longer supports perfectly fine old-ish machines. Both my mother and wife are now using Linux not because their computers broke but because Apple gave up on them.
- cguess 5y ago
  How old are their machines? Apple's next MacOS version supports MacBooks Pros going back to 2015. Seven years is a pretty long support cycle.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Is it? Windows has always had an extended support life cycle if ten years, and Windows 11 is heavily criticised for their new restrictions on hardware. I've seen Windows 10 run just fine on budget devices that go further back than that. You can get the most recent Ubuntu LTS to run on a ten year old Thinkpad without issue. The performance may be limited bytthe hardware, but the software isn't the problem here. Honestly, if I were to pay the premium prices Apple asks for their products, I'd expect them to outsupport a bunch of hackers that had nothing to do with the hardware.
    - masalah 5y ago
      It's ridiculous how people downvote this and support apple and other corps rendering otherwise fine hardware into waste
  - arepublicadoceu 5y ago
    Oh my, the mobile market really skewed our perception of reasonable support cycle. What a crazy world where 7 years is a “pretty long support cycle” for personal computers. I have money to spend on computers but I still use a 10 years old laptop running windows and Linux (both supported) and with absolutely no desire to upgrade it as it runs better than when I bought it (after a ssd swap and more memory). There’s nothing that I do on my personal computer that would be improved by purchasing a new machine. Same goes with most people I know.
rkangel 5y ago
> the Linux in M1 projects are probably targeted at Mac Minis I'm not sure that's true. What the M1 gives you is an incredibly powerful processor that's also very power efficient. That gives you a spectacularly performing laptop with good battery life, making the M1 laptops compelling even if you want to run Linux. If you're plugged into the wall the M1s are still quick, but there are other options to get you into the same ballpark. There are no other options that use as little power.
- vletal 5y ago
  I'm curious about the power efficiency. From all my experience, all laptops I had usually drained battery much faster on Linux than on Windows. And these were very standard mainstream machines. M1 is a proprietary CPU which requires reverse engineering to even make OS running. I wonder how close to "native" is the Linux going to get.
  - chippiewill 5y ago
    I doubt the CPU itself will be that much trouble, it's still mostly an ARM CPU. Power draw problems usually arise because the drivers are half baked and don't know how to turn the peripherals off when they're not being used. It might not be native power efficiency, but if non-M1 Mac linux experience is anything to go by then it's still plausible that it can run circles around x86 based laptops with good Linux driver support.
- hvis 5y ago
  > What the M1 gives you is an incredibly powerful processor that's also very power efficient. While true, the benchmarks show that recent AMD CPUs have comparable power efficiency, even on single-core loads. And it might be that a significant part of M1's advantage lives in some (proprietary) scheduling software, so the Asahi Linux effort might not reach the same numbers even with a few years of work. But then again, some companies just standardize on Apple hardware for their employees, so this can at least allow people to run GNU/Linux in those situations. Someday.
rjsw 5y ago
The RPi4 and new Pine64 Quartz64 can both have 8GB of RAM, the M1 is faster though.
davidbanham 5y ago
That power efficiency also buys you thermal efficiency, which buys you silence. Silent small form factor PCs are available, but to get one that won’t throttle all the time is pretty spendy.

ducktective 5y ago

What is your experience about Linux on Macs in general?

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I have an old MacBook Air running Ubuntu Linux, and that is my only experience.
squarefoot 5y ago
Not the OP, anyway I used Debian on my old Mac Mini (first model, PPC CPU) about 2007 or so as media player connected to a projector, all mounted on a wooden shelf over a door; very compact and fit nicely in the living room. I used a media player roughly similar to Kodi (can't remember the name atm) that loaded just after boot without requiring login, set up to connect automatically to my NFS NAS and present all media as browseable directories; I later also added a USB TV dongle for DVB-T TV, so it was practical enough to be used by the girlfriend who isn't much into computers. A wireless IR keyboard with sort of a trackball (actually a giant equivalent of the Thinkpad red mouse "thing") completed it. It lasted a few years though, as pretty soon I discovered that a Raspberry PI that cost about 1/25 could do almost the same things, so I gave the Mini to a relative of mine who is an architect, and never heard that awful loud "boonnnnng" sound again. I had to fiddle a bit with startup scripts, kernel recompiles etc. to bring it to useable level, today it would be probably a plain install, but was helpful and taught me a couple things. As for MacOS, I tried it, it was like a large polished, beautiful, golden cage. It has every possible comfort, but it was still a cage, and it lasted a few hours before I installed Debian over it.
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
Also not the OP. I've got a Mac Mini (2014?) that I bought for a Mac/Windows contract. Contract is long over so I wiped Windows and now dual-boot MacOS and Pop!_OS (a terrible name). Works fine. The machine is tolerably fast/quiet. I'd scrub the MacOS entirely as I'm not a huge fan but still like to mess with Rocksmith now and again.
macNchz 5y ago
Not OP, but I've used a Mac as my main computer since I was a kid in the mid 90s, and I've installed Linux on most of my Macs at some point or another since like 2002. Every single time I've found it sufficiently cumbersome and glitchy that I moved back off of it within a few weeks. Last fall–needing a new computer, frustrated with the slow iOSification of MacOS, and anticipating months to years of compatibility issues with developer tools on the M1–I built a desktop PC and installed Ubuntu. I figured if running Linux was as annoying as it had been on my Macs I'd just install windows and run a VM like I'd done for years on Mac, but it has been way smoother than I expected. There are still a few driver issues now and then, but I mostly just bought the newest hardware and didn't make much of an effort to ensure compatibility. I'm not sure I'll buy another Mac at this point, but if I do I'm not going to bother with Linux.

mschuster91 5y ago

At least for Apple MacBooks, there is nothing in the Windows world that comes even close to them in terms of pure hardware capability. The Linux software-side support is... a bit of a mess though.

squarefoot 5y ago

I think this might be useful for those who already are into the Mac ecosystem, so they'd pay for one anyway. I personally wouldn't touch one with a 100 meters pole, not even for free, especially after the recent developments about privacy and security related to Apple.

jmnicolas 5y ago

It's not about making sense economically it's just that there are not many ARM platforms out there, so if you want a native ARM dev box, Apple is pretty much the only choice.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
That's not true at all. There's plenty of ARM platforms out there, especially in the Linux world they've been around a long time (does the Raspberry PI ring any bells? Or Nvidia Jetson? Or Freescale iMX6? Or Beaglebone Black?). Of course, they don't have M1 performance, but best in class performance was not a condition in you statement.
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  You're right I should have said an arm laptop. Microsoft have (had?) one and that's pretty much it.
  - commoner 5y ago
    The Pinebook Pro is an ARM laptop designed for Linux: https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ It doesn't have the performance of a MacBook, but it's also just $220 (when it's back in stock).
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    There are some nice Chromebooks in that space

phire 5y ago

If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. But, if your requirement is for a "high performance" ARM based machine, suddenly the M1 macs become very appealing. Many of the other solutions are ARM dev boards that have a tenth of the performance and very limited RAM. There are some half decent Snapdragon based laptops, but that only gets you about 50% of the way to M1 performance.

darkwater 5y ago
> If you just want a system in the Mac Mini (or MacBook) style form factor, it's probably not worth it. There are plenty of x86 based alternatives and even some low cost ARM solutions. Care to elaborate, or at least some names/models and opinions? I might be in the market for a fanless home server in that form factor. I might end up just buying a Synology but I would like to run HomeAssistant on it as well (although currently it just works fine on a Raspberry Pi4)
- haswell 5y ago
  It’s larger than a Mac mini because it’s meant to be a NAS, but I’ve been running FreeNAS on an HP MicroServer for almost a decade now and it’s been mostly great. They still make products in that line although I’m not very familiar with the newer offerings.
  - abrookewood 5y ago
    Yep, I have one too and it must be close to 10 years old. Still chugging along running Ubuntu LTS and serving files via ZFS.
- runjake 5y ago
  Intel NUC or any of the NUC clones produced by other PC manufacturers, like the Gigabyte Brix.
- OldHand2018 5y ago

luke2m 5y ago

Maybe not for new hardware, but in the future, mac users get the new M7 or whatever, and want to run a Linux desktop or server on their old hardware. And if this project gets stable enough, I would want to buy an old ARM mac to use as a linux machine.

tomxor 5y ago

There is also another factor for some of us... Although practically I am interested in running Linux on an appleM1, my conscious will no longer allow me to fund the company producing it, so I can never own one.

nisegami 5y ago
Is buying a used M1 Mac an option?
- pcdoodle 5y ago
  I'm in the same boat. If I need one, I'll buy it used.
  - speed_spread 5y ago
    To add to your torment, sustaining the used market provides additional incentive to those buying new since they know the hardware will preserve its value longer. You'll still be indirectly supporting the company by justifying the value of their products.
- alfonsodev 5y ago
  I bought my M1 refurbished from Apple, so far zero problems. https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
  - derefr 5y ago
    I think the GP didn’t mean “in non-new condition”, but rather “from the secondary market, so that you aren’t giving Apple your money.” Getting a refurbished Mac from Apple still involves giving Apple money.
    - meowster 5y ago
      Also, supporting the secondary market, supports the primary market. Additionally, being seen with Apple hardware supports Apple's legitimacy.

jon-wood 5y ago

If you just want something in that sort of form factor, buy an Intel NUC which will work out of the box with any Linux you throw at it.

metahost 5y ago

Not just that but also the fact that the person is so young and so talented! It is amazing and humbling.

gizdan 5y ago

If the performance of the M1 with Linux matches the performance with macOS I honestly believe it's worth it. Apple has produced a wonderful product and personally I'm very likely to purchase a Macbook Pro M1 if Linux is stable on it.

arvinsim 5y ago
Why not get the Air? Are you optimistic that the touchbar will be fully supported?
- gizdan 5y ago
  Because I stupidly forget that something as stupid as a touchbar was created in the first place. Perhaps it'll be the Air in that case. Edit: worth noting that the Air is more likely to thermal throttle the Pro, which would be a major reason to go for the Pro. I support it'll be alright if it's mostly connected to a keyboard.
  - InvaderFizz 5y ago
    Rumors are that the touchbar is going away with the next generation of MBP anyways, so it may not matter. As for thermal throttle on the Air, you can spend $10 and 10 minutes installing thermal pads to bridge the CPU and the aluminum backplate. This will cause the backplate to heat up more, but nearly eliminates any thermal throttling even under sustained load.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Go with the Air. It's not a huge difference in thermal performance as far as I can tell. We're going to support the Touch Bar to make those machines useful, but given it's likely to be dead in the next generation, it's unlikely Linux will get any kind of ecosystem for it unless someone is really dedicated. I can only promise basic function key emulation (same kind of thing you get on T2 Macs with Windows/Linux), and it will take some time since that needs a couple bespoke drivers and we have bigger fish to fry first. Then again, you could also wait for the next generation. As long as M1X didn't redo the GPU, which seems unlikely, I don't expect support for that chip to lag much behind M1.

ntnsndr 5y ago

It's good planning ahead for when Apple no longer supports perfectly fine old-ish machines. Both my mother and wife are now using Linux not because their computers broke but because Apple gave up on them.

cguess 5y ago
How old are their machines? Apple's next MacOS version supports MacBooks Pros going back to 2015. Seven years is a pretty long support cycle.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Is it? Windows has always had an extended support life cycle if ten years, and Windows 11 is heavily criticised for their new restrictions on hardware. I've seen Windows 10 run just fine on budget devices that go further back than that. You can get the most recent Ubuntu LTS to run on a ten year old Thinkpad without issue. The performance may be limited bytthe hardware, but the software isn't the problem here. Honestly, if I were to pay the premium prices Apple asks for their products, I'd expect them to outsupport a bunch of hackers that had nothing to do with the hardware.
  - masalah 5y ago
    It's ridiculous how people downvote this and support apple and other corps rendering otherwise fine hardware into waste
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  Oh my, the mobile market really skewed our perception of reasonable support cycle. What a crazy world where 7 years is a “pretty long support cycle” for personal computers. I have money to spend on computers but I still use a 10 years old laptop running windows and Linux (both supported) and with absolutely no desire to upgrade it as it runs better than when I bought it (after a ssd swap and more memory). There’s nothing that I do on my personal computer that would be improved by purchasing a new machine. Same goes with most people I know.

rkangel 5y ago

> the Linux in M1 projects are probably targeted at Mac Minis I'm not sure that's true. What the M1 gives you is an incredibly powerful processor that's also very power efficient. That gives you a spectacularly performing laptop with good battery life, making the M1 laptops compelling even if you want to run Linux. If you're plugged into the wall the M1s are still quick, but there are other options to get you into the same ballpark. There are no other options that use as little power.

vletal 5y ago
I'm curious about the power efficiency. From all my experience, all laptops I had usually drained battery much faster on Linux than on Windows. And these were very standard mainstream machines. M1 is a proprietary CPU which requires reverse engineering to even make OS running. I wonder how close to "native" is the Linux going to get.
- chippiewill 5y ago
  I doubt the CPU itself will be that much trouble, it's still mostly an ARM CPU. Power draw problems usually arise because the drivers are half baked and don't know how to turn the peripherals off when they're not being used. It might not be native power efficiency, but if non-M1 Mac linux experience is anything to go by then it's still plausible that it can run circles around x86 based laptops with good Linux driver support.
hvis 5y ago
> What the M1 gives you is an incredibly powerful processor that's also very power efficient. While true, the benchmarks show that recent AMD CPUs have comparable power efficiency, even on single-core loads. And it might be that a significant part of M1's advantage lives in some (proprietary) scheduling software, so the Asahi Linux effort might not reach the same numbers even with a few years of work. But then again, some companies just standardize on Apple hardware for their employees, so this can at least allow people to run GNU/Linux in those situations. Someday.

rjsw 5y ago

The RPi4 and new Pine64 Quartz64 can both have 8GB of RAM, the M1 is faster though.

davidbanham 5y ago

That power efficiency also buys you thermal efficiency, which buys you silence. Silent small form factor PCs are available, but to get one that won’t throttle all the time is pretty spendy.