Linux 6.2: The First Mainstream Linux Kernel with Upstream Support for Apple M1 Chips Arrives (twitter.com) 65
Steven Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, "Maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some test love too." For once, I disagree with Torvalds. By adding upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips, newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines. And, for techies, that's sexy. Getting Linux to run on the M1 family wasn't easy.
When these high-powered ARM chips first arrived, Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next-generation Macs. But, while he'd been "waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time," he worried, saying, "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."
UPDATE (2/26/2023): Asahi Linux called ZDNet's report "misleading and borderline false," posting on Twitter that "You will not be able to run Ubuntu nor any other standard distro with 6.2 on any M1 Mac. Please don't get your hopes up." We are continuously upstreaming kernel features, and 6.2 notably adds device trees and basic boot support for M1 Pro/Max/Ultra machines. However, there is still a long road before upstream kernels are usable on laptops. There is no trackpad/keyboard support upstream yet.
While you can boot an upstream 6.2 kernel on desktops (M1 Mac Mini, M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studio) and do useful things with it, that is only the case for 16K page size kernel builds. No generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today, to our knowledge.
Our goal is to upstream everything, but that doesn't mean distros instantly get Apple Silicon support. As with many other platforms, there is some integration work required. Distros need to package our userspace tooling and, at this time, offer 16K kernels. In the future, once 4K kernel builds are somewhat usable, you can expect zero-integration distros to somewhat work on these machines (i.e. some hardware will work, but not all, or only partially). This should be sufficient to add a third-party repo with the integration packages.
But for out-of-the-box hardware support, distros will need to work with us to get everything right. We are already working with some, and we expect to announce official Apple Silicon support for a mainstream distro in the near future. Just not quite yet!
When these high-powered ARM chips first arrived, Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next-generation Macs. But, while he'd been "waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time," he worried, saying, "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."
UPDATE (2/26/2023): Asahi Linux called ZDNet's report "misleading and borderline false," posting on Twitter that "You will not be able to run Ubuntu nor any other standard distro with 6.2 on any M1 Mac. Please don't get your hopes up." We are continuously upstreaming kernel features, and 6.2 notably adds device trees and basic boot support for M1 Pro/Max/Ultra machines. However, there is still a long road before upstream kernels are usable on laptops. There is no trackpad/keyboard support upstream yet.
While you can boot an upstream 6.2 kernel on desktops (M1 Mac Mini, M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studio) and do useful things with it, that is only the case for 16K page size kernel builds. No generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today, to our knowledge.
Our goal is to upstream everything, but that doesn't mean distros instantly get Apple Silicon support. As with many other platforms, there is some integration work required. Distros need to package our userspace tooling and, at this time, offer 16K kernels. In the future, once 4K kernel builds are somewhat usable, you can expect zero-integration distros to somewhat work on these machines (i.e. some hardware will work, but not all, or only partially). This should be sufficient to add a third-party repo with the integration packages.
But for out-of-the-box hardware support, distros will need to work with us to get everything right. We are already working with some, and we expect to announce official Apple Silicon support for a mainstream distro in the near future. Just not quite yet!
I have difficulty (Score:1)
wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up."
Re:I have difficulty (Score:4, Informative)
Apple won't release any documentation as how to properly support them because that would mean they would release design documents, trade secrets, etc. that would help competitors to create better chips.
Think of it like nVIDIA and how the opensource codec had to hack-and-slash until it got something workable without support from the company.
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Re:I have difficulty (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have difficulty (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple released enough documentation for people to write open-source drivers, it would not help competitors one iota.
Competitors already keep a close eye on one another, and you can bet that major competitors have acquired Apple chips and reverse-engineered them to see what's up.
No, this is just control on the part of large companies. They can't stand the idea of open-source software somehow reducing their control over their products. It's a bullshit control-freak mentality... nothing to do with preventing competitors from gaining knowledge.
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They can't stand the idea of open-source software somehow reducing their control over their products. It's a bullshit control-freak mentality... nothing to do with preventing competitors from gaining knowledge.
I doubt this. After all, you can download all the source code to the MacOS XNU kernel too, edit it, recompile it, and install it on your Mac. I think it's just that Apple has a lot better things to do with their engineer's time, especially when it comes to making money, than trying to get this to work and getting the documentation to widespread-distribution levels of quality.
re: control on part of companies (Score:3)
Yeah.... I'm not so sure? On one hand, we know Apple is a control-freak type company in general. That attitude has served them well over the decades, and was pretty much demanded from the top down by Steve Jobs.
But with the M series processors? What we seem to have going on is a CPU/GPU combo that Microsoft has no interest in trying to port Windows onto. (Their official stance is to buy a copy of Parallels desktop to run it via emulation, or to pay for them to serve an instance of it to you via the cloud.)
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Yeah.... I'm not so sure? On one hand, we know Apple is a control-freak type company in general. That attitude has served them well over the decades, and was pretty much demanded from the top down by Steve Jobs.
But with the M series processors? What we seem to have going on is a CPU/GPU combo that Microsoft has no interest in trying to port Windows onto. (Their official stance is to buy a copy of Parallels desktop to run it via emulation, or to pay for them to serve an instance of it to you via the cloud.) Every time MS has tried to shoehorn Windows onto ARM CPUs, it wound up performing poorly and had almost no third party software support. And from what I've read from others here? Apparently, there are some logistical problems trying to move the x86 type code over to ARM having to do with sequences/order of operations. It's much easier to start from scratch like Apple did, writing an OS specifically for the chipset (and note how they completely dumped 32-bit app support before ever attempting it, too).
So .... it *would* be potentially compelling for Apple to cooperate with providing tech details the open source community could use to make Linux run better on it. Apple would still make the money on the hardware sales that it makes now, and since MacOS comes WITH the machines and not sold separately? They even sell a MacOS license with each one -- even if the user plans to wipe it and make it a Linux box. This could be done without aiding Microsoft in getting people more comfortable with the Windows platform and software applications.
I don't think you know the difference between Emulation and Virtualization.
Even running x86 code isn't done under Emulation, unless
there is no other way; like if code is dynamically-generated during execution. It is Translated from x86 to ARM before running. Not even close to the same thing.
Rosetta2 and MS' version of the same thing is not "SoftPC".
Apple did dump 32 bit support, because the ARM architecture was SO much more efficient at 64 bit code that it would be silly to do anything else; and bec
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If Apple released enough documentation for people to write open-source drivers, it would not help competitors one iota.
Err that is demonstrably false given the history we have of performance improvements that have occurred due to code leaks. Driver level optimisations are a real thing and complete documentation of a device provides a lot of insight into how a device does what it does.
Sure you could likely eventually figure it out through reverse engineering the existing delivered product and code, but that takes a long time.
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>"If Apple released enough documentation for people to write open-source drivers, it would not help competitors one iota. "
Correct
>this is just control on the part of large companies. They can't stand the idea of open-source software somehow reducing their control over their products."
Not correct. It is the part of APPLE, and MICROSOFT (and perhaps some other large companies), but many other large manufacturers, Lenovo for example, have no hostility at all to Open Source/Linux. In some ways, they ha
Re:I have difficulty (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think releasing a description of the registers and the rendering pipeline would make much difference to competitors. Apple's GPU isn't magic, it's the same as many other mobile GPUs. Performance is okay, not spectacular.
Same with their ARM CPUs really. Nothing revolutionary there, just massive caches and all the usual pipeline tricks. There are a apparently a few enhancements to make x86 emulation faster, but they aren't needed for Linux and there doesn't seem to be any public compiler support.
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We live in a world where major vendors fall over themselves providing optimised driver updates that deliver actual step changes in performance on their hardware. And sadly in this same world Linux either resorts to binary blobs or a significant performance hit from open source drivers.
There is absolutely IP to be discovered in the complete documentation of a GPU.
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It's not that releasing docs would give competitors any significant advantage, it's that Apple is not a "hardware vendor", they're a "package supplier". They are not in the business of selling hardware for you to run whatever you want on it, they are selling a packaged thing (hardware, software, and support) - they want to control as much as they can what you do with their packaged thing. You're just supposed to look good using it and advertise it for them.
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I preferred Apple when it was pre-post-Woz. Remember when they used to release schematics for their mainboards? Remember when they used to provide commented assembly code for their mainboard and I/O board firmware? Remember when they used to publish thick dead tree volumes through Addison-Wesley about their hardware, firmware and toolbox routines on Apple II and Macintosh computers?
They were pretty much Open Source before that was even a term. But the money grabbers have taken over since then and now it's a
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Yeah, no. Even Nvidia has open sourced their drivers [github.com] (kind of) at this point, because nothing that is important in the chip design is exposed by the driver code.
If even Nvidia has come around on that, then Apple is VERY late to the party. And it's not like Nvidia, AMD, Intel, etc. can't just go buy a Macbook and de-lid the SoC and have a look in a scanning electron microscope anyway...
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So, forgive my ignorance, but did Apple open up?
A agree with Linus (Score:4)
Re:A agree with Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
But yet Asahi Linux is now good enough that Linus uses an Apple M1 as his daily driver. This kernel release came from his Apple M1. So it's usable now to a large degree. Yes there are bugs and some things are not working that need to be, but people are using the M1s every day as their main laptops.
Re:A agree with Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would Linus do something so stupid? Creator of the greatest open source project ever using the most locked down hardware ever. Dumb dumb dumb.
Maybe he's just a little smarter than you, eh?
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This is a good thing. It will push Linux for M1's development faster with him onboard.
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This is a good thing. It will push Linux for M1's development faster with him onboard.
Agreed.
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In his field. The more I hear Linus speak about things, I don't think he really cares much about things outside of the kernel. Other than errata, he rather famously said he doesn't care much about the details of CPU hardware because, "It doesn't involve me." As long as Linux boots, he probably doesn't care about what hardware is in his Mac.
I also know a lot of smart people who are willing to put their principles aside when convenient, so I don't blindly follow the lead of any public figure.
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In his field. The more I hear Linus speak about things, I don't think he really cares much about things outside of the kernel. Other than errata, he rather famously said he doesn't care much about the details of CPU hardware because, "It doesn't involve me." As long as Linux boots, he probably doesn't care about what hardware is in his Mac.
I also know a lot of smart people who are willing to put their principles aside when convenient, so I don't blindly follow the lead of any public figure.
I think you just called the Inventor of Linux a stupid Mac User who don' know no better!
Tally Ho!
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Yes, the man behind one of the world's most successful open source projects is dumb.
By comparison, where do you stand?
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Why would Linus do something so stupid? Creator of the greatest open source project ever using the most locked down hardware ever. Dumb dumb dumb.
Probably because they are the best laptops out there by a considerable margin? Anything from the competition that can match the performance is much bulkier, heavier and has 1/3rd of the autonomy.
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>"Probably because they are the best laptops out there by a considerable margin? Anything from the competition that can match the performance is much bulkier, heavier"
"Better" depends entirely the criteria used. Apple laptops are not "better" if you care about compatibility, price, feature choice, and repairability.
I recently bought a Lenovo X13 gen2 AMD laptop. Works perfectly with Linux (every single function), has a headphone jack, has more USB ports, has great performance/keyboard/screen, I can eas
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Having actually used it, there's a better-than-average chance that he knows something that you don't. But you're real quick on the trigger to call him stupid, so we'll just have to make some bad assumptions about you...
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Why would Linus do something so stupid? Creator of the greatest open source project ever using the most locked down hardware ever. Dumb dumb dumb.
You're confusing Linus Torvalds (a programmer who developed Linux and gets practical work done) with Richard Stallman (a programmer who runs a religion based on the ideals of freedom).
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It's not the CPU support that made this newsworthy, they got the GPU working with OpenGL.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
When Apple stops making OS updates for the current models, it is nice to have another OS that still receives security patches. There are a lot of Macs out there that get repurposed into Linux machines because the hardware is still good, even relatively recent... but Apple cut off updates for them. Having another OS is a lot better than dealing with something unpatched, or having to toss perfectly working hardware.
Since M1/M2 Macs use iBoot and regardless of what physical drive the OS is located, it uses that, maybe Apple should move a hypervisor there. That way, booting Linux would be just as easy as installing Linux onto a Parallels or other AVF instance.
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Also, it gives owners of M1/M2 machines (such as myself) an "out" should Apple decide to take macOS down the iOS route.
There have been noises from a one or two higher-ups at Apple which seem to indicate there are people there who really want to neuter macOS. Which would be incredibly stupid, IMHO, unless those people's goal is to kill their laptop line. And it's possible those were just talking points being advanced for the Epic lawsuit.
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Also, it gives owners of M1/M2 machines (such as myself) an "out" should Apple decide to take macOS down the iOS route.
There have been noises from a one or two higher-ups at Apple which seem to indicate there are people there who really want to neuter macOS. Which would be incredibly stupid, IMHO, unless those people's goal is to kill their laptop line. And it's possible those were just talking points being advanced for the Epic lawsuit.
Apple understands that macOS is not iOS, and Macs aren't iPads with a permanent keyboard.
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Apple does understand this, but there's a fear that folks like Tim Cook (who have actively spoken about doing everything they need with an iPad and iOS) don't see the long-term value in continuing to produce Macs and MacOS.
Ultimately, I think it's always about the money. As long as it's still profitable to make Macs, Apple will make Macs. But there's definitely the situation in play that Apple makes far MORE money on the iOS product line these days. So Mac support often comes in second to what they want to
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Apple does understand this, but there's a fear that folks like Tim Cook (who have actively spoken about doing everything they need with an iPad and iOS) don't see the long-term value in continuing to produce Macs and MacOS.
Ultimately, I think it's always about the money. As long as it's still profitable to make Macs, Apple will make Macs. But there's definitely the situation in play that Apple makes far MORE money on the iOS product line these days. So Mac support often comes in second to what they want to do with iOS. (Quite a few of the newer Mac OS features and capabilities are really just ports of things they did in iOS already, such as the "Home" app for home automation.)
If you haven't noticed, smartphones and tablets are levelling-off; but Mac sales are the single bright spot in a flagging Personal Computer market.
Macs aren't going away anytime soon.
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Re:Why? (Score:4)
Actually the MacBook air is pretty reasonably priced, cheaper than system 76 for example. It's true apple will never go out of their way to enable Linux to run well, but then again no other mainstream windows laptop vendors do either.
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Lenovo and Dell actually offer pre-installed GNU/Linux as an option, but keep smoking whatever you're smoking.
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It's true apple will never go out of their way to enable Linux to run well, but then again no other mainstream windows laptop vendors do either.
Really? Scroll down to "Operating Systems" on these laptops:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/sho... [dell.com]
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p... [lenovo.com]
HP dabbled, but they are incompetent morons so of course they released one laptop and didn't follow up.
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>"Actually the MacBook air is pretty reasonably priced, cheaper than system 76 for example."
A 16GB MacBook air cost TWICE as much as the 16GB Lenovo X13 gen2 AMD (that I just bought a few months ago) which runs Linux perfectly (and easily). The X13 is not as thin or light, but it is more repairable and performs quite well. I would rather have a machine that doesn't hate me at half the price.
>"It's true apple will never go out of their way to enable Linux to run well, but then again no other mainstre
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Linux Domination! (Score:2)
We really don't have to run Linux on everything, do we?
Au contraire, Linux world domination is a basic tenet of the Linux ardent techies. Except when older architectures and platforms are deprecated.
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I mean, you spend a lot of money for the M1 and M2 macbooks and what, you're going to throw part of that away to install Linux on top of it?
Throwing away the crap bit increases its value. The machine runs somewhat faster in many benchmarks with Linux installed.
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That's great until you get to the battery benchmarks. There the trade off for slightly faster benchmarks is a large decrease in battery life.
As they get better support for the GPU that will probably change, though I doubt it will ever match the optimizations that MacOS has.
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The machine runs somewhat faster in many benchmarks with Linux installed.
Citations needed...
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Phoronix.
A lot of it because the osx filesystem and filesystem layer, track scheduling and, well everything kernel related can't match Linux.
Re:Why? - not a troll... (Score:2)
Getting marked as a troll, but the question certainly wasn't meant to be trolling... I truly do question the idea of spending so much on a macbook (price of which includes OSX) in order to install Linux on top of it.
I'm not sure who thinks I'm trolling, but I would honestly like to know who thought this was a good idea, I mean, maybe I'm missing something...
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I truly do question the idea of spending so much on a macbook (price of which includes OSX) in order to install Linux on top of it.
Some people really like the hardware. I'm personally not a fan ever since my partner's Macbook Pro died when the battery became a spicy pillow [reddit.com]. The demographic on /. is mostly well-paid IT professionals though, so the concept of buying a non-upgradable machine that self-destructs when the battery inflates really isn't a dealbreaker if you've got the budget to just buy the next new shiny when Apple announces it.
Now, what I'd really want is Android on my iPhone. Locked bootloader prevents that from being a
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Now, what I'd really want is Android on my iPhone.
Proving positively that you are mentally challenged.
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How about instead of resorting to a personal insult, you show me an Android phone that is identical in size and hardware specifications to the iPhone Mini? Or perhaps you were insinuating that iOS is flawless and anyone wishing to escape the walled garden is a moron?
Sorry, I may own some Apple products but I don't drink the Kool-Aid.
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How about instead of resorting to a personal insult, you show me an Android phone that is identical in size and hardware specifications to the iPhone Mini? Or perhaps you were insinuating that iOS is flawless and anyone wishing to escape the walled garden is a moron?
Sorry, I may own some Apple products but I don't drink the Kool-Aid.
I dunno. Android has about 10 major OEMs. Surely one of them has a phone that meets or exceeds the iPhone mini?
And once all those iOS Optimizations are replaced with crappy generic Android Libraries, do you really think you will end up with anything nearly as responsive as the original hardware/software combination?
As I said: Mentally challenged.
Open Source (Score:2)
for closed hardware. Funny that Linus gives NVIDIA the finger but buys Macs.
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The dude seems a bit bipolar.
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for closed hardware. Funny that Linus gives NVIDIA the finger but buys Macs.
Heck even Apple gave the finger to NVIDIA, so the enemy of an enemy is a friend?
Given his work history and the fact he describes himself as non-technical, outside of the kernel space [youtube.com], maybe the Apple hardware is a place where Linus can look good on a laptop, if it works?
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Some people enjoy the path of more resistance. I've got a friend who could easily afford a new car, but he'd rather tinker away on some clunkers.
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Some people enjoy the path of more resistance. I've got a friend who could easily afford a new car, but he'd rather tinker away on some clunkers.
I thought enjoying the path of most resistance is the watchword of all Linux masochists.
Seriously. Ya buy an Mx Laptop with a perfectly good Unix (with the revered CLI) installed, updated and maintained; on which you can install and run basically any 64 bit x86 and ARM software.
But you'd rather exhaust yourself swimming upstream, just to. . . to what, exactly?
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for closed hardware. Funny that Linus gives NVIDIA the finger but buys Macs.
Maybe he knows something that you don't.
Note that Apple gave the finger to nVidia, too. . .
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this is a bit of a stretch. the lack of Linux drivers for hardware in your PC is a small matter of closeness. And entire hardware platform that is closed is a large matter. As much as I cringe when RMS is trotted out, he's right about these closed platforms being a serious problem. And I'll go a step further than RMS and say this isn't just a philosophical or political soapbox, but if you can't control hardware you bought with your money then did you even buy it? If I can't operate something as I see fit, a