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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @12:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-would-Linus-do? dept.

Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware:

In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"

If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Apple released new versions of the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini featuring a brand-new processor—the Apple M1.

The M1 processor is a successor to the A12 and A14 Bionic CPUs used in iPhones and iPads, and pairs the battery and thermal efficiency of ultramobile designs with the high performance needed to compete strongly in the laptop and desktop world.

"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."

[...] In an interview with ZDNet, Torvalds expounded on the problem:

The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it, because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up... [that] seems unlikely, but hey, you can always hope.

[...] It's also worth noting that while the M1 is unabashedly great, it's not the final word in desktop or laptop System on Chip designs. Torvalds mentions that, given a choice, he'd prefer more and higher-power cores—which is certainly possible and seems a likely request to be granted soon.

Previously: Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Monday November 30 2020, @03:14PM (4 children)

    by theluggage (1797) on Monday November 30 2020, @03:14PM (#1082381)

    It's not so much about ARM, as about why 'regular' Linux and other *nix systems have never taken off as personal computer/desktop operating systems. Shifting to ARM (or RISC-V or Whatever) would be much less of a big deal if everybody was already using x86 *nix.

    Microsoft is certainly part of the problem, but as you point out, Linux (the kernel) has succeeded in the form of Android and Chromebooks. Linux has also carved out a significant slice of the server and scientific computing market against stiff competition from MS. Raspberry Pi etc. are a huge hit with tinkerers and even Apple successfully switched to Unix 20 years ago... Meanwhile, Microsoft has gone through 2-3 big crises - Vista, Windows 8, initial hate for Windows 10 - which should have been ideal opportunities for *nix to muscle in.

    So maybe, just maybe, there's something about *nix that people just don't like in a "desktop" operating system?

    Like... er... the desktop experience? Because one thing that the *nix success - Android, Chromebook, Mac, server - have in common is that they've either rolled their own desktop GUI system and applications, or just don't need a GUI much. Meanwhile, the scientific computing/CS community can use *nix's various X11-descended GUI systems as their designers intended: running 8 copies of vim in translucent windows floating over a shot from the Hubble space telescope...

    It's not that there haven't been great strides in making *nix more user-friendly than it has been in the past (hell, I haven't had to re-compile the kernel for a year or two...) and there is certainly a mass of really powerful *nix application software - and a Linux desktop is perfectly usable - but if an OS is going to displace an incumbent like Windows or MacOS, "perfectly usable" won't cut it - it needs to be better.

    I've used Linux a lot as a server for doing web development stuff, home servers, messing about with Raspberry Pi, making MythTV/TVHeadend PVRs and it's great for that - but doing that via SSH, file sharing and - maybe now - remote development tools in VS Code etc. is fine by me - there's nothing that makes me want to switch to Linux as a main desktop, and when I am confronted with a Gnome/KDE/Mate/whatever (that's part of the problem) desktop I usually just head straight to the terminal. As for applications I know I could switch - all the tools are there - but when you get onto graphics, IDE, Wordprocessing etc. the proprietary tools are just smoother, slicker and more pleasant to use... even when you eschew MS, Adobe etc. in favour of newer (cheaper) Mac/Windows alternatives like Affinity... and, yes, I've used Inkscape and appreciate its power but it's like kicking a dead whale along a beach c.f. Affinity... yes, I actually sat down and used Open/LibreOffice to write a thesis, and got quite familiar with it, but it was, at best, swings and roundabouts c.f. MS Word... the take-home lesson from that was wishing I's just taken the time to re-learn LaTeX, and hang all the GUI stuff.

    ...and that's really my point: Linux is great as a minimal OS for server stuff, embedded, number crunching etc. but after a few decades of trying and failing to catch up with Windows and Mac in the point-n-drool stakes, is there any point to Linux as a desktop OS other than "because freedom"? Most of the key open source applications have Windows and/or MacOS native builds and- for server/embedded development or any other time you want a minimal sandbox - there's always virtualisation.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @08:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @08:07PM (#1082516)

    Foss apps need to quit worrying about cross platform and just focus on gnu+linux. cross platform is only desirable, IMO when enabling an app principally built for an EnslaveOS to work on a FreedomOS. small dev teams need to quit wasting all their dev effort pimping their projects out for willing users of enemy platforms.

  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday November 30 2020, @09:46PM

    by DECbot (832) on Monday November 30 2020, @09:46PM (#1082570) Journal

    One thing that keeps Arm from really succeeding for general computing is there isn't a standard for determining what hardware is baked into the chip like there is with X86. That's why when you go to a distribution--especially phone distributions, you have your x86 image, arm64 image, and armv7, aarm64, and raspberry pi, and rockpro64, and, and, and. Each chip must have a custom crafted image because of the differences of the silicon, how boot is handled by each device, and so forth. There's not a simple universal booter and minimal kernel that gets the system up to start probing models and such that we take for granted on x86/arm64 space.
     
    Check out this podcast episode [linuxunplugged.com] if you want to hear more. I won't pretend to remember it all, but a standard on how to boot and recognized Arm architecture would really benefit general OSes like Linux, BSD, and even Microsoft. This would unlock Arm from the system builders' tight control over their hardware. Probably a good reason why we don't have it now and I doubt we will see it any time soon given how much NVIDA keeps their own drivers mostly private.

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @10:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @10:40PM (#1082591)

    Focusing on the desktop is stupid, because the desktop paradigm is stupid. I don't use a DE, just a window manager, because the DE is just training wheels for the typewriter crowd.

  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday November 30 2020, @11:18PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Monday November 30 2020, @11:18PM (#1082596) Journal

    after a few decades of trying and failing to catch up with Windows and Mac in the point-n-drool stakes, is there any point to Linux as a desktop OS other than "because freedom"?

    In my experience, Xfce desktop on GNU/Linux has better I/O performance, faster process startup time, and lower RAM use than Windows 10 on the same computer. These add up to less disk thrashing during boot and login, less disk thrashing during use, and more work getting done.

    Most of the key open source applications have Windows and/or MacOS native builds and- for server/embedded development or any other time you want a minimal sandbox - there's always virtualisation.

    Virtualization also implies more RAM use to fit the host and client in RAM at once. Once you add the highest-capacity RAM module your laptop can use, you're out of luck. Plus the client OS needs to wait for the host OS's pokey I/O.