6 ms·

Linuxulator on FreeBSD Feels Like Magic

134 points by vermaden 8mo ago

wolvoleo 8mo ago
I really don't like using projects like linuxulator or the linux compatibility layer (are those different?). I'm running FreeBSD because I prefer it over Linux. I don't want to make it like Linux. If we give in to that we'll end up importing more and more linuxisms and in the end everything will require those. Bedides, the FreeBSD port of codium works fine and with a few setting changes you can install even the proprietary extensions like the Remote SSH. There's a few tools I don't use because they don't have a FreeBSD port. I've asked the developers and they were like 'just use the compatibility layer'. But nope, then I'll just pick something else. Right now I have nothing using the Linux compatibility layer at all which is great.
- vermaden 8mo ago
  > (are those different?) Its the same thing - just different naming. > I'm running FreeBSD because I prefer it over Linux. Me too but there are things that will not be ported (at least soon) anyway ... that is where Linux Compat Layer helps. Even simple watching movies with DRM bullshit (Widevine) or using a Brave browser that is not in the FreeBSD Ports ... or running Linux games ... or CUDA workaround ... and no NopeVidia will not provide official CUDA support anytime soon. Also please remember that entire The Matrix (1999) movie was rendered [1] on FreeBSD machines in Linux Compat Layer because the software used to do that was not natively available on FreeBSD an yet it sill run faster on FreeBSD in Linux Compat Layer then natively on Linux. Let that sink in. Even today [2] playing Linux games in Linux Compat Layer is faster then natively on Linux - with more FPS and more 'stable' gameplay. Hope that helps. [1] https://freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/ https://freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/ [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK6eRbz9DkM https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK6eRbz9DkM
  - jabbywocker 8mo ago
    In the reference video you posted he literally states that the FreeBSD version was less stable than Linux, that he experienced repeated game crashes in FreeBSD, that frame rates would drop 50% without explanation and that the overall experience was better on Linux than FreeBSD or Windows. It should also be noted that it’s also not native on Linux either as he’s using Wine on both Linux and FreeBSD
  - marxisttemp 8mo ago
    Why are you using a scam crypto browser?
    - morjom 8mo ago
      Brave does fall under crypto, yeah, but I don't know about it being a scam. You don't need to engage with the crypto/web3 and all of those can be disabled.
  - anthk 8mo ago
    Maybe with games from 2004 and the like, the ones built to run with a single thread. With ntsync (and previously, esync/fsync) that's not true anymore with games designed for multiple cores.
- wutwutwat 8mo ago
  Leaving a potential solution on the table that could make your own life easier is silly to me. You don't have to use it for everything and you shouldn't worry about some Linux takeover. Id imagine that for user-land desktop environment related stuff there isn't much difference. Gnome on FreeBSD and gnome on Ubuntu can't be doing things that different from one another.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Well if I wanted to make my life easier I would just use ubuntu or something. Or even Windows? Because even between Linux distros there's a lot of difference in terms of usability. FreeBSD is not something you can run without investing time to figure things out, you really have to be willing to think different. But that's good for me, I don't like going with the flow, I'm an anti-team player :) But by supporting options that have real ports, I stimulate those. By giving in to the easy way I will make that more palatable for developers. And Gnome and KDE have native ports. I really hate the opinionated design of Gnome so I don't use it, but I do use KDE. It does have a lot of cool tweaks by the maintainer to make it work properly.
    - wutwutwat 8mo ago
      I was just saying, is your goal for the os to get out of the way so you can get a job done, or is your job tinkering with your os. I've ran opensense which is a freebsd derivative, and I daily macOS/Darwin which is bsd. Honestly until I need to mess with some systemctl flags I get the same experience from bsd and Linux. Posix and all...
      - wolvoleo 8mo ago
        macOS is not BSD. It's a common misunderstanding, it borrows some userland but the kernel is radically different. But yeah my OS should get out of the way but I don't mind investing a little time in getting things working right. That includes picking the right tools. I was looking for a notetaking app and one of them was like 'just use the compatibility layer'. I think it was notesnook. I just picked obsidian instead which has a port. Still not ideal as it's electron but pretty much all these notetaking apps seem to be electron somehow. And I needed compatibility with android too. If there's something I could really not do without I would consider it but there's nothing like that right now.
- drzaiusx11 8mo ago
  Do the "linuxisms" inherent in a compatibility shim like linuxlator get exposed to users in day to day application use? I figured it'd be more like how proton provides windows APIs on Linux and applications "just work" as per normal. I admire your purist approach, but most folks don't have that luxury and just need to make do with what works today for their tooling of choice (or more common, what their employer thrusts upon them.)
  - tomth 8mo ago
    Compatibility layers can also introduce security bugs. One of the reasons why it was removed from OpenBSD. BSD is more for purists anyway. Virtualization seems to be a better option than compatibility layers for the odd program that doesn't work natively. Maybe that it's different for Windows API's on Linux, because by virtualizing Windows, you're still dealing with an unfree OS.
    - bentley 8mo ago
      Theo de Raadt, 2010, on the removal of emulation: “we no longer focus on binary compatibility for executables from other operating systems. we live in a source code world.” (Since then, OpenBSD has gained support for virtualization for some operating systems including Linux, through the vmm(4) hypervisor.)
      - avadodin 8mo ago
        > Linux: Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI :( > OpenBSD: Whatever the C compiler produced last is the only OpenBSD ABI :D
    - anthk 8mo ago
      FreeBSD used to have compat libraries for old FreeBSD releases itself. With NetBSD it used to be the same. OpenBSD, well, by policy running old, insecure binaries it's basically a no-no.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Which is the same reason I don't like Proton, as it in the end doesn't change Windows status quo as the platform for game developers, and hardly any different from using MAME, Vice, Stella, Mesen, Linux-UAE,....
  - jamesnorden 8mo ago
    Valve tried really hard to steer the world into native Linux ports, it simply didn't pan out, that ship has already sailed.
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      And now is subject to the whims of Microsoft, wherever Windows, DirectX, Visual Studio go, Valve must follow. Additionally, everyone is betting on Valve as if Steam would be around forever serving Linux gaming with Proton, except no one lives forever, and who knows what will happen to Valve, when current management passes the torch.
- arch1e 8mo ago
  Author here: I get where you’re coming from and long term, I agree. I don’t want FreeBSD to slowly turn into "Linux but different." For me though, the Linuxulator is about practicality today, not philosophy. It lets me use one or two tools (like the VS Code server) without changing how I actually run my system. Everything else stays native FreeBSD. It's optional, isolated, and doesn't pollute the base system. If native ports exist and work well, I'll always prefer those. But when something critical doesn't, the compatibility layer keeps FreeBSD usable in modern workflows instead of becoming limiting. So yeah.. I see it more as a bridge, not a direction.
- musicale 8mo ago
  I'm running macOS because it runs desktop applications, and the macOS desktop itself, fairly well. But I wouldn't mind if macOS (a BSD-flavored Unix) added support for linuxlator, and jails, pledge, and various other BSD-flavored things.
jrmg 8mo ago
After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Isn’t it still the case that, for speeds comparable to an Apple system, x86_64 is still more power/performance efficient than basically any other ARM-based system you can buy?
- swiftcoder 8mo ago
  For the most part, yes, which is why he's using a Mac as his daily driver, and ssh'ing into the BSD box
- throwa356262 8mo ago
  In raw power x64 is still the king, has always been. You can skew things by looking only at single core performance (where apples most expensive cpus might win because of their strategy of having fewer but more powerful cores + memory latency gains are much more visible with only one core). With that said, things are changing in the PC landscape and some extremely powerful and power efficient ARM designs are coming soon. We have already seen a small glimpse of that with MediaTek.
  - jeroenhd 8mo ago
    I just looked into that for this thread, but the highest-end Apple chips (M4 Max/M5) outperform the fastest normal Ryzens in both single core and multi core tests. They're awful for gaming, which most benchmarks online are run for, but it takes a Threadripper to dethrone Apple's impressive CPU performance. Of course, this also has to do with their integrated memory architecture, which isn't very popular with high-end PC customers who like the ability to upgrade their RAM.
    - throwa356262 8mo ago
      Are you sure? Top searches for M5 vs Ryzen: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m5-vs-amd-ryzen-9-9950x https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m5-vs-amd-ryzen-... https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m5_10_cpu-vs-amd_ryzen_7_9850x3d https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m5_10_cpu-vs... It is hard to compare apples to oranges, sometimes people benchmark different software (e.g. Safari on osx vs Edge on windows) or software that on one platform is more optimised. But in general it looks like AMD despite using an older process node is doing fairly good.
throw0101a 8mo ago
Back in the day I used to run the Linux client of RtCW on FreeBSD with Nvidia drivers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein
kleiba 8mo ago
Cool! Reminds me of how some 18 years ago or so, I was using TRAMP in Emacs to do remote development over ssh. Some things never change, apparently.
metadat 8mo ago
> After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. This seems like a flawed premise. Battery: Yes, MacBook battery life is really good, but only when you're not doing CPU-intensive tasks. Browsing the web, watching Tube or Netflix, it's amazing. Once you're compiling a bunch of stuff the battery performance tanks and seems just like any other notebook computer. CPU: Intel Mac performance was horrible, M* is terrific. And so are the latest from AMD Ryzen. Regardless, FreeBSD is a fantastic OS in so many ways!
- throawayonthe 8mo ago
  Definitely true that the battery life is not at all inherent to arm, but "Once you're compiling a bunch of stuff the battery performance tanks and seems just like any other notebook computer" is not that true i think, apple silicon is still fairly power efficient even at full throttle compared to most x86 chips (though again yes the latest mobile amd chips are catching up)
drewg123 8mo ago
The best way to run linux compat on FreeBSD is in an Linux jail. See https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails The difference is that with the standard linuxulator, the linux env. is maintained by the FreeBSD package manager, and can sometimes be out of date. Further, the standard linux compat package will install a red hat based distro, which is often not the easiest to deal with in terms of compat with random things you might want to run. I often found I had libraries that were either missing, or were a version out of date when trying to run stuff with linux compat from packages/ports. With a linux jail, you can install an ubuntu based distro & let it keep itself up to date via apt.
ch_123 8mo ago
> After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. I have a Thinkpad X1 with a Lunar Lake CPU, running Fedora. Battery life is comparable to the Mx Macbook Pros I've owned or used. Performance is not as good on synthetic benchmarks, but more than good enough for my needs, even when running VMs or containers.
- ahartmetz 8mo ago
  I have a Strix Halo laptop, HP ZBook Ultra G1a. (HP is a weird brand. I'm not a loyal customer, but every once in a while they create a product with really good reviews, I buy it, and it delivers.) Performance is almost on par with Apple's best, but battery life under light load is much worse :P, 6:30 or so. Under full load, battery life is an hour or so, similar to Apple actually! If the numbers I've seen are correct, they also use a lot of power under full load. Also, thank $deity for engineered noise signatures. Whooshing is not so bad. Whining fans are the worst. Last heard in better laptops several years ago.
bzmrgonz 8mo ago
I'm curious OP, what are you doing with openwrt? Does it have anything to do with openWISP??
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- arch1e 8mo ago
  We build and sell multi-service business gateways, basically devices that do networking, VoIP, etc. all in one box. https://difuse.io/ https://difuse.io/ if you're interested!
eqvinox 8mo ago
> I need an ARM64 machine. Period. This feels a little off base; what the author needs is a fast and efficient machine. Why would the architecture matter? It may be the current state of affairs that Apple ARM systems are great at this. But (1.) that doesn't mean other ARM systems are good at it, and (2.) doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. (And in all honesty, a lot of non-Apple ARM systems are just garbage in either performance, efficiency, or both.)
- DaveCharlieLen 8mo ago
  > I need an ARM64 machine. Period. >After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Unfortunately, there’s currently no FreeBSD-supported (or even Linux, as far as I can tell) ARM64 laptop that truly rivals Apple Silicon. I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years. I thought the parent maybe was off base, but that is literally all the reasoning. For guidance the arch doesn't impact battery life or performance as much as a specific process node and model. There are slow as shit x86 chips from VIA(maybe? I just retired a node that ran on one.) and fast ARM64 chips, but any high end Ryzen will blow an ARM64 chip out of the water on most real benchmarks I run(HPC stuff, lotsa matrix multiplications and such(CUDA and double float performance is too much premium and yes I have done alot of profiling and benchmarking.))
  - AS04 8mo ago
    > I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years. Building a custom CPU like Apple Silicon is plain impossible for a company like Framework. The best they can do is have support for ARM motherboards and sell those with the best CPUs on the open market.
    - notpushkin 8mo ago
      I’m hearing good things about Snapdragon nowadays. I’ll certainly give it a try in a bit.
  - 8mo ago
DaveCharlieLen 8mo ago
I want to love FreeBSD I have run it for multiple years on my servers. But there is always something off. The linuxulator works okay, but not great, and not great isn't good enough. Like WSL1 worked better than Linuxulator at least as of last Jan when I tried. The WINE story was even worse(do a jail for x32 things and run x64 normal). I do love FreeBSD but it is hard to take seriously as a desktop OS when some regular things are way too hard to get working.
lamuswawir 8mo ago
Linuxulator feels like magic for most things, until said thing works with systemd.
- Gud 8mo ago
  Then it feels like black magic
teekert 8mo ago
"After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Unfortunately, there’s currently no FreeBSD-supported (or even Linux, as far as I can tell) ARM64 laptop that truly rivals Apple Silicon. I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years." I thought it was now well established that it's not neccessarily ARM vs x86, but more "All the optimization of MacOS" vs "Bloated Windows" and "Sub-optimal (hardware control wise) Linux" Am I wrong?
- foldr 8mo ago
  Compare an M1 MacBook to one of its Intel predecessors. It’s not just software.
  - teekert 8mo ago
    But you should compare it to a present day Intel system, and you should then also ask Apple to make the same optimizations... I know, it's a difficult comparison. But OP stating "I just want ARM" will disappoint for any non Apple ARM (at the moment, I'd say due to software).
    - zamalek 8mo ago
      You should be comparing to AMD, at that. There's hope for the upcoming Intel chips - but anything current isn't competitive. Furthermore, M* is good for a specific form-factor, but don't for a second suggest that 4 P-Cores will outdo the 16 hyper threaded cores on a 9950x
    - foldr 8mo ago
      The only like for like comparison you can do is comparing an M1 MacBook to one of its Intel Mac contemporaries (which were present day Intel systems at the time).
- intothemild 8mo ago
  No you're not wrong, if you're comparing ARM CPUs on Linux to one specific Intel CPU, the Lunar Lake V ones. Then yeah you're not wrong, it's very much a case of optimisation for CPUs like the Snapdragon X Elite CPUs in comparison. But if you widened the scope a bit more, then I think there's plenty of more energy hungry x86_64 CPUs compared to ARM.

134 points by vermaden 8mo ago

I really don't like using projects like linuxulator or the linux compatibility layer (are those different?). I'm running FreeBSD because I prefer it over Linux. I don't want to make it like Linux. If we give in to that we'll end up importing more and more linuxisms and in the end everything will require those. Bedides, the FreeBSD port of codium works fine and with a few setting changes you can install even the proprietary extensions like the Remote SSH. There's a few tools I don't use because they don't have a FreeBSD port. I've asked the developers and they were like 'just use the compatibility layer'. But nope, then I'll just pick something else. Right now I have nothing using the Linux compatibility layer at all which is great.

vermaden 8mo ago
> (are those different?) Its the same thing - just different naming. > I'm running FreeBSD because I prefer it over Linux. Me too but there are things that will not be ported (at least soon) anyway ... that is where Linux Compat Layer helps. Even simple watching movies with DRM bullshit (Widevine) or using a Brave browser that is not in the FreeBSD Ports ... or running Linux games ... or CUDA workaround ... and no NopeVidia will not provide official CUDA support anytime soon. Also please remember that entire The Matrix (1999) movie was rendered [1] on FreeBSD machines in Linux Compat Layer because the software used to do that was not natively available on FreeBSD an yet it sill run faster on FreeBSD in Linux Compat Layer then natively on Linux. Let that sink in. Even today [2] playing Linux games in Linux Compat Layer is faster then natively on Linux - with more FPS and more 'stable' gameplay. Hope that helps. [1] https://freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/ https://freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/ [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK6eRbz9DkM https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK6eRbz9DkM
- jabbywocker 8mo ago
  In the reference video you posted he literally states that the FreeBSD version was less stable than Linux, that he experienced repeated game crashes in FreeBSD, that frame rates would drop 50% without explanation and that the overall experience was better on Linux than FreeBSD or Windows. It should also be noted that it’s also not native on Linux either as he’s using Wine on both Linux and FreeBSD
- marxisttemp 8mo ago
  Why are you using a scam crypto browser?
  - morjom 8mo ago
    Brave does fall under crypto, yeah, but I don't know about it being a scam. You don't need to engage with the crypto/web3 and all of those can be disabled.
- anthk 8mo ago
  Maybe with games from 2004 and the like, the ones built to run with a single thread. With ntsync (and previously, esync/fsync) that's not true anymore with games designed for multiple cores.
wutwutwat 8mo ago
Leaving a potential solution on the table that could make your own life easier is silly to me. You don't have to use it for everything and you shouldn't worry about some Linux takeover. Id imagine that for user-land desktop environment related stuff there isn't much difference. Gnome on FreeBSD and gnome on Ubuntu can't be doing things that different from one another.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Well if I wanted to make my life easier I would just use ubuntu or something. Or even Windows? Because even between Linux distros there's a lot of difference in terms of usability. FreeBSD is not something you can run without investing time to figure things out, you really have to be willing to think different. But that's good for me, I don't like going with the flow, I'm an anti-team player :) But by supporting options that have real ports, I stimulate those. By giving in to the easy way I will make that more palatable for developers. And Gnome and KDE have native ports. I really hate the opinionated design of Gnome so I don't use it, but I do use KDE. It does have a lot of cool tweaks by the maintainer to make it work properly.
  - wutwutwat 8mo ago
    I was just saying, is your goal for the os to get out of the way so you can get a job done, or is your job tinkering with your os. I've ran opensense which is a freebsd derivative, and I daily macOS/Darwin which is bsd. Honestly until I need to mess with some systemctl flags I get the same experience from bsd and Linux. Posix and all...
    - wolvoleo 8mo ago
      macOS is not BSD. It's a common misunderstanding, it borrows some userland but the kernel is radically different. But yeah my OS should get out of the way but I don't mind investing a little time in getting things working right. That includes picking the right tools. I was looking for a notetaking app and one of them was like 'just use the compatibility layer'. I think it was notesnook. I just picked obsidian instead which has a port. Still not ideal as it's electron but pretty much all these notetaking apps seem to be electron somehow. And I needed compatibility with android too. If there's something I could really not do without I would consider it but there's nothing like that right now.
drzaiusx11 8mo ago
Do the "linuxisms" inherent in a compatibility shim like linuxlator get exposed to users in day to day application use? I figured it'd be more like how proton provides windows APIs on Linux and applications "just work" as per normal. I admire your purist approach, but most folks don't have that luxury and just need to make do with what works today for their tooling of choice (or more common, what their employer thrusts upon them.)
- tomth 8mo ago
  Compatibility layers can also introduce security bugs. One of the reasons why it was removed from OpenBSD. BSD is more for purists anyway. Virtualization seems to be a better option than compatibility layers for the odd program that doesn't work natively. Maybe that it's different for Windows API's on Linux, because by virtualizing Windows, you're still dealing with an unfree OS.
  - bentley 8mo ago
    Theo de Raadt, 2010, on the removal of emulation: “we no longer focus on binary compatibility for executables from other operating systems. we live in a source code world.” (Since then, OpenBSD has gained support for virtualization for some operating systems including Linux, through the vmm(4) hypervisor.)
    - avadodin 8mo ago
      > Linux: Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI :( > OpenBSD: Whatever the C compiler produced last is the only OpenBSD ABI :D
  - anthk 8mo ago
    FreeBSD used to have compat libraries for old FreeBSD releases itself. With NetBSD it used to be the same. OpenBSD, well, by policy running old, insecure binaries it's basically a no-no.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago
pjmlp 8mo ago
Which is the same reason I don't like Proton, as it in the end doesn't change Windows status quo as the platform for game developers, and hardly any different from using MAME, Vice, Stella, Mesen, Linux-UAE,....
- jamesnorden 8mo ago
  Valve tried really hard to steer the world into native Linux ports, it simply didn't pan out, that ship has already sailed.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    And now is subject to the whims of Microsoft, wherever Windows, DirectX, Visual Studio go, Valve must follow. Additionally, everyone is betting on Valve as if Steam would be around forever serving Linux gaming with Proton, except no one lives forever, and who knows what will happen to Valve, when current management passes the torch.
arch1e 8mo ago
Author here: I get where you’re coming from and long term, I agree. I don’t want FreeBSD to slowly turn into "Linux but different." For me though, the Linuxulator is about practicality today, not philosophy. It lets me use one or two tools (like the VS Code server) without changing how I actually run my system. Everything else stays native FreeBSD. It's optional, isolated, and doesn't pollute the base system. If native ports exist and work well, I'll always prefer those. But when something critical doesn't, the compatibility layer keeps FreeBSD usable in modern workflows instead of becoming limiting. So yeah.. I see it more as a bridge, not a direction.
musicale 8mo ago
I'm running macOS because it runs desktop applications, and the macOS desktop itself, fairly well. But I wouldn't mind if macOS (a BSD-flavored Unix) added support for linuxlator, and jails, pledge, and various other BSD-flavored things.

jrmg 8mo ago

After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Isn’t it still the case that, for speeds comparable to an Apple system, x86_64 is still more power/performance efficient than basically any other ARM-based system you can buy?

swiftcoder 8mo ago
For the most part, yes, which is why he's using a Mac as his daily driver, and ssh'ing into the BSD box
throwa356262 8mo ago
In raw power x64 is still the king, has always been. You can skew things by looking only at single core performance (where apples most expensive cpus might win because of their strategy of having fewer but more powerful cores + memory latency gains are much more visible with only one core). With that said, things are changing in the PC landscape and some extremely powerful and power efficient ARM designs are coming soon. We have already seen a small glimpse of that with MediaTek.
- jeroenhd 8mo ago
  I just looked into that for this thread, but the highest-end Apple chips (M4 Max/M5) outperform the fastest normal Ryzens in both single core and multi core tests. They're awful for gaming, which most benchmarks online are run for, but it takes a Threadripper to dethrone Apple's impressive CPU performance. Of course, this also has to do with their integrated memory architecture, which isn't very popular with high-end PC customers who like the ability to upgrade their RAM.
  - throwa356262 8mo ago
    Are you sure? Top searches for M5 vs Ryzen: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m5-vs-amd-ryzen-9-9950x https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m5-vs-amd-ryzen-... https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m5_10_cpu-vs-amd_ryzen_7_9850x3d https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m5_10_cpu-vs... It is hard to compare apples to oranges, sometimes people benchmark different software (e.g. Safari on osx vs Edge on windows) or software that on one platform is more optimised. But in general it looks like AMD despite using an older process node is doing fairly good.

throw0101a 8mo ago

Back in the day I used to run the Linux client of RtCW on FreeBSD with Nvidia drivers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein

kleiba 8mo ago

Cool! Reminds me of how some 18 years ago or so, I was using TRAMP in Emacs to do remote development over ssh. Some things never change, apparently.

metadat 8mo ago

> After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. This seems like a flawed premise. Battery: Yes, MacBook battery life is really good, but only when you're not doing CPU-intensive tasks. Browsing the web, watching Tube or Netflix, it's amazing. Once you're compiling a bunch of stuff the battery performance tanks and seems just like any other notebook computer. CPU: Intel Mac performance was horrible, M* is terrific. And so are the latest from AMD Ryzen. Regardless, FreeBSD is a fantastic OS in so many ways!

throawayonthe 8mo ago
Definitely true that the battery life is not at all inherent to arm, but "Once you're compiling a bunch of stuff the battery performance tanks and seems just like any other notebook computer" is not that true i think, apple silicon is still fairly power efficient even at full throttle compared to most x86 chips (though again yes the latest mobile amd chips are catching up)

drewg123 8mo ago

The best way to run linux compat on FreeBSD is in an Linux jail. See https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails The difference is that with the standard linuxulator, the linux env. is maintained by the FreeBSD package manager, and can sometimes be out of date. Further, the standard linux compat package will install a red hat based distro, which is often not the easiest to deal with in terms of compat with random things you might want to run. I often found I had libraries that were either missing, or were a version out of date when trying to run stuff with linux compat from packages/ports. With a linux jail, you can install an ubuntu based distro & let it keep itself up to date via apt.

ch_123 8mo ago

> After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. I have a Thinkpad X1 with a Lunar Lake CPU, running Fedora. Battery life is comparable to the Mx Macbook Pros I've owned or used. Performance is not as good on synthetic benchmarks, but more than good enough for my needs, even when running VMs or containers.

ahartmetz 8mo ago
I have a Strix Halo laptop, HP ZBook Ultra G1a. (HP is a weird brand. I'm not a loyal customer, but every once in a while they create a product with really good reviews, I buy it, and it delivers.) Performance is almost on par with Apple's best, but battery life under light load is much worse :P, 6:30 or so. Under full load, battery life is an hour or so, similar to Apple actually! If the numbers I've seen are correct, they also use a lot of power under full load. Also, thank $deity for engineered noise signatures. Whooshing is not so bad. Whining fans are the worst. Last heard in better laptops several years ago.

bzmrgonz 8mo ago

I'm curious OP, what are you doing with openwrt? Does it have anything to do with openWISP??

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
arch1e 8mo ago
We build and sell multi-service business gateways, basically devices that do networking, VoIP, etc. all in one box. https://difuse.io/ https://difuse.io/ if you're interested!

eqvinox 8mo ago

> I need an ARM64 machine. Period. This feels a little off base; what the author needs is a fast and efficient machine. Why would the architecture matter? It may be the current state of affairs that Apple ARM systems are great at this. But (1.) that doesn't mean other ARM systems are good at it, and (2.) doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. (And in all honesty, a lot of non-Apple ARM systems are just garbage in either performance, efficiency, or both.)

DaveCharlieLen 8mo ago
> I need an ARM64 machine. Period. >After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Unfortunately, there’s currently no FreeBSD-supported (or even Linux, as far as I can tell) ARM64 laptop that truly rivals Apple Silicon. I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years. I thought the parent maybe was off base, but that is literally all the reasoning. For guidance the arch doesn't impact battery life or performance as much as a specific process node and model. There are slow as shit x86 chips from VIA(maybe? I just retired a node that ran on one.) and fast ARM64 chips, but any high end Ryzen will blow an ARM64 chip out of the water on most real benchmarks I run(HPC stuff, lotsa matrix multiplications and such(CUDA and double float performance is too much premium and yes I have done alot of profiling and benchmarking.))
- AS04 8mo ago
  > I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years. Building a custom CPU like Apple Silicon is plain impossible for a company like Framework. The best they can do is have support for ARM motherboards and sell those with the best CPUs on the open market.
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    I’m hearing good things about Snapdragon nowadays. I’ll certainly give it a try in a bit.
- 8mo ago

DaveCharlieLen 8mo ago

I want to love FreeBSD I have run it for multiple years on my servers. But there is always something off. The linuxulator works okay, but not great, and not great isn't good enough. Like WSL1 worked better than Linuxulator at least as of last Jan when I tried. The WINE story was even worse(do a jail for x32 things and run x64 normal). I do love FreeBSD but it is hard to take seriously as a desktop OS when some regular things are way too hard to get working.

lamuswawir 8mo ago

Linuxulator feels like magic for most things, until said thing works with systemd.

Gud 8mo ago
Then it feels like black magic

teekert 8mo ago

"After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life. Unfortunately, there’s currently no FreeBSD-supported (or even Linux, as far as I can tell) ARM64 laptop that truly rivals Apple Silicon. I really hope Framework or someone else changes that in the coming years." I thought it was now well established that it's not neccessarily ARM vs x86, but more "All the optimization of MacOS" vs "Bloated Windows" and "Sub-optimal (hardware control wise) Linux" Am I wrong?

foldr 8mo ago
Compare an M1 MacBook to one of its Intel predecessors. It’s not just software.
- teekert 8mo ago
  But you should compare it to a present day Intel system, and you should then also ask Apple to make the same optimizations... I know, it's a difficult comparison. But OP stating "I just want ARM" will disappoint for any non Apple ARM (at the moment, I'd say due to software).
  - zamalek 8mo ago
    You should be comparing to AMD, at that. There's hope for the upcoming Intel chips - but anything current isn't competitive. Furthermore, M* is good for a specific form-factor, but don't for a second suggest that 4 P-Cores will outdo the 16 hyper threaded cores on a 9950x
  - foldr 8mo ago
    The only like for like comparison you can do is comparing an M1 MacBook to one of its Intel Mac contemporaries (which were present day Intel systems at the time).
intothemild 8mo ago
No you're not wrong, if you're comparing ARM CPUs on Linux to one specific Intel CPU, the Lunar Lake V ones. Then yeah you're not wrong, it's very much a case of optimisation for CPUs like the Snapdragon X Elite CPUs in comparison. But if you widened the scope a bit more, then I think there's plenty of more energy hungry x86_64 CPUs compared to ARM.