[kwlug-disc] m1 RISC silicon: impression

[Jason Eckert]

I have always liked Apple's hardware quality (butterfly keyboard excepted),
but do not like their OS, business practices or cult members.

I also like that their ARM CPU design is stellar in so many ways.

>From the following two quotes from Linus Torvalds, it looks like he feels
the same way in many respects:
*“I’d absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux.. I have fairly
fond memories of the 11″ Macbook Air (I think 4,1) that I used about a
decade ago (but moved away from because it took Apple too long to fix the
screen – and by the time they did, I’d moved on to better laptops, and
Apple had moved on to make Linux less convenient).”*

*“I’ve been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time.
The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS. And I don’t have
the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that
don’t want to help.”*

>From the Asahi Linux site, Apple has allowed the booting of other OSes like
Linux in their M1 platform design - it's just that they won't do any work
beyond that.
So it's up to the open source community to get Linux running on it,
doing some reverse engineering in the process.
It seems like that's mostly done, and we may see an easy install process
for Linux on M1 early 2022. And once that happens, it will likely attract
the momentum needed to keep mainstream Linux support for the M1 and later
platforms.


On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 10:52 AM Doug Moen <doug at moens.org> wrote:

> I would buy an Apple laptop because of the hardware, especially the CPU,
> trackpad and display.
> The CPU is famous because it totally dominates intel + AMD in performance
> per watt.
> But another issue that people don't discuss is the absence of malware in
> the CPU.
> Intel CPUs have the Management Engine, which is considered malware, and
> AMD has a similar feature.
> But there's no ME in Apple Silicon.
>
> MacOS is, from my perspective, malware, so I want Linux instead.
> It's that simple.
>
> I do not classify every large corporation into one of two buckets, either
> wholely Good or wholely Evil.
> I can't support that kind of moralistic thinking.
> It is overly simplistic and doesn't fit the facts.
>
> Consider Apple.
>
> On one hand, iPhones are a distopian nightmare of malware and surveillance
> capitalism.
> This applies to the hardware, the OS, and the cloud infrastructure.
> I refuse to own one, and I refuse to develop iOS applications due to the
> abusive relationship that iOS developers have with Apple.
>
> On the other hand, Apple supports many important open source projects.
> LLVM is the most prominent one. The availability of a high quality, free
> software, portable optimizing compiler backend has revolutionized free
> software. So many new things have become possible.
> Apple is also one of the main contributors to the new WebGPU standard, a
> free and open standard with multiple free software implementations and a
> large comprehensive test suite that all implementations must pass. This is
> going to revolutionize GPU programming and I am very excited to begin using
> it.
> For this, I am grateful to Apple.
>
> Doug Moen.
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 11:30 PM, William Park via kwlug-disc wrote:
> > I don't understand this Linux on Mac thing.  Why would you buy Apple,
> > and then run Linux on them?  Just more PR and hype for Apple.  Apple
> > says, "Thanks, you Linux suckers!"
> >
> > On 11/17/21 10:17 PM, Jeff Smith wrote:
> >> It seems that even HackaDay is onto you...
> >>
> >> https://hackaday.com/2021/11/17/linux-coming-soon-to-m1-macbooks/
> >> <https://hackaday.com/2021/11/17/linux-coming-soon-to-m1-macbooks/>
> >>
> >> Linux: Coming Soon To M1 Macbooks | Hackaday
> >> <https://hackaday.com/2021/11/17/linux-coming-soon-to-m1-macbooks/>
> >> Regardless of the chipset or original intended use of any computer
> >> system, someone somewhere is going to want to try and run Linux on it.
> >> And why not? Linux is versatile and free to use as well as …
> >> hackaday.com
> >
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