37 ms·

Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

367 points by svenpeter 5y ago

noisy_boy 5y ago
Though I'm ok with my Thinkpad X1E Gen 2 (not super happy but ok), I had made up my mind about Framework being my next machine. Now with Asahi Linux's progress, build quality of the Macbook combined with flexibility of Linux makes it a serious option. Very interested to see how things turn out on both these fronts in next few years.
- juancampa 5y ago
  I'm curious, what don't you like about the X1E? I have a Gen 3 and it's super wonky with an external monitor, nvidia + linux seems to still be a mistake.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    Battery life isn't great (I occasionally take it out for about 2-2.5 hours which it does manage but a longer duration would probably kill it). Once froze and refused to resume when I tried to put it on standby and I had to do multiple hard resets to somehow make it going again (could be related to S3 config in BIOS) - scared me off to ever try to standby again. Also, I think you are 100% correct on Nvidia + Linux point; I did an upgrade to Nvidia driver version 460 (I think) and it basically made everything so slow that it was unusable. When I tried to downgrade, apt showed that uninstalling the driver would uninstall entire pop-desktop so had to do some hacks to downgrade back to version 450. Thankfully everything works well with that version including multiple external displays so I have locked the version via Synaptic. But yeah, not a great overall experience; someone less experienced with Linux might have (justifiably) given in to frustration and switched to Windows or Mac.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Nvidia and Linux, a frustrating duo. Nvidia! Fuck you!
SamuelAdams 5y ago
> Amusingly, while implementing support for this in Linux, we ran into a bug in Linux’s ARM SMMU support that had been there ever since 52-bit address support was introduced. This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed? Either way, Linux now correctly supports standard ARM systems with up to 4 PiB of RAM ;-). Interesting how working on new technologies helps improve existing things for all users. Sort of reminds me how NASA invests in R&D and those investments eventually come back to military and consumers.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Especially handy for SpaceX, which employs a number of ex-NASA folk. SpaceX wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for the investment in NASA.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  > This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed? Are there even ARM systems with that amount of RAM? I assume it's something in the order of what super computers use, but I don't think any of them are ARM. That doesn't sound that surprising to me that no one noticed if no one uses that much RAM.
  - pthariensflame 5y ago
    There’s at least one Armv8 supercomputer out there today, and it’s a beast too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)
hbbio 5y ago
The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.
- wronglebowski 5y ago
  I do wonder what Apple will do if this gets any sort of traction. I fear they only allow disabling of secure boot/other OS installs due to fear of regulation. Apple wants you running their OS and in their walled garden.
  - favorited 5y ago
    Apple explicitly enabled support for this: https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126018068955136/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551...
  - dilap 5y ago
    I don't know, when they were on Intel they went out of their way to support dual-booting with Windows. Maybe if 20XX really does become year the "year of desktop on linux" they'll start to get worried? But for now it seems like an easy calculation that it only benefits Apple to allow easy dual-booting to Linux -- it makes their hardware more appealing to the hard-core geek crowd (w/ disproprtionate mind-share and knock-on effects), while still having essentially zero chance of Linux cannibalizing your every-day user market.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    Apple is at no risk of having Linux stealing their users away. Unless someone makes a business of reselling Macbooks with linux being preinstalled and in some magical way that business becomes immensely successful.
    - 5y ago
yosito 5y ago
As a Linux user coming from Mac, I'm super excited about this, since Apple's hardware is some of the best. As a web application developer and Linux newbie, I don't feel like I have the expertise to be able to contribute to this, but I wish I did.
- bartvk 5y ago
  Me neither, so I donate to Marcan on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts (I'm not saying you should, I just thought your point is good and I wanted to point out the possibility of sponsoring to everyone here).
  - e40 5y ago
    I do, as well, and I don't even know if I'll ever use the result of this project. However, I know it's important work.
- kreetx 5y ago
  I don't think being even a linux "old-timer" would help with the low-level stuff that they are doing. (As the sibling) Supporting on Patreon is what hopefully gets us what we want quicker :)
captn3m0 5y ago
Very excited about this work, planning to move to a M1 Air once it gets a stable relase.
retskrad 5y ago
Alder Lake, Intel's flagship dekstop class CPU, is only 10-15% faster than the M1 Pro/M1 Max in CPU performance but it requires an insane amount of cooling and the power consumption is frankly ridiculous. Seems like Apple Silion will be 5 years ahead of the competition - similar to how long it took for others to catch up with the first iPhone.
- automatic6131 5y ago
  Apple will only be ahead of the competition for as long as they can buy out the whole TSMC's latest and greatest node. After that day, it won't be.
  - simonh 5y ago
    There is good reason to believe that’s not the case. Oh having access to TSMC 5nm to other designs would definitely help reduce the gap, but we can see from like-for-like node implementations of previous A series chips and other ARM designs that Apple has a significant lead in architecture too. M1 has some really impressive new architectural features of its own that it’s hard to imagine their competitors being able to replicate any time soon.
    - acomjean 5y ago
      According to AMD you get >1.25 performance at 1/2 the power usage when chips go from 7nm to 5nm. Some of that might be architecture but when x86 gets to 5nm the difference in performance might be fairly negligible. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-unveils-zen-4-cpu-roadmap-96-core-5nm-genoa-128-core-begamo https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-unveils-zen-4-cpu-road...
    - loeg 5y ago
      The competition isn’t other ARM players, it’s Intel and AMD. Both are on larger nodes for now.
  - sharikous 5y ago
    It's not only that. They have the knowhow, and a top-notch engineering team. The iPhone processor were developed over the course of 15 years and grew organically to become the M1. Even if you consider other mobile processors on par with Apple's (they are not) - it will take years before they can be adapted to PCs. And as latest Intel efforts show us processors that were not designed with efficiency as a key target from the beginning cannot be easily modified to challenge the M1 either. Even without TSMC Apple has all the cards - experience in state of the art chips, phones, tablets and PCs, from the silicon to the software, all in one company. They should do some serious slipups before someone has even a chance to challenge them.
Aissen 5y ago
Anyone has a pointer to what "Blocked on PSCI discussion" means ? I'd be interested to read those (mailing list?) discussions.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It hasn't really started yet, other than some discussions on IRC, but the TL;DR is on every other ARM64 system those features are handled by either a hypervisor or a supervisor, via special PSCI calls. These machines don't have the option for a supervisor (and no nested virtualization, so an under-OS hypervisor would preclude VMs). Rather than introducing a special snowflake driver for these machines, the current thinking is we can introduce some kind of third PSCI mechanism to make these calls into code set up by the bootloader (a la EFI runtime services), without switching to a higher privilege level. That means we need to define how all that would work first.
  - phh 5y ago
    Implementing a PSCI mechanism in m1n1 sounds like a nice workaround (I could almost consider it an actual fix, even if it's not totally standard), but I'm a bit surprised: - Doesn't ARMv8 architecture require supervisor mode? You should be able to just pop a good old Arm Trusted Framework sample, implement PSCI in there just like other standard ARMv8? - Linux kernel already supports various PSCI-less architectures (rpi4 notably for armv8 if I'm not mistaken), so I don't think upstream would mind about that at all? I guess your proposed approach makes sense when the target is more than just Linux though, do you have hopes that m1n1 could be eventually suitable to boot Windows?
    - svenpeter 5y ago
      I don't think ARMv8 requires EL3 but even if it did there is no EL3 on the M1. Booting Windows natively would require Microsoft's support since some rather invasive changes to the kernel would be required (FIQ support, DART instead of SMMU) on top of implementing drivers for everything.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
RMPR 5y ago
This is great and might actually prompt me to get a Mac, as much as I like ThinkPads, this battery life is simply on another level.
- LeonM 5y ago
  Don't get your expectations up too high. My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux, and has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt, the external dock, HDMI port, audio and WiFi. For example: when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. BMC support seems problematic as well, my battery status is often 'unknown' with the Lenovo ACPI kernel modules. And this is even with 'official' support from Lenovo for Linux. I can only imagine how bad the experience will be for running Linux on Apple products for the coming years.
  - sharikous 5y ago
    Judging from the enthusiasm radiating from Asahi Linux I am optimistic in this regard. It seems to be interesting enough to attract a lot of talents, which is the key to succeeding for OSS projects. The ThinkPad seems a boring challenge in comparison. It won't surprise me if the Linux support will be better for Macs than it is for Lenovo "officially supported" PCs.
    - LeonM 5y ago
      Don't forget that Thinkpads have a huge Linux fan base as well. Don't get me wrong though, I am hoping that this project succeeds, I'd love to have a Mac with Linux as my daily work machine. I guess time will tell how well this unfolds.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux I ran the M1 Pro for a whole day during early testing without charging (because we hadn't initialized the USB-C port yet) and didn't even run out of battery. And I didn't even have the power management driver running yet. > has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt We'll see how that goes, but I get the feeling Apple's Thunderbolt controllers are going to be a lot less insane than Intel's... > HDMI port That's just a DP-HDMI converter and whatever needs managing is managed by DCP firmware; it'll work once DP works. > audio WIP, already working on some machines; we just need to write a couple codec drivers to get it working across the board. > WiFi That's my TODO for this week, and I have it all planned out already :-) > when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. Good thing these machines don't have ACPI then! :-) > USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. We actually already have a workaround in Linux for USB lockups that affect macOS on these machines, so we're already doing better on that front. > BMC support seems problematic as well, my battery status is often 'unknown' with the Lenovo ACPI kernel modules. That goes via SMC on these machines, which has a very simple interface. That's my TODO right after WiFi :-) > And this is even with 'official' support from Lenovo for Linux. Turns out "official" support sometimes is horrible... we can do better than that. > I can only imagine how bad the experience will be for running Linux on Apple products for the coming years. Some people are already using them as their daily driver; I don't see it taking more than another year to be in a very good place.
chewyland 5y ago
I have been running Ubuntu on my 14 inch Mac for a little while now and it works great. This project here is also really exciting. Also, Windows ARM with the recent updates also works well in the new base 14 inch. I've been using it daily, no issues. I have nothing but praise and swiftly switching between 3 OSs sure is neat. This computer is sooo fast. I can see myself using this Mac for many years ahead.
- sys_64738 5y ago
  What is Linux graphics performance like? Can you comment on battery life also compared to the Mac OS running?
- mlindner 5y ago
  How are you getting Windows ARM on a mac? I thought it wasn't available yet because of some kind of exclusivity agreement.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    It'll be VM, use Parallels as it has better Windows 11 ARM64 support. You do not want to use Windows 10, it doesn't have x86-64 app compatibility like Windows 11. GPU acceleration is decent but no DX12 support yet. I've been using Windows ARM on M1 as my primary work PC device since ~January when I got a 13" M1 MacBook Pro. I now have a 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max. Can share particulars of my Parallels config or answer any questions.
terafo 5y ago
While it's obvious that within two years every GPU manufacturer is going to release MCM offering to the consumer market I'm surprised by a fact that Apple, of all companies, actually might deliver first consumer(actually more prosumer with their pricing) MCM GPU to the market. I think two M1 Max dies, if overclocked, actually can beat 3090 in most tasks and take performance crown if they release it this spring. Nvidia won't have a new GPU generation for nearly a year, same for AMD and Intel will probably shoot for performance crown only with Battlemage, which will probably be released in mid-2023.
- frant-hartm 5y ago
  MCM = multi chip module
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  Can it mine like Nvidia?
  - terafo 5y ago
    It definitely can, but it will not be price efficient since you can buy 3090 for 3k$ and that's the price of macbook pro with single m1 max chip.
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      Hypothetical mac minis with m1 max might be of interest in that regard.
      - terafo 5y ago
        I think even mac mini will likely cost 5k given two chip config.
minimaul 5y ago
It's still not really ready for prime-time, but I've got a M1 mac mini running debian as an arm64 build bot (and a few other small things) now, and I can say that the bits that work, work really well. Storage is fast, CPU performance is solid, PCIe for ethernet works just fine. Now if I could just get one with 64G of RAM and 2TB of SSD... ;) edit: the setup process is still far from polished but that's not unexpected this early, and it's still in a 'build your own kernel' state. But it was easy enough to get going in an hour or two with a pointer or two from IRC and from reading the wiki.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > Now if I could just get one with 64G of RAM and 2TB of SSD... ;) Careful what you wish for. With the way Apple marks up memory and storage upgrades, you might be looking at a $5,000 machine there...
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    According to MBP 16" price, Apple charges $800 for 64 GB RAM and $800 for 2 TB SSD. IMO that's a reasonable price.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      2 TB of NVME storage is little more than $200 off-the-shelf. 64 gigs of DDR4, high-bandwidth laptop memory costs ~$250. Even assuming Apple is springing for high-quality, high-speed RAM, $800 borders on insanity when other laptops offer similar configuration options at less than half the price. Apple's price gouging in this department is well-documented, I don't think I need to argue with HN users about that.
      - vbezhenar 5y ago
        I just checked out some random Dell Precision laptop. They want $800 for 64GB RAM and $720 for SSD. Seems pretty comparable to me. Samsung 970 Pro 1TB is $270 on newegg, so it makes $540 for 2TB. Cheaper, but it's only PCI-E 3.
andy_ppp 5y ago
I will probably never install Linux on this MacBook but I'm so impressed with the technical quality of this work that I sponsor them a coffee per month through GitHub Sponsors, you can find out more here: https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/
sohrob 5y ago
Does the method whereby they circumvent the T2 security enclave work on Intel-based Macs? I have a 2018 Mac mini which I would love to repurpose with Linux once the end-of-life support stage is reached.
- unix_fan 5y ago
  There is no circumvention going on. The problem with the t2 chip is more of the lack of proper driver support, because it’s Frankenstein hardware even for Apple. There should be a driver to support apple NVME implementation, and that should get you to boot on a t2 mac.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  You want to look at t2linux.org. There is nothing to circumvent, it's just that some of the drivers aren't upstream yet. NVMe has been upstream for years, so you won't have any issues doing a vanilla Linux install with an up to date distro, especially on a Mac Mini (the bigger issue is no upstream keyboard support on the T2 laptops). I'm working on Wi-Fi for M1 Macs this week and that particular patch will be useful for T2 Macs too, so hopefully that will be upstream in the near future.

367 points by svenpeter 5y ago

Though I'm ok with my Thinkpad X1E Gen 2 (not super happy but ok), I had made up my mind about Framework being my next machine. Now with Asahi Linux's progress, build quality of the Macbook combined with flexibility of Linux makes it a serious option. Very interested to see how things turn out on both these fronts in next few years.

juancampa 5y ago
I'm curious, what don't you like about the X1E? I have a Gen 3 and it's super wonky with an external monitor, nvidia + linux seems to still be a mistake.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  Battery life isn't great (I occasionally take it out for about 2-2.5 hours which it does manage but a longer duration would probably kill it). Once froze and refused to resume when I tried to put it on standby and I had to do multiple hard resets to somehow make it going again (could be related to S3 config in BIOS) - scared me off to ever try to standby again. Also, I think you are 100% correct on Nvidia + Linux point; I did an upgrade to Nvidia driver version 460 (I think) and it basically made everything so slow that it was unusable. When I tried to downgrade, apt showed that uninstalling the driver would uninstall entire pop-desktop so had to do some hacks to downgrade back to version 450. Thankfully everything works well with that version including multiple external displays so I have locked the version via Synaptic. But yeah, not a great overall experience; someone less experienced with Linux might have (justifiably) given in to frustration and switched to Windows or Mac.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Nvidia and Linux, a frustrating duo. Nvidia! Fuck you!

SamuelAdams 5y ago

> Amusingly, while implementing support for this in Linux, we ran into a bug in Linux’s ARM SMMU support that had been there ever since 52-bit address support was introduced. This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed? Either way, Linux now correctly supports standard ARM systems with up to 4 PiB of RAM ;-). Interesting how working on new technologies helps improve existing things for all users. Sort of reminds me how NASA invests in R&D and those investments eventually come back to military and consumers.

fragmede 5y ago
Especially handy for SpaceX, which employs a number of ex-NASA folk. SpaceX wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for the investment in NASA.
Leherenn 5y ago
> This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed? Are there even ARM systems with that amount of RAM? I assume it's something in the order of what super computers use, but I don't think any of them are ARM. That doesn't sound that surprising to me that no one noticed if no one uses that much RAM.
- pthariensflame 5y ago
  There’s at least one Armv8 supercomputer out there today, and it’s a beast too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)

hbbio 5y ago

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

wronglebowski 5y ago
I do wonder what Apple will do if this gets any sort of traction. I fear they only allow disabling of secure boot/other OS installs due to fear of regulation. Apple wants you running their OS and in their walled garden.
- favorited 5y ago
  Apple explicitly enabled support for this: https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126018068955136/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551...
- dilap 5y ago
  I don't know, when they were on Intel they went out of their way to support dual-booting with Windows. Maybe if 20XX really does become year the "year of desktop on linux" they'll start to get worried? But for now it seems like an easy calculation that it only benefits Apple to allow easy dual-booting to Linux -- it makes their hardware more appealing to the hard-core geek crowd (w/ disproprtionate mind-share and knock-on effects), while still having essentially zero chance of Linux cannibalizing your every-day user market.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  Apple is at no risk of having Linux stealing their users away. Unless someone makes a business of reselling Macbooks with linux being preinstalled and in some magical way that business becomes immensely successful.
  - 5y ago

yosito 5y ago

As a Linux user coming from Mac, I'm super excited about this, since Apple's hardware is some of the best. As a web application developer and Linux newbie, I don't feel like I have the expertise to be able to contribute to this, but I wish I did.

bartvk 5y ago
Me neither, so I donate to Marcan on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts (I'm not saying you should, I just thought your point is good and I wanted to point out the possibility of sponsoring to everyone here).
- e40 5y ago
  I do, as well, and I don't even know if I'll ever use the result of this project. However, I know it's important work.
kreetx 5y ago
I don't think being even a linux "old-timer" would help with the low-level stuff that they are doing. (As the sibling) Supporting on Patreon is what hopefully gets us what we want quicker :)

captn3m0 5y ago

Very excited about this work, planning to move to a M1 Air once it gets a stable relase.

retskrad 5y ago

Alder Lake, Intel's flagship dekstop class CPU, is only 10-15% faster than the M1 Pro/M1 Max in CPU performance but it requires an insane amount of cooling and the power consumption is frankly ridiculous. Seems like Apple Silion will be 5 years ahead of the competition - similar to how long it took for others to catch up with the first iPhone.

automatic6131 5y ago
Apple will only be ahead of the competition for as long as they can buy out the whole TSMC's latest and greatest node. After that day, it won't be.
- simonh 5y ago
  There is good reason to believe that’s not the case. Oh having access to TSMC 5nm to other designs would definitely help reduce the gap, but we can see from like-for-like node implementations of previous A series chips and other ARM designs that Apple has a significant lead in architecture too. M1 has some really impressive new architectural features of its own that it’s hard to imagine their competitors being able to replicate any time soon.
  - acomjean 5y ago
    According to AMD you get >1.25 performance at 1/2 the power usage when chips go from 7nm to 5nm. Some of that might be architecture but when x86 gets to 5nm the difference in performance might be fairly negligible. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-unveils-zen-4-cpu-roadmap-96-core-5nm-genoa-128-core-begamo https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-unveils-zen-4-cpu-road...
  - loeg 5y ago
    The competition isn’t other ARM players, it’s Intel and AMD. Both are on larger nodes for now.
- sharikous 5y ago
  It's not only that. They have the knowhow, and a top-notch engineering team. The iPhone processor were developed over the course of 15 years and grew organically to become the M1. Even if you consider other mobile processors on par with Apple's (they are not) - it will take years before they can be adapted to PCs. And as latest Intel efforts show us processors that were not designed with efficiency as a key target from the beginning cannot be easily modified to challenge the M1 either. Even without TSMC Apple has all the cards - experience in state of the art chips, phones, tablets and PCs, from the silicon to the software, all in one company. They should do some serious slipups before someone has even a chance to challenge them.

Aissen 5y ago

Anyone has a pointer to what "Blocked on PSCI discussion" means ? I'd be interested to read those (mailing list?) discussions.

marcan_42 5y ago
It hasn't really started yet, other than some discussions on IRC, but the TL;DR is on every other ARM64 system those features are handled by either a hypervisor or a supervisor, via special PSCI calls. These machines don't have the option for a supervisor (and no nested virtualization, so an under-OS hypervisor would preclude VMs). Rather than introducing a special snowflake driver for these machines, the current thinking is we can introduce some kind of third PSCI mechanism to make these calls into code set up by the bootloader (a la EFI runtime services), without switching to a higher privilege level. That means we need to define how all that would work first.
- phh 5y ago
  Implementing a PSCI mechanism in m1n1 sounds like a nice workaround (I could almost consider it an actual fix, even if it's not totally standard), but I'm a bit surprised: - Doesn't ARMv8 architecture require supervisor mode? You should be able to just pop a good old Arm Trusted Framework sample, implement PSCI in there just like other standard ARMv8? - Linux kernel already supports various PSCI-less architectures (rpi4 notably for armv8 if I'm not mistaken), so I don't think upstream would mind about that at all? I guess your proposed approach makes sense when the target is more than just Linux though, do you have hopes that m1n1 could be eventually suitable to boot Windows?
  - svenpeter 5y ago
    I don't think ARMv8 requires EL3 but even if it did there is no EL3 on the M1. Booting Windows natively would require Microsoft's support since some rather invasive changes to the kernel would be required (FIQ support, DART instead of SMMU) on top of implementing drivers for everything.
  - marcan_42 5y ago

RMPR 5y ago

This is great and might actually prompt me to get a Mac, as much as I like ThinkPads, this battery life is simply on another level.

LeonM 5y ago
Don't get your expectations up too high. My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux, and has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt, the external dock, HDMI port, audio and WiFi. For example: when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. BMC support seems problematic as well, my battery status is often 'unknown' with the Lenovo ACPI kernel modules. And this is even with 'official' support from Lenovo for Linux. I can only imagine how bad the experience will be for running Linux on Apple products for the coming years.
- sharikous 5y ago
  Judging from the enthusiasm radiating from Asahi Linux I am optimistic in this regard. It seems to be interesting enough to attract a lot of talents, which is the key to succeeding for OSS projects. The ThinkPad seems a boring challenge in comparison. It won't surprise me if the Linux support will be better for Macs than it is for Lenovo "officially supported" PCs.
  - LeonM 5y ago
    Don't forget that Thinkpads have a huge Linux fan base as well. Don't get me wrong though, I am hoping that this project succeeds, I'd love to have a Mac with Linux as my daily work machine. I guess time will tell how well this unfolds.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  > My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux I ran the M1 Pro for a whole day during early testing without charging (because we hadn't initialized the USB-C port yet) and didn't even run out of battery. And I didn't even have the power management driver running yet. > has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt We'll see how that goes, but I get the feeling Apple's Thunderbolt controllers are going to be a lot less insane than Intel's... > HDMI port That's just a DP-HDMI converter and whatever needs managing is managed by DCP firmware; it'll work once DP works. > audio WIP, already working on some machines; we just need to write a couple codec drivers to get it working across the board. > WiFi That's my TODO for this week, and I have it all planned out already :-) > when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. Good thing these machines don't have ACPI then! :-) > USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. We actually already have a workaround in Linux for USB lockups that affect macOS on these machines, so we're already doing better on that front. > BMC support seems problematic as well, my battery status is often 'unknown' with the Lenovo ACPI kernel modules. That goes via SMC on these machines, which has a very simple interface. That's my TODO right after WiFi :-) > And this is even with 'official' support from Lenovo for Linux. Turns out "official" support sometimes is horrible... we can do better than that. > I can only imagine how bad the experience will be for running Linux on Apple products for the coming years. Some people are already using them as their daily driver; I don't see it taking more than another year to be in a very good place.

chewyland 5y ago

I have been running Ubuntu on my 14 inch Mac for a little while now and it works great. This project here is also really exciting. Also, Windows ARM with the recent updates also works well in the new base 14 inch. I've been using it daily, no issues. I have nothing but praise and swiftly switching between 3 OSs sure is neat. This computer is sooo fast. I can see myself using this Mac for many years ahead.

sys_64738 5y ago
What is Linux graphics performance like? Can you comment on battery life also compared to the Mac OS running?
mlindner 5y ago
How are you getting Windows ARM on a mac? I thought it wasn't available yet because of some kind of exclusivity agreement.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  It'll be VM, use Parallels as it has better Windows 11 ARM64 support. You do not want to use Windows 10, it doesn't have x86-64 app compatibility like Windows 11. GPU acceleration is decent but no DX12 support yet. I've been using Windows ARM on M1 as my primary work PC device since ~January when I got a 13" M1 MacBook Pro. I now have a 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max. Can share particulars of my Parallels config or answer any questions.

terafo 5y ago

While it's obvious that within two years every GPU manufacturer is going to release MCM offering to the consumer market I'm surprised by a fact that Apple, of all companies, actually might deliver first consumer(actually more prosumer with their pricing) MCM GPU to the market. I think two M1 Max dies, if overclocked, actually can beat 3090 in most tasks and take performance crown if they release it this spring. Nvidia won't have a new GPU generation for nearly a year, same for AMD and Intel will probably shoot for performance crown only with Battlemage, which will probably be released in mid-2023.

frant-hartm 5y ago
MCM = multi chip module
vbezhenar 5y ago
Can it mine like Nvidia?
- terafo 5y ago
  It definitely can, but it will not be price efficient since you can buy 3090 for 3k$ and that's the price of macbook pro with single m1 max chip.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    Hypothetical mac minis with m1 max might be of interest in that regard.
    - terafo 5y ago
      I think even mac mini will likely cost 5k given two chip config.

minimaul 5y ago

It's still not really ready for prime-time, but I've got a M1 mac mini running debian as an arm64 build bot (and a few other small things) now, and I can say that the bits that work, work really well. Storage is fast, CPU performance is solid, PCIe for ethernet works just fine. Now if I could just get one with 64G of RAM and 2TB of SSD... ;) edit: the setup process is still far from polished but that's not unexpected this early, and it's still in a 'build your own kernel' state. But it was easy enough to get going in an hour or two with a pointer or two from IRC and from reading the wiki.

smoldesu 5y ago
> Now if I could just get one with 64G of RAM and 2TB of SSD... ;) Careful what you wish for. With the way Apple marks up memory and storage upgrades, you might be looking at a $5,000 machine there...
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  According to MBP 16" price, Apple charges $800 for 64 GB RAM and $800 for 2 TB SSD. IMO that's a reasonable price.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    2 TB of NVME storage is little more than $200 off-the-shelf. 64 gigs of DDR4, high-bandwidth laptop memory costs ~$250. Even assuming Apple is springing for high-quality, high-speed RAM, $800 borders on insanity when other laptops offer similar configuration options at less than half the price. Apple's price gouging in this department is well-documented, I don't think I need to argue with HN users about that.
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      I just checked out some random Dell Precision laptop. They want $800 for 64GB RAM and $720 for SSD. Seems pretty comparable to me. Samsung 970 Pro 1TB is $270 on newegg, so it makes $540 for 2TB. Cheaper, but it's only PCI-E 3.

andy_ppp 5y ago

I will probably never install Linux on this MacBook but I'm so impressed with the technical quality of this work that I sponsor them a coffee per month through GitHub Sponsors, you can find out more here: https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/

sohrob 5y ago

Does the method whereby they circumvent the T2 security enclave work on Intel-based Macs? I have a 2018 Mac mini which I would love to repurpose with Linux once the end-of-life support stage is reached.

unix_fan 5y ago
There is no circumvention going on. The problem with the t2 chip is more of the lack of proper driver support, because it’s Frankenstein hardware even for Apple. There should be a driver to support apple NVME implementation, and that should get you to boot on a t2 mac.
marcan_42 5y ago
You want to look at t2linux.org. There is nothing to circumvent, it's just that some of the drivers aren't upstream yet. NVMe has been upstream for years, so you won't have any issues doing a vanilla Linux install with an up to date distro, especially on a Mac Mini (the bigger issue is no upstream keyboard support on the T2 laptops). I'm working on Wi-Fi for M1 Macs this week and that particular patch will be useful for T2 Macs too, so hopefully that will be upstream in the near future.