Ask HN: Early M1 adopters in Cybersec, how has it been? is it mature enough?
I landed a cybersec job and I'm allowed to choose a laptop. I would love to know what your experiences have been like so far.
There is virtualization software for the M1 and it works well, but it does not virtualize or emulate x86/x64 images, where things are the most available and stable.
Eg. there is Kali Linux for ARM, but its not as mature or compatible as on x64.
Additionally, several Python libs are still broken on ARM.
have you been able to do all your work on your Mac albeit with some workarounds or did you have to resort to a backup x64.
I feel like most of these issues will be resolved with another year, but I have to choose in a few months.
Even with the current shortcomings of an M1 reality there's no way in hell I'd trade out my M1.
This all depends on the software you use everyday for work. If the software you require does not run on the laptop or is so unstable that it prevents you from doing your work then skip it.
What the M1 early adopters didn't tell you is that basic software like Java, Docker and Node required hacks and tons of workarounds before it was made stable. Some have strangely went 'all in' and encountered tons of issues which have costed them weeks or months to get started. Even after they finished setting up everything, the occasional issues still slow them down despite the machine being faster than everything on the market.
If an urgent issue was to arise and you are still unable to do your job because the software on your machine doesn't work or isn't mature, or occasionally crashes or reboots itself (even worse becomes bricked) then it is not worth the risk.
Personally, I moved most of my toys to VMs elsewhere a few years ago and everything left with just interia.
As other posters mentioned python libraries are a problem, but then python on Mac is a circus anyway!
VMware is working on it, but it's not ready yet. Virtualbox will not be ported, and Docker is about containers, not VMs.