4 ms·

Very impressive. Basically a year later and (I assume) the first release is imminent. I'd wager most people don't need a GPU with such a powerful CPU. Only thin

Very impressive. Basically a year later and (I assume) the first release is imminent. I'd wager most people don't need a GPU with such a powerful CPU. Only thing missing for me to daily drive something like this is Audio and BT.

marcan_42 5y ago
Headphone jack works on M1 models (though I discovered today it's a bit flaky on boot). The speakers technically work on all the laptops, but we need to implement safeties to make sure you don't accidentally blow your speakers, and also add DSP so they sound good. Fir now, we keep the speakers disabled. BT will take longer though, it's not a huge priority for me so it's behind things like the GPU on the list (unless someone volunteers, of course.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  On the topic of MacBook speaker DSP, I'm irritated how the MacBook Air speakers seem to add copious amounts of negative crosstalk to stereo to artificially widen the image. Playing a sine wave on the left speaker plays a slightly quieter inverted waveform on the right speaker, creating unnatural imaging that's tiring to listen to, much like "invert surround" SNES music. The worst part is that macOS offers no way to turn it off!
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Chadmed is working on the processing, and he already thinks he can get better results than macOS. The other day he measured the response with a calibration mic so we can compute good correction coefficients.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I’m curious, why can’t you limit the max speaker volume to something stupidly low in the interim? (Under the logic that a very quiet speaker is better than no speaker.)
sudosysgen 5y ago
You will absolutely need a GPU even if the CPU was 3x faster. It doesn't have anything to do with speed - the issue is that without hardware accelerated rendering, your battery life will tank, hard.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  If you care about battery life I would say the video decode unit is much more important then the GPU. The M1 doesn't really struggle with rendering a basic DE.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  If you're playing games or rendering 3D models, sure, but how much graphics work does it really take to render a DE? Wasn't it Vista that was the first OS to even support graphics acceleration for rendering the UI? That was a long time ago, but not that long either, and I don't recall it coming alongside massive improvements in battery life. I'm not against graphics acceleration or anything, but I don't find it at all hard to believe that a fast, power-efficient CPU like the M1 could perform adequately with software rendering.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    It takes a fair amount of work to render a modern DE. Especially at high framerates. I'm sure an M1 could perform adequately, but it would probably be around half the efficiency possible otherwise.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Sure, but the question isn't how it could run otherwise, but how well it runs in comparison to other options for running Linux.

marcan_42 5y ago

Headphone jack works on M1 models (though I discovered today it's a bit flaky on boot). The speakers technically work on all the laptops, but we need to implement safeties to make sure you don't accidentally blow your speakers, and also add DSP so they sound good. Fir now, we keep the speakers disabled. BT will take longer though, it's not a huge priority for me so it's behind things like the GPU on the list (unless someone volunteers, of course.

nyanpasu64 5y ago
On the topic of MacBook speaker DSP, I'm irritated how the MacBook Air speakers seem to add copious amounts of negative crosstalk to stereo to artificially widen the image. Playing a sine wave on the left speaker plays a slightly quieter inverted waveform on the right speaker, creating unnatural imaging that's tiring to listen to, much like "invert surround" SNES music. The worst part is that macOS offers no way to turn it off!
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Chadmed is working on the processing, and he already thinks he can get better results than macOS. The other day he measured the response with a calibration mic so we can compute good correction coefficients.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I’m curious, why can’t you limit the max speaker volume to something stupidly low in the interim? (Under the logic that a very quiet speaker is better than no speaker.)

sudosysgen 5y ago

You will absolutely need a GPU even if the CPU was 3x faster. It doesn't have anything to do with speed - the issue is that without hardware accelerated rendering, your battery life will tank, hard.

rowanG077 5y ago
If you care about battery life I would say the video decode unit is much more important then the GPU. The M1 doesn't really struggle with rendering a basic DE.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
If you're playing games or rendering 3D models, sure, but how much graphics work does it really take to render a DE? Wasn't it Vista that was the first OS to even support graphics acceleration for rendering the UI? That was a long time ago, but not that long either, and I don't recall it coming alongside massive improvements in battery life. I'm not against graphics acceleration or anything, but I don't find it at all hard to believe that a fast, power-efficient CPU like the M1 could perform adequately with software rendering.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It takes a fair amount of work to render a modern DE. Especially at high framerates. I'm sure an M1 could perform adequately, but it would probably be around half the efficiency possible otherwise.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Sure, but the question isn't how it could run otherwise, but how well it runs in comparison to other options for running Linux.