Apple M1 Linux GPU DRM Driver Now Running GNOME, Various Apps (phoronix.com) 44
Developer Asahi Lina with the Asahi Linux project was successfully able to get GNOME running on the Apple M1, including "Firefox with YouTube video playback, the game Neverball, various KDE applications, and more," reports Phoronix. From the report: This is some great progress especially with the driver being written in Rust -- the first within the Direct Rendering Manager subsystem -- and lots of work there with the Rust infrastructure in early form. It won't be until at least Linux 6.2 before this driver could be mainlined while we'll see how quickly it tries to go mainline before it can commit to a stable user-space interface. At the moment there is also a significant driver "hack" involved but will hopefully be sorted out soon. Over in user-space, the AGX Gallium3D driver continues being worked on for OpenGL support with hopes of having OpenGL 2.1 completed by year's end. Obviously it will be longer before seeing the Apple graphics suitable for modern gaming with Vulkan, etc but progress is being made across the board in reverse-engineered, open-source Apple Silicon support under Linux. You can watch a video of the driver working here.
Old joke (Score:5, Funny)
"It said install Gnome 3 or better, so I installed Gnome 2"
Seriously.
I'm feeling old (Score:2)
So now even Linux hackers are pretending to be VTuber avatars?
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Pretending? Seems like they are in fact using a vtube avatar on youtube.
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And you're pretending to be Cultureofone. Does that make you a child for not using your real name?
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Re: I'm feeling old (Score:2)
ZOomers gonna zoomer I guess.
Hey, at least the kids are still getting involved. It's a *good* thing. Kernel hacking is kind of the final boss of coding , so it means these skills are still being taught.
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Asahi could be a 60 years old guy....
I wish Asahi would use a 60 year old guy's voice for the avatar. The one that is being used is too painful to listen to for more than one second. I hit stop as fast as I could once that fingernails-on-chalkboard voice started scraping my brain with an ice pick.
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If the person actually turns out to be a cat, it's a cat that can write functioning GPU drivers for the kernel in Rust of all languages and I won't care. I'll take whatever can munch kernel code and produce working product any day. Because at the end of the day that's the part that matters the most. Just like that time they trained a monkey to do train switching [wikipedia.org], as long as the trains got to the right places, if the monkey can do it right, I'll take it.
Didn't Apple promise to "work with" linux for M1? (Score:1)
I'm sure I remember Linux being expressly called out during the unveiling of the new M1 machines.
Re: Didn't Apple promise to "work with" linux for (Score:2)
Pretty sure what they meant was âoewell give you really good virtualisation supportâ
Feeling so conflicted over this (Score:1, Troll)
Anyways it's their time not my time so as long as they are having fun doing it I guess it's fine.
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The pros of buying Apple are reliable hardware with limited depreciation. Apple hardware is generally quality stuff. And people who want an Apple device will still pay a premium for a second-hand device that is several years old.
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The M2 is just an iteration over the M1. From what I've read, ASAHI Linux works just fine on the M2, with the same limitations than it has on the M1. So to answer your question, when the whole featureset of the M1 will be supported, chances are it'll work for the whole series.
Re: Feeling so conflicted over this (Score:3)
Building the initial support for AGX GPUs is a *really* big job. Building support for a new iteration of the same architecture is not so much.
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Apple hardware is generally quality stuff
I've been distinctly unimpressed with the quality of several MPBs I've owned for work, compared to Thinkpads. They're just not as well made.
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Linus Tech Tips just reviewed the M2 Macbook Air. It overheats under any kind of load lasting more than a few seconds. It's basically an overpriced Chromebook, okay for light use like web browsing, but as soon as you put a load on it the case reaches the legal limit of 50C. The thermal limit of the laptop is literally set by the law preventing users from getting their most private parts burned.
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Apple seem just astonishingly incompetent at thermal design.
Of course the response from the maciverse is that you're using it wrong. I mean clearly with the super low end performance that £1600 implies you couldn't expect to do anything other than very casual work on it...
It never ceases to amaze me how much mac fans will attempt to justify blatantly shoddy build quality and obvious blunders, on the grounds that you should have bought a more expensive product. Personally, with a laptop in that p
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I think it has to be deliberate. They ship the same chip in a number of machines, and differentiate them by making them deliberately thermal throttle or have minimal I/O ports. The RAM and storage being non-upgradable is a massive up-sell scam too.
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could well be! I mean it can also be both, given the proven record of incompetence. Also a record of dickishness.
RAM though can't be upgradable if it's LPDDR, that doesn't support socketed memory. My SO's thinkpad X1 has socketed everything except RAM. Even the bluetooth adapter is replaceable.
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I'd been an Apple person since they switched from PPC to Intel since about 2007. My first Mac was a 17" MacBookPro with a Core Duo. On that machine, batteries were external and swappable just by unlocking the little sliding lever. Removing one Philips screw would get you into the memory compartment to add RAM. You did have to remove the whole bottom cover to add a new HD, but it was a standard SATA part. The bottom line was that it was no more painful to upgrade an Apple computer of the era than it was
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The pros of buying Apple are reliable hardware with limited depreciation
So my one piece of Apple hardware, a mackbook air, that grew fuzzy white spots all over the screen is just a statistical anomaly?
Re: Feeling so conflicted over this (Score:2)
These are by far the best ARM desktop/server devices weâ(TM)ve found. Itâ(TM)s much more cost effective for us to test on these than pay for AWS Graviton instances for example. Then again, weâ(TM)re currently using Parallels though despite it being beta quality, and VMWare are very late.
Why? (Score:2)
Why?
Re: not likely (Score:2)
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Re: not likely (Score:2)
The iMac and MacBook Pro both use active cooling. Neither is clocked higher. Instead, they added extra cores and RAM. That makes sense - increasing clock rate gives you logarithmic gains for a particular increase in power.
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As the old saying goes, Linux is user friendly, it's just picky about its friends.
Chances are, I'd hate the "refined" user experience you'd love Linux to develop.
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Why do people do anything challenging?
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Why?
A better question (since you're on a nerd website) would be: Why not ?
Patreon and stuff (Score:2)
If you like these guys, support them via Patreon or Github: https://asahilinux.org/support... [asahilinux.org]
I support them through Patreon for $3 per month. I don't know if I'm ever going to use their work, but I think it's pretty fun to fund people who a) don't run on Intel, b) use Rust in the kernel and c) will make a cool little server when Apple stops supporting the M1 after 5-7 years.
qualcomm is out hope (Score:1)