4 ms·

Arm64 vms seem to be working great. And pretty soon Asahi will get to the point of being completely usable as a daily driver

smoldesu 4y ago
Why would I buy a Mac Mini for Linux when devices like this exist? The Qualcomm chip is officially supported and much cheaper than buying the Mac. Seems to be much less hassle and better value on the Microsoft side of things.
- Funnyduck99 4y ago
  Yeah I am seriously considering getting one of these. 32gb of ram for 600 dollars plus its a decent specked arm machine with plenty of ports
- thisarticle 4y ago
  Where does it say Linux is officially supported?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The chip is having mainline Linux support merged with 5.20, according to Phoronix: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-SoCs-8cx-Gen3-Arm https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-SoCs-8cx-Gen3-Arm
    - sliken 4y ago
      Sure, doesn't mean that everything works though. The Thinkpad x13s has the same CPU and apparently is quite tricky to get booted. Once booted audio, sleep, bluetooth and the like has been problematic. Granted that's more of an issue with a laptop than a SFF like the DevKit. Things do seem to be improving. Releasing the Thinkpad x13s has brought attention to the 8cx gen 3 from the Linux community.
    - alexellisuk 4y ago
      I've tried it. It seems like even with a 6.0 Kernel, additional DTBs are required to boot. https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/1585562359254421504?s=20&t=aM3vYMh2SksCGkNDg9u5XQ https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/1585562359254421504?s...
    - monocasa 4y ago
      I'd wait to hear if this board has Linux support. It might have a locked bootloader.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Specs seem to list UEFI Secure Boot, which has been unlockable on all of Microsoft's Surface devices and previous ARM outings. Shipping this with a locked bootloader would be one hell of a breach from tradition (and probably undermine it's usefulness as a dev box anyways). Regardless, the internal SOC is the same as the new ARM Thinkpad which also shipped with an unlocked bootloader. Pretty much everything suggests that this will ship unlocked.
        monocasa 4y ago
        > Specs seem to list UEFI Secure Boot, which has been unlockable on all of Microsoft's Surface devices and previous ARM outings That doesn't quite seem accurate. For one example: https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/15/windows_fix_closes_rt_unlock_loophole/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/15/windows_fix_closes_rt...
        my123 4y ago
        For all ARM64 Windows devices, UEFI Secure Boot is end-user configurable. And yes that includes Surface Pro X, Pro 9 arm and this devkit.
- artificialLimbs 4y ago
  $699 for a Mini, $599 for this. The 32GB ram may be nice, but I haven't felt ram pressure on my M1 16GB even running Windows VM on Parallels once, with VSCode, Teams, ~20 tabs of Firefox, DBeaver, Outlook, and Kitty open at once. Would like to see perf numbers. Could be an interesting box, maybe a nice home server.
  - Funnyduck99 4y ago
    that 699 mini also has a lot smaller ssd which is pretty important.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  > Qualcomm The main reason so many Android devices are throwaway junk is Qualcomm. Don't rely on them for anything that you still want to keep running for more than a couple of years.
  - skohan 4y ago
    We used a Qualcomm module for wifi/bluetooth connectivity on an IoT device and the bluetooth just straight up didn't work for a handful of Android devices. We had to wait like a year for a mitigation, since it was closed source firmware. That was after like a 3 month process of actually find someone who would hear our issue.

smoldesu 4y ago

Why would I buy a Mac Mini for Linux when devices like this exist? The Qualcomm chip is officially supported and much cheaper than buying the Mac. Seems to be much less hassle and better value on the Microsoft side of things.

Funnyduck99 4y ago
Yeah I am seriously considering getting one of these. 32gb of ram for 600 dollars plus its a decent specked arm machine with plenty of ports
thisarticle 4y ago
Where does it say Linux is officially supported?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  The chip is having mainline Linux support merged with 5.20, according to Phoronix: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-SoCs-8cx-Gen3-Arm https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-SoCs-8cx-Gen3-Arm
  - sliken 4y ago
    Sure, doesn't mean that everything works though. The Thinkpad x13s has the same CPU and apparently is quite tricky to get booted. Once booted audio, sleep, bluetooth and the like has been problematic. Granted that's more of an issue with a laptop than a SFF like the DevKit. Things do seem to be improving. Releasing the Thinkpad x13s has brought attention to the 8cx gen 3 from the Linux community.
  - alexellisuk 4y ago
    I've tried it. It seems like even with a 6.0 Kernel, additional DTBs are required to boot. https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/1585562359254421504?s=20&t=aM3vYMh2SksCGkNDg9u5XQ https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/1585562359254421504?s...
  - monocasa 4y ago
    I'd wait to hear if this board has Linux support. It might have a locked bootloader.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Specs seem to list UEFI Secure Boot, which has been unlockable on all of Microsoft's Surface devices and previous ARM outings. Shipping this with a locked bootloader would be one hell of a breach from tradition (and probably undermine it's usefulness as a dev box anyways). Regardless, the internal SOC is the same as the new ARM Thinkpad which also shipped with an unlocked bootloader. Pretty much everything suggests that this will ship unlocked.
      - monocasa 4y ago
        > Specs seem to list UEFI Secure Boot, which has been unlockable on all of Microsoft's Surface devices and previous ARM outings That doesn't quite seem accurate. For one example: https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/15/windows_fix_closes_rt_unlock_loophole/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/15/windows_fix_closes_rt...
        my123 4y ago
        For all ARM64 Windows devices, UEFI Secure Boot is end-user configurable. And yes that includes Surface Pro X, Pro 9 arm and this devkit.
artificialLimbs 4y ago
$699 for a Mini, $599 for this. The 32GB ram may be nice, but I haven't felt ram pressure on my M1 16GB even running Windows VM on Parallels once, with VSCode, Teams, ~20 tabs of Firefox, DBeaver, Outlook, and Kitty open at once. Would like to see perf numbers. Could be an interesting box, maybe a nice home server.
- Funnyduck99 4y ago
  that 699 mini also has a lot smaller ssd which is pretty important.
rodgerd 4y ago
> Qualcomm The main reason so many Android devices are throwaway junk is Qualcomm. Don't rely on them for anything that you still want to keep running for more than a couple of years.
- skohan 4y ago
  We used a Qualcomm module for wifi/bluetooth connectivity on an IoT device and the bluetooth just straight up didn't work for a handful of Android devices. We had to wait like a year for a mitigation, since it was closed source firmware. That was after like a 3 month process of actually find someone who would hear our issue.