Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

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I don't expect it to make a measurable difference. Android and iOS have already pushed ARM support and optimizations in programming languages and key libraries.

For macOS, the support revolves around Xcode. Cross-compilation support is Apple-specific and won't benefit Linux. CPU architecture is abstracted away in macOS as much as possible, so average developers won't think much about ARM support.

Where Apple wants developers to tune for M1 specifically, is their proprietary frameworks for ML acceleration and Metal, which don't benefit anyone but Apple.

At best there may be some halo effect from proving that ARM can be as fast as "real" desktop CPUs, and it's not just the low-end slow Qualcomm chips. That might legitimize running ARM on servers, but Pi is neither high-end desktop nor a server platform.

One could expect that docker on macOS with M1 will be able to run aarch64 linux container images and therefore make it more convenient for developers to better maintain open source libraries for this platform (without suffering from long build time on an under-powered external ARM box, or the complexity to setup a cross-compilation toolchain or the slowness of a qemu layer).

Parallels/VMWare (even Docker maybe) on Apple Silicon Macs will be the first desktop class Linux ARM computers in wide circulation. Certainly putting a popular and performant package for the same software stack as the Rasperry Pi should help the Raspberry Pi project right?

I don't understand why you think Apple specific components matter, surely Linux developers will ignore those and focus on the cpu side.

MacOS has privacy issues. But if Linux works fine on M1... Finally great ARM based workstation.

Linux will not run on the M1 until 1a) Apple decides to allow it or 1b) someone finds a boot chain exploit, and 2a) Apple releases full chip documentetion or a Linux port outright or 2b) People spend years reverse engineering it all until it works well.

I don't see 2a happening, and let's hope for 1a and time.

Apple ships a utility on Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to sign kernels yourself for booting yourself, sort of like EFI Secure Boot: https://twitter.com/never_released/status/132631574108015001...

Surely the Linux kernel does not support these things now, but there's only baseless speculation that Apple would actively lock this down.

It's not exactly baseless since Apple actively opposes open computing. You can't even run an interpreter on iOS without Apple hammer coming down. They are slowly but surely moving towards not being apple to run anything not Apple on OSX as well. So I don't think it's baseless to suggest that Apple will try to actively lock this down.

> It's not exactly baseless since Apple actively opposes open computing.

> They are slowly but surely moving towards not being apple to run anything not Apple on OSX as well.

I would argue that both of these statements are completely baseless, and the second is actually actively argued against by Apple.

I'll be the first to say that their handling of iOS things is horrible, and I would buy iPhones and iPads if they were a more open platform, but the world is more complicated than "Apple is evil" and their handling of iOS has no bearing on the Mac.

I don't really care what they say themselves. They quite obviously continue to move OSX in that direction. First they made opening unsigned programs a little bit harder. Then they made it much harder. Now they don't allow any unsigned apps to run at all unless you opt-out at OSX install time. I really don't understand how you can believe this is not clear. Especially considering the iOS situation.

I believe it's not clear because Apple is set to gain nothing if they would move against "open computing", and only lose. iOS has not been an open computing platform since the start, and Apple appears to have trouble changing their backwards attitude there. There's no attitude to change on the Mac. Everything they've done on Mac nudges to strict defaults, but does not limit anyone (at best it improves security, at worst it annoys, but it does not fundamentally limit anyone). You can fully disable Gatekeeper with one Terminal command if those defaults annoy you.

In my view you can only believe Apple will lock down the Mac if you somehow view them as an irrational ideological opponent, not simply a company that wants to make money by selling computers. Since you say you don't care what Apple themselves say towards this, I can't escape the impression that you might actually already view them in this way. If so, there's not much we can talk about.

I don't know why they want to lock it down. I don't understand why they lock down iOS either. I also don't know why they are moving further on locking down OSX over time. I'm only observing what they are doing and extrapolate. I don't care what they are saying because it's worth nothing. I rather watch their actions.

I really would love nothing more then buy the new Apple Arm Macbook Pro but I can't risk investing in this ecosystem when, to me, it's quite obvious where Apple stands on this.

If you don't know why they want to lock it down, if Apple says they don't want to lock it down, and Apple Silicon Macs show no further evidence of things being locked down (they're just different), then why do you still think it's so evident they will lock it down? I honestly get the impression you're caught up in some narrative that has very little substantiation, just a fear that macOS will become iOS.

> I rather watch their actions.

And which actions are those? Gatekeeper and the Apple T2 are not enough to make the Mac not an "open computing platform", let alone something close to iOS. I'd argue they're not even on the way there, just like Windows SmartScreen isn't on the way there. And note that the T2 is even gone from Apple Silicon Macs.

Apple deserves all the added scrutiny in this area because of their attitude on iOS [1]. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that Apple's direction towards locking down Macs is either "clear" or "inevitable" in my view.

[1]: There are some identifiable explanations as to why iOS is so locked down whereas the Mac isn't, but let's talk about that some other time.

If you want a reason, efficiency of maintenance and RD departments.

If everything works exactly like iOS you save $$$$$$$, added benefits you can charge enterprise licensing fees to get access to your sdks and dev tools. And if you have e.g. a luxury market cornered you can command those sorts of prices.

This is exactly Apple's playbook, I don't know why anyone would expect them to do anything different...

T2 has been rolled into M1. Not gone at all.

> "Linux will not run on the M1 until ..."

Not as the primary boot OS, perhaps, but it will work under virtualization. The M1 chip supports virtualization, and Apple has a new hypervisor API in Big Sur:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization

As I mentioned in a previous comment, 2b should be easier on the M1 because it's inside a real computer with debugging tools and we can probably fuzz the hell out of it, among other things. (Famous last words.)

1b and device drivers seem to me like the biggest obstacles.

Even 1a is unlikely. Have they ever done something to support Linux on Intel Macs?

No, but I'm thinking they might if they get hit with a hefty enough antitrust case.

I would be amazed if Linux runs better on M1 laptops than on Intel ones.

As far as I know there Linux driver support for Intel Macs is abysmal, due to lack of support from Apple.

I would be shocked if ARM Macs, which will probably be even more locked down, were more open somehow.

Curious how is CPU architecture abstracted away more macOS than any other OS?

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