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posted by chromas on Monday November 12 2018, @02:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the apple-is-now-dead-to-me dept.

Apple's MacBook Pro laptops have become increasingly unfriendly with Linux in recent years [...] But now with the latest Mac Mini systems employing Apple's T2 security chip, they too are likely to crush any Linux dreams.

At least until further notice, these new Apple systems sporting the T2 chip will not be able to boot Linux operating systems.

[...] By default, Microsoft Windows isn't even bootable on the new Apple systems until enabling support for Windows via the Boot Camp Assistant macOS software.

From Phoronix.


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  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @03:58AM (12 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday November 12 2018, @03:58AM (#760801) Journal

    I can't see very many reasons to buy a new Mac to boot linux natively on the hardware. There are other options, many of them truly excellent.

    Having said that, odds are linux can be run just fine in a VM under OSX on these machines.

    If that's not so, then this is an issue. Otherwise, it's just noise. There are plenty of good reasons to take Apple to task. Somehow I doubt this rises to that level. We'll see though. The minis are out in the wild now.

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  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday November 12 2018, @05:10AM (3 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Monday November 12 2018, @05:10AM (#760811) Journal

    On a machine with a given amount of RAM, using a VM means you thrash swap sooner than you would with a dual boot. It also means that your USB passthrough is limited to the 12 Mbps of USB 1.1-era "full speed" devices unless you spend $5,000[1] on the full version. Nor is the performance of GPU passthrough likely to be representative of the majority of other users, who are not using a VM.

    [1] Source: Oracle [oracle.com]. Commercial use licenses for VirtualBox Extension Pack are $50 each in lots of 100. Equivalently, buy 1 seat for $5,000 and get 99 free.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @12:57PM (2 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday November 12 2018, @12:57PM (#760890) Journal

      On a machine with a given amount of RAM

      I read that as "insufficient RAM" :) With an OSX machine that has sufficient RAM, I turn the swap off. It can provide quite a speed boost. You can also direct it to a RAM drive, which isn't quite as good as actually having code (and data, if we add in-OS data cache to this line of thinking) ready to go, but still far better than swapping to HD, even SSD.

      It also means that your USB passthrough is limited to the 12 Mbps of USB 1.1-era "full speed" devices unless you spend $5,000[1] on the full version.

      Oracle is not the only fish in the OSX VM sea, nor the tastiest. For example, on this particular issue, OSX vmware has long supported USB 2.0, with USB 2.0 speeds proportional to the available CPU power applied, and OSX parallels supports USB 3, same conditions. I use both; they both work. OTOH, if you truly require native speeds, sure, get something else. There will always be exceptions.

      Nor is the performance of GPU passthrough likely to be representative of the majority of other users, who are not using a VM.

      This varies with the particular VM and graphics hardware combination as well. But getting right down to it, if GPU performance is what you're after, you don't want Mac hardware at all, nothing to do with direct bootability. Apple's long been the trailer in the fast GPU wars, even in their top of the line machines where you can swap GPU cards around, and unless they do something very differently in the future, I expect they'll remain dependably well behind. Adding a VM will just compound the problem.

      Having said that, most people will do fine with a lot less GPU than they think they need, gamers and really heavy CAD users excepted.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Monday November 12 2018, @02:03PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Monday November 12 2018, @02:03PM (#760907) Journal

        On a machine with a given amount of RAM

        I read that as "insufficient RAM" :)

        By that definition, there's a sentiment across certain forums that affordable Macs ship with insufficient RAM. One of the costs that T2 imposes on many is the price of Apple's RAM upgrade.

        For example, on this particular issue, OSX vmware has long supported USB 2.0, with USB 2.0 speeds proportional to the available CPU power applied, and OSX parallels supports USB 3, same conditions.

        In other words, another of the costs that T2 imposes on many is the price of a license of proprietary VM software.

        if GPU performance is what you're after, you don't want Mac hardware at all

        Say an application developer is using a Mac to test an application that he or she plans to make available for macOS and Linux. In a case like this, performance on par with a low-end PC is fine, so long as what is fast in the VM is also fast on metal, and what is slow in the VM is also slow on metal. But I haven't seen evidence that a VM offers even this.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @03:05PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday November 12 2018, @03:05PM (#760923) Homepage Journal

        In my experience, there is no such thing as sufficient RAM. Mine may be mostly empty (okay, full up of cached files) five nines worth of the time but I've yet to find a box I didn't hit swap on eventually. Even with vm.swappiness set to 1.

        Pro-tip: it's a damned fine condition to alert yourself on if you want to be able to deal with things before they manage to get completely out of hand. Having a swap file/partition as nothing but a time buffer for you to be able to investigate and fix the problem is quite valuable.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday November 12 2018, @05:42AM (4 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Monday November 12 2018, @05:42AM (#760814) Journal
    Yeah, running Linux under a Mac OS VM is exactly the same thing as running under bare hardware - not.

    Why would you want to do it? Because you happen to own an Apple branded PC. Maybe you got it for free, I don't know, the point being that you want to get some use out of it, instead of use it as a doorstop, so of course you will want to install software on it.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @12:33PM (3 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday November 12 2018, @12:33PM (#760883) Journal

      Because you happen to own one?

      No, because I know what I'm doing. I don't own one, I own five. Presently three Mac Pros, a Mac mini, and an iMac, as well as a set of four native linux servers and two Windows machines, so I'm intimately familiar with various paths of mixing and matching. When you develop software for all three platforms as I do, as well as run multiple web servers, you tend to learn quite a bit about what can be done and how difficult or easy it is.

      Yeah, running Linux under a Mac OS VM is exactly the same thing as running under bare hardware - not.

      Having been running multiple varieties of linux doing real work under OSX VMs for many years now, I seriously doubt that most people have any applications at all that require running under bare hardware. VMs are very powerful these days and there are many things you might think of running under linux you can also run under OSX native, linux not in the least bit required. But for the exceptions, yes, there are other paths they can take so again, this is pretty much going to be a non-issue for 99.99% of the people out there that actually know what they're doing. Further, running a VM under OSX offers advantages as well, specifically ready access to many applications otherwise not available (and that goes for Windows as well... in fact in all six directions, any OS to any other OS, not even counting the less commonly used OS's that can also run in VMs.)

      the point being that you want to get some use out of it, instead of use it as a doorstop, so of course you will want to install software on it.

      "Doorstop", lol. That's purest backwards hyperbolic nonsense. If you can't get any use out of such a setup, it's not the setup's fault, it's 100% yours and it goes straight to your lack of competence. A linux machine standalone has access to far less software than an OSX machine that can comfortably and legally run applications from all three major operating systems. Period.

      There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, [Arik], Than Are Dreamt of in [your] Philosophy.

      --Shakespeare (Hamlet)

      • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @01:00PM

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday November 12 2018, @01:00PM (#760891) Journal

        Actually... six Macs. Forgot about the laptop. Still running fine after all these years, but hardly ever used, so I dropped some bits. My brain needs regular refreshes like DRAM. :)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @01:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @01:34PM (#760899)

        When the PPC macs could no longer run the newest mac OS, you could put linux on them and run modern browsers. So when this newer generation loses OSX support and you can run only old ass shit you would want a brand new distro which actually supports programs from less than 10 years ago. That's why you want linux on bare hardware. Otherwise enjoy doing everything in a VM. And this is just one thing off the top of my head.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 12 2018, @05:04PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Monday November 12 2018, @05:04PM (#760966)

        Having spent a couple months trying to use Linux under a VM on MacOS, I gave up. It ran fine, but between two OSes and a VM, the hotkey conflicts and other UI glitches were interminable. It'd be great if I wanted to run MacOS and a few Linux programs, but I wanted to run Linux and a few MacOS programs, and was lured by the promise of three-finger-swiping between OSes (that part worked beautifully). So the plan is now to install Linux natively and try to get MacOS running in a VM. I've heard it can be done, we'll see if Fusion360 cooperates.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday November 12 2018, @02:00PM (1 child)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 12 2018, @02:00PM (#760906) Homepage Journal

    Is there a guide somewhere for running a VM under Linux? What VM systems are available (and which of them are free software)? How you get subsystems like Windows to run under them? Even an old Windows whose installer can no longer authenticate? Whether you can move an existing OS installation from a hardware machine to a virtual one? How well they work and what scale of resources they need?

    • (Score: 2) by dw861 on Tuesday November 13 2018, @04:03AM

      by dw861 (1561) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 13 2018, @04:03AM (#761148) Journal

      Here are a couple of tutorials to get you started.

      https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/set-windows-virtual-machine-linux/ [makeuseof.com]

      https://www.ionos.ca/digitalguide/server/know-how/virtual-machines/ [ionos.ca]

      No doubt there are other better ones.

      Most recently I set up an XP virtual machine under Linux (to run an aged version of WordPerfect). Had to phone an automated 800 number to get it to authenticate. Meaning, I sat with a pen and wrote down the authentication code. If you phone from a cell phone, they can text you the code, instead of writing it down. Is this what you are worried about?

      Have never tried moving an existing installation from hardware to a virtual one. Not sure that it is possible. When you create the virtual machine, you really are creating an OS installation from scratch.

      For scale of resources, you can install something like VirtualBox and play, poke around. If you go through the first few steps to create a new virtual machine, it will tell you how much hard drive space it would like for that particular installation. Depending on what you want to install, it likely requires 5-10 gigs of space and up.

      hope this is helpful, hendrikboom.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:55PM (#760986)

    i don't deal in mapple shit so idk what vm stuff is available but if it's not lxc or kvm, it doesn't count as far as i'm concerned. i'm not running some bullshit gui closed source or gpl violating vm shitware.