[HN Gopher] ARM64 Linux Workstation
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ARM64 Linux Workstation
Author : jasoneckert
Score : 242 points
Date : 2023-03-03 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jasoneckert.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jasoneckert.github.io)
| leidenfrost wrote:
| Imho the only relevant parts left are: Sleep (which is being
| tackled right now), USB-C Extra displays (Also WIP) and Hardware
| Decode for video.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| and audio and screen brightness at least...those don't work on
| my M2 setup.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > and audio...
|
| Overall tip for anyone using Linux and having issues with
| audio... USB Audio is magical and works wonder. I never
| bother with the computer's in-board sound: it's USB Audio
| immediately through a DAC. Works fine. Apple sells $10 USB-C-
| to-3.5mmjack DAC which are basically a tiny cable (for anyone
| lamenting it's "too bulky" to have a full-on DAC next to
| their laptop).
|
| For desktops: problem doesn't even register. Just bypass the
| audio components on your motherboard and use a proper DAC.
|
| As an added bonus computers are particularly electrically
| noisy and a DAC is a great way to do away with all that the
| noise.
|
| So my advice: just use a DAC with Linux. Plug it in. Marvel
| at "dmesg" showing "USB Audio" and enjoy quality sound.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I've been doing this to get my computers connected to a KVM
| to share speakers. Works pretty well, bought a Soundblaster
| for nostalgia sake.
| loeg wrote:
| Be somewhat careful what USB audio device you buy. I've had
| multiple of these and some of them have tons of EM noise,
| which is very obnoxious.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I've had multiple of these and some of them have tons
| of EM noise, which is very obnoxious.
|
| Ah darn yup! If there's one thing I'd expect from these
| is to not be noisy! FWIW I'm using a CambridgeAudio DAC
| and, well, CambridgeAudio is supposed to be a good brand
| when it comes to audio stuff (amp is CambridgeAudio too).
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with Dragonfly[0]. Tho they don't
| come cheap.
|
| I have had the black and am currently on the Red, I
| noticed the difference so I think it's worth it. Have not
| tried the cobalt.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.audioquest.com/dacs/dragonfly/dragonfly-
| cobalt
| Gigachad wrote:
| Screen brightness works on the beta kernel. Speakers work but
| are disabled by default because there is a risk it could blow
| up the hardware
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Speakers work but are disabled by default because there
| is a risk it could blow up the hardware
|
| Wait, what? This sounds like a pretty egregious design flaw
| on Apple's part.
| Teongot wrote:
| There's a good write up of it here https://social.treehou
| se.systems/@marcan/109917995005981968
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| > Everything - and I mean everything - is unbelievably fast.
|
| As a long time Linux user and someone forced to use MacOS, my
| hands are itching to buy a 2nd M1/M2 mac and install Asahi linux
| on it. I've never felt such excitement since the days of Compiz.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Are these ARM64 Mac using ECC?
|
| P.S: the 3440x1440 screenshot in TFA looks gorgeous on my system.
| Everything is using subpixel AA (terminals, code editor, browser,
| except for the URL, for whatever reason) but not the file
| manager. I wonder why that is.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > but not the file manager. I wonder why that is.
|
| It's documented:
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| So that's what happens when you use 3D rendering approaches
| for 2D text and line drawings. That's too bad. Hopefully we
| can come up with better approaches to using the GPU's compute
| hardware for this stuff. Pixel-correct rendering is not a
| trivial concern;
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Agreed, a 1080p or 1440p screen with good pixel-sharp graphics
| (which Mac OS does not provide, leaving you with blurry anti-
| aliasing) is all you need. 4K resolution is overkill.
| silisili wrote:
| That's really impressive!
|
| That said, I really wish someone other than Apple would release
| something like an ARM64 NUC, with good Linux compat. Even
| something on par with the SD Gen 2 should be plenty to run a
| desktop day to day.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I was really tempted to try this out:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34027280 but the 16GB of
| RAM was too tiny for my day-to-day. It seemed to be a common
| trend in arm64 things one can buy nowadays
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| I'm not trying to invalidate your specific use case, but in
| general, there's not really any practical difference between
| ARM64 and x86 for desktop use. ARM is generally _perceived_ as
| being more power efficient, but the latest x86 mobile
| processors from AMD (and probably also Intel) are very
| efficient. The Apple M series does have very tightly coupled
| RAM and onboard ML & video encode accelerators, but when it
| comes to plain old compute power & efficiency, AMD and Intel
| have pretty much caught up afaik.
|
| There were recently a couple of new NUC-type devices based on
| the outgoing generation AMD mobile processors. I have the
| Minisforum UM690, based on the Ryzen 6900HX, and it's been
| working great as my new desktop computer. The iGPU is pretty
| good too. The Ryzen 6800U (U = efficient variant, 25 W TDP) is
| about the same as the M2 for performance and power consumption.
| The 6900HX in this device is the high power variant, default
| TDP is 45 W but you can lower it to 25 W in the BIOS which
| should make it about identical to a 6800U. The newer ones with
| the latest gen Ryzen chips should be much more efficient.
| sliken wrote:
| Dunno, M1 max (400GB/sec twice a threadripper) fits in a thin
| laptop, performance well, and has a decent iGPU. That's more
| bandwidth than a threadripper, better iGPU then anything
| Intel/AMD ships, and still sips on the power.
|
| M1 Ultra doubles the bandwidth again to 800GB/sec, and fits
| in a small and quite desktop. What CPU+iGPU (or GPU) do you
| think is comparable to M1 Ultra and competes on performance
| and power?
| goosedragons wrote:
| PS5 is $500 also has 400GB/sec memory bandwidth. Very good
| iGPU made by AMD. Also has a Blu-ray drive.
| sliken wrote:
| Sadly they are hard to run Linux on 8-(.
| silisili wrote:
| Just a tinkerer - no real specific use case. I also have a
| UM690 that I'm using as my primary desktop, pretty sweet
| little machine.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > in general, there's not really any practical difference
| between ARM64 and x86 for desktop use
|
| ... provided everything you and your team does is 100% on the
| web, otherwise if you're a normal dev shop building and
| consuming docker images then you'll chase innumerable reports
| of "well, on _my machine_ I can 't use
| docker.io/example/thingy:1.0 I had to use docker.io/eleeetz-
| safe-4-sure/thingy:0.33.05beta-arm64"
|
| Thus, it would be better if the whole company were on the
| same CPU and since there's no longer any prayer of amd64
| macOS ... we Linuxers have to capitulate
| merb wrote:
| btw. my m1 mac barely goes over 40 w TOTAL power (whole
| machine) heck watching prime video my total power is at ~10w
| total power. trust me no matter which ryzen/intel processer
| you will never be as low as 10w total power.
|
| I'm pretty sure the biggest intel/amd desktopn cpu is faster
| than a m1 pro/ultra, m2 pro/ultra but there is no amd64
| processer with the same efficiency than the m1/m2 macs.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > btw. my m1 mac barely goes over 40 w TOTAL power (whole
| machine)
|
| The v2718 is an embedded Zen2 SoC with a Vega GPU that
| totals 10-25wCDP. Adding RAM and a main board to that might
| add 10w, give or take.
|
| > heck watching prime video my total power is at ~10w total
| power.
|
| Watching video is probably one of the most efficient tasks
| you can do these days, especially since most of it is
| offloaded to specialized decoders in the GPU (of which AMD,
| Apple, nvidia, Intel, etc all provide).
|
| > trust me no matter which ryzen/intel processer you will
| never be as low as 10w total power.
|
| They _literally_ exist. There's just no market for them.
| The sweet spot for PC users is around 15-25w for laptops.
| The loss in performance below that is generally something
| people are dissatisfied with.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Try rereading my comment. Your M1's 40 W total power is not
| special, the 6800U does that with roughly the same
| performance.
|
| My 7 year old i7 laptop used 5 W idling with a few
| applications open and the screen at max brightness. I don't
| know what a modern non-Apple laptop uses when watching
| video, but 10 W seems about right.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not a NUC, but there is the ThinkPad X13s. Linux support seems
| to be shaping up decently, with some hope that it might be
| supported by stock ubuntu in ubuntu 23.04.
| synergy20 wrote:
| is the super fast speed mainly due to Linux the OS? is there
| benchmark done to compare to MacOS? with most recent hardware and
| 128GB memory I would expect things will run naturally faster no
| matter what and Linux might not be the key deciding factor.
|
| I'm a Linux user, considering to get a M2 Mac Mini these days,
| and probably load Linux, even better and if possible, dual-boot
| as I do need MacOS to run some ios apps on emulator.
| birken wrote:
| I have a relatively mid-to-top tier linux desktop (i5-13600K,
| 64 GB ram) and an M2 Macbook pro (M2 max, 32GB ram). The linux
| desktop comfortably outperforms the M2 in any CPU based
| benchmarks while also being significantly cheaper (though the
| M2 desktop machines are cheaper than the laptops, but still
| more expensive than the alternatives). If I were doing GPU
| heavy work than I assume the M2 would have a leg up, but then
| again I could just buy whatever GPU I wanted for the desktop
| machine and put it in there and I think it would outperform the
| mac once again.
|
| However, if you were concerned about power consumption than the
| M2 would win by a mile, but for me it wasn't a huge factor in a
| desktop machine.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I saw 64GB vs 32GB here, many apps are memory intensive, thus
| the linux desktop will win no matter how faster M2 is, it
| will be interesting to run cpu intensive benchmark between
| them and see how that goes.
|
| for ML training or 3D graphics, I wonder how M1 and M2's NPU
| and GPU are supported under Linux, unless they're optimized
| and verified to be superior, I will grab a machine with RTX
| 3090Ti instead.
| birken wrote:
| I have a very CPU intensive single threaded program that
| runs about 15% faster on the intel CPU. Other CPU
| benchmarks out there show my particular processor is
| slightly ahead of the M2 (and there are faster intel/amd
| processors than the one in my machine). But if you look at
| power consumption I believe the intel CPU uses something
| like 3-5x the power to generate that slightly better
| performance.
|
| At the high end of performance, the M2 is just light years
| better than any other chip (other than the M1) in terms of
| performance per watt. But if that stops being a concern to
| you then I think most linux desktop users are better off
| just getting a "normal" intel machine, which also will have
| 100% driver support for everything, cost less, and probably
| be faster.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I think OP is just saying it's a very fast/snappy experience,
| independently (as in the hardware). Not that Linux is
| necessarily more performant than macOS.
| waingake wrote:
| > Moreover, running Asahi is perfectly legal because Apple
| formally allows booting non-macOS operating systems on their
| Apple Silicon platform.
|
| How nice of Apple. #snarc
| ngold wrote:
| #snarc beats /s anyday. On a serious note. If you want to save
| on the power bill. Arm anything wins against my 1000 watt xeon
| workstation. I can heat several rooms with that monster.
| bogwog wrote:
| It's a shame Apple is Apple and you can't pay a reasonable
| price for RAM, otherwise these would make awesome servers.
| sliken wrote:
| That's the cost for 10x the memory bandwidth of the Ryzen
| 7950x.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's... comically untrue. The Playstation 5 has faster
| memory than the M1 (448gb/s vs 200), and it was
| manufactured by AMD before Zen 3 or Apple Silicon even
| shipped. Dual-channel DDR5 should smoke the LPDDR4X in
| Apple Silicon in terms of memory bandwidth.
| sliken wrote:
| How so?
|
| Memory bandwidth (peak, not stream) Ryzen
| 7950x = 84GB/sec # 128 bit wide ddr5-5200 M1 =
| 66GB/sec # 128 bit wide ddr5-4800 M2 =
| 100GB/sec # 128 bit wide ddr5-6400 M1/M2 Pro =
| 200GB/sec # 256 bit wide M1/M2 Max = 400GB/sec #
| 512 bit wide M1 Ultra = 800GB/sec # 1024 bit
| wide, m2 ultra not out
|
| 800GB/sec / 84 = 9.5. Although the ARM64 has a more
| relaxed memory ordering and generally you see a greater
| fraction of peak in the real world. Also Mac's default to
| a 16kb page, which helps the TLB with random workloads.
| Memory bandwidth is part of why the Apple iGPU does so
| well when compared to Intel and AMDs best iGPUs.
| Similarly the improved memory system is why the PS5 and
| XboxX does so well on games.
|
| Sadly AMD is reserved the improved memory system for the
| XboxX and PS5. Both AMD and Intel limit laptops and
| normal desktops (except for the expensive HEDT segment
| like the Threadripper) to 128 wide memory.
| cjbprime wrote:
| The latest Intel/AMD non-HEDT memory controllers only
| have two channels, so your DDR5 would drop to below-DDR4
| speeds if you put 128GB DDR5 in it.
|
| (32GB dual rank sticks * 4 -- there are no 64GB DDR5
| sticks yet. Some reports of system instability with all
| four DDR5 slots populated, too, even when running at DDR4
| speeds, it seems the motherboard manufacturers aren't
| QAing it.)
| bogwog wrote:
| Nope, that's the cost of a monopoly. However fast or
| special Apple's RAM is, it doesn't cost them 10x the
| price of the competition, it costs _us_ that because we
| can 't around shop for another supplier.
| sliken wrote:
| It does cost quite a bit more though. Otherwise everyone
| would ship 1k bit wide memory interfaces instead of 128
| bit wide.
|
| Just look at the premium AMD and Intel charge for 256 bit
| wide memory, let alone 1024 bit wide. Xeon servers have
| 512 bit wide memory, AMD Epycs in the newest gen have
| 768. Apple's unique in having a 1024 bit wide memory
| interface, at least among commodity hardware.
| pella wrote:
| if you need AVX-512 ( x86-64-v4 ) then Ryzen 9 7950X3D 3D
| V-Cache is also good alternative.
|
| "AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Linux Performance"
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen9-7950x3d-linux
|
| _" From the nearly 400 benchmarks, when taking the geo mean
| the 7950X3D was at 97% the performance of the Ryzen 9 7950X
| while on average being at 60% the power consumption rate. The
| Ryzen 9 7950X3D in these non-gaming workloads was 11% faster
| than the Intel Core i9 13900K and at around 60% the power."_
|
| +
|
| "AMD Unveils Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 7900X3D, and Ryzen 7 7800X3D,
| Up to 128 MB of L3 Cache And 5.7 GHz Boost"
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/18709/amd-unveils-
| ryzen-9-795...
|
| HN Thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34260253
| jlarocco wrote:
| It's cool that Arm64 chips are catching up in speed, but the
| software support has been there for a long time.
|
| When I bought my Raspberry Pi several years back, I was able to
| comfortably develop using Emacs, gcc, and SBCL Common Lisp - the
| same software I use on my AMD desktop. Everything I needed "just
| worked"; compiling just wasn't very fast.
| emilsedgh wrote:
| Asahi Linux is amazing and pretty usable at this point. However,
| last I tried I couldn't get stuff like Slack and Spotify to work
| on it because there are no Arm packages for those. Has anyone
| found a way around that?
| doubled112 wrote:
| Electron and apps built with it are missing from most ARM64
| Linux distributions.
|
| Once you've built Electron (or downloaded their binaries), many
| of the builds fail because they download something that
| requires x86_64, and then you get to troubleshoot that.
|
| Flathub doesn't have aarch64 builds of most of these apps
| either, so I'm assuming it is not just me having issues.
|
| So much for cross platform. It is doable for the open source
| apps if you want to get your hands dirty though.
|
| It did motivate me to look for non-Electron replacements (to
| Electron apps, not Slack and Spotify specifically), so I've got
| that going for me.
|
| Sent from an RPi4 I use as an always on workstation.
| inconceivable wrote:
| when i run across this issue i just use their web apps in a
| separate browser. slack's 'native' app is just a sequestered
| browser instance. not sure about spotify.
| nicce wrote:
| You can make your "own" slack app with few lines of code by
| using some WebView library, like Tauri and Rust, for fun :-D
| davidw wrote:
| Use the web versions?
| psanford wrote:
| The web version of spotify doesn't work on my m2 air in
| either chromium or firefox. The Spotify website errors with:
| "Playback of protected content is not enabled."
|
| Slack works just fine from the browser on Asahi though.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| You can't run any Electron apps. Is that a problem? :)
| nicce wrote:
| At least for Spotify, there are many other options, like
| spotifyd and spotify-tui. Also one decent GUI app build with
| Rust, if you want to try them.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Perhaps the universe is telling you something there? :-)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I'd be curious to see properly done benchmarks against top of the
| line Intel or AMD machines. I'd be surprised if the Mac was
| faster.
|
| I do understand that people want the Mac for the build quality of
| the laptop, not just for speed.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Don't forget that it's the best bang for the watt (at least
| when running macOS).
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I do understand that people want the Mac for the build
| quality of the laptop, not just for speed.
|
| I find LG Gram laptops to be of higher build quality than Mac
| laptops. They may be pricier too depending on which LG Gram and
| which Mac you buy though.
|
| Mac laptops feel and _are_ incredibly brittle. They may look
| shiny and the screen may look gorgeous, but they 're simply
| brittle.
|
| People here and there like to make fun of "MILSPEC" but my
| MILSPEC LG Gram can sustain quite a beating. Meanwhile my M1
| Mac is 1/5th the age of my LG Gram and the M1 Mac's screen is
| already broken.
|
| Mac laptops are very good looking but they are not, to me, of
| great build quality. They're also heavier than my LG Gram.
| [deleted]
| karmakaze wrote:
| I wasn't planning to switch to ARM anytime soon, but I was
| looking for a new Linux distro with Ubuntu heading off in it's
| own 'Canonical' way.
|
| Debian seemed to be a natural default but I'm leaning toward an
| Arch distro so would prepare me if I should switch to ARM down
| the road.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Pop!OS is worth looking at if you like Ubuntu but don't like
| where Ubuntu is going.
|
| Plain debian is fine though - unless you have a recent laptop
| and need nvidia drivers. You can make it work, but it's fiddly
| and the Pop! guys already figured everything out for you. I use
| debian on an old HP deskside server as a workstation and it's
| been fantastic.
| Avlin67 wrote:
| hdmi and workstation doesnt fit, but you can down vote me its
| fine I dont care.
| lizknope wrote:
| Okay but it supports 5 monitors. 1 via HDMI and 4 via the
| Thunderport / DisplayPort Type-C outputs. I've got a Lenovo
| Thinkpad and I use a $15 Type C to DisplayPort adapter and it
| works fine at 4K @60Hz
|
| The specs say it supports 6K @60Hz over the Type-C ports and 4K
| for the HDMI port
| MBCook wrote:
| In general I agree with you, but I think that may be a
| limitation of Asashi right now. So if you want a display it may
| be your only choice for a desktop.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Blanket statements of "everything works" always leave me a little
| suspicious. But if sleep/wake, DPMS, power consumption, fans, and
| those kinds of irritants, which are omnipresent even on x86
| Linux, are all good under Asahi that is pretty cool.
| hillcrestenigma wrote:
| Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio would be
| compared to a PC build with comparable cost? There's also the
| obvious set of trade offs, such as being quiet, compact, but
| being unrepairable, while the PCs having nearly the opposite
| qualities. Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major
| advantage in a desktop system?
| nicce wrote:
| I save 20EUR per month by using my Macbook instead of desktop
| PC in electricity. At least 720 euros from three years.
| poolopolopolo wrote:
| I dont think this mac consumes much less than a amd 7950x
| capped at 65W.
| sliken wrote:
| Depends, whats the GPU on the 7950x?
| poolopolopolo wrote:
| I dont think gpu power is relevant for people installing
| linux on their m1/2 as long as it can play youtube at 4k.
| nicce wrote:
| Not yet but maybe soon https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinu
| x/comments/10prw2c/stable_...
| sliken wrote:
| Light gaming seems common, asahi linux streams have have
| minecraft, tux racer, mario kart, and related. Seems like
| a fair amount of ML (both inference and training) going
| on. PyTouch now works with CPU, GPU, and AMX (via metal),
| and seen some posts on using the neural to achieve a 7x
| improvement over the GPUs, but not upstreamed yet. One
| bonus is the GPU (and AMX) can access all memory, not
| just the 8-16GB that's common on GPUs these days.
|
| I'm not a heavy gamer, but having some 3D is nice. I'd
| likely buy a 7900 (non-x) or 7800X3D if buying now, but
| not going to spend $800 and up for current gen GPUs,
| maybe get a 3060 or 3060 Ti. The Mac Studio is looking
| pretty promising, hopefully it's refreshed with the M2
| CPUs RSN.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Does anyone know how cost effective a base M1 Mac Studio
| would be compared to a PC build with comparable cost?
|
| If you normalize to performance, building a comparable PC for
| things like compiling code can be about half the price. Intel
| and AMD's latest top-end consumer CPUs are very, very fast and
| significantly cheaper.
|
| > Is the power efficiency of Apple Silicon still a major
| advantage in a desktop system?
|
| If you're going for ultimate silence and/or you need the
| smallest machine possible, power efficiency matters.
|
| If you're spending 99% of your time in the code editor and web
| browser, your CPU is going to be mostly idle anyway and peak
| power usage basically doesn't matter. A decently configured AMD
| or even Intel system with reasonable fan curves can be plenty
| quiet for the 1% of time that you're at 100% CPU usage (hint:
| embrace the high temperatures and let it throttle, it's fine).
| Gigachad wrote:
| I watched one guy build a hackentosh for the same price as a
| Mac mini and compared them. The intel based one wins in multi
| threaded workloads but the M1 wins in single threaded, power
| efficiency, and things which it has hardware acceleration like
| video encoding.
| gabereiser wrote:
| It's about half the cost to build your own based on Ryzen
| thread ripper and DDR5. I've done this before however, it's not
| ARM64. It also requires like 1000w power supply. Can you build
| a machine just as capable? Yes. Will it be as efficient? No.
| Will it be Arm? Probably not. That said, I run Apple MacBook
| Air as my daily so YMMV.
|
| *edit* ok a bit more than half. Chip shortage has scalpers
| sitting on threadrippers.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Do you need a Threadripper to compete with M1 Ultra? Ryzen 9
| 7950X seems pretty comparable and doesn't require a 1000W PSU
| unless you must pair it with a 4090 or something.
| sliken wrote:
| Depends, how cache friendly is your workload? The M1 ultra
| has more than 4x the memory bandwidth of the threadripper.
| Of course the GPU makes a big difference in cost and power
| use. If you need a 4090, there's nothing comparable. But if
| the Apple iGPU is enough you save a ton of power and space.
| danielheath wrote:
| If you leave it switched on using 5 cents worth of
| electricity an hour, how long does it take to cost more?
| lizknope wrote:
| The 20-core Mac Studio with 128GB RAM is $4,800
|
| It would be interesting to see a 24 or 32 core Threadripper vs
| the Mac Studio. I didn't price out the full system but those
| CPUs are in the $1300-2800 range
| nottorp wrote:
| Only you can answer that question. You just stated the
| tradeoffs.
|
| Compact quiet low power unexpandable box vs large noisy power
| hungry expandable box. Pick your poison.
|
| I'd also do more research if I'd plan to run Linux on an Apple
| box. Just because it's good for TFA's use case, it may not be
| good for yours.
| eatonphil wrote:
| > Is there anything that doesn't work?
|
| > To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: "No."
|
| > Everything works... and works perfectly.
|
| That is impressive and really hard to believe! I guess I'll have
| to find an M1 mac Mini to try myself!
| nicce wrote:
| Not everything will work. Once upon time I tried to make CTF
| with M2 Pro, and I seriously wished that I had x86_64 Linux
| instead.
|
| Many of the penetration testing tools are not mainstream and
| they include pre-build x86_64 binaries, or are configured just
| to not compile with ARM, for reason unknown. And there is no
| time to figure out what is wrong.
|
| I know this might be a niche scenario, but still...
| snazz wrote:
| That seems like a wonderful opportunity to use QEMU since
| it's not all that performance-sensitive (I think?) and you're
| not running random pre-built binaries directly on your
| computer.
| nicce wrote:
| I ran all my stuff inside non-root non-volume container so
| prebuilt binary it is not really a problem.
|
| I used QEMU through Podman machine in the end, but the
| performance is terrible. Even on MacOS side QEMU does not
| support Rosetta 2. Docker for Desktop supports and gives
| significant boost, but I don't want to use it.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| This stuff makes me super nervous. I've just gotten an M1
| MacBook Pro at work because my old touchbar Mac was
| showing signs of impending battery death (and I only got
| that because IT didn't want to support Linux and I didn't
| want Windows). I've already had a few battles with some
| python libraries and today I've found that the Oracle
| container image doesn't run.
|
| I love the battery life and the keyboard is much better
| than the old one. It feels snappy running native code but
| I just know it's going to cause me more issues than it's
| worth.
| pxc wrote:
| > Even on MacOS side QEMU does not support Rosetta 2.
|
| Is Rosetta 2 that much faster than QEMU's own
| translation? Why?
| nicce wrote:
| QEMU makes translation in Just-in-Time. Rosetta "pre-
| builds" binaries to match different architecture, and
| binaries eventually run "natively", with the cost of
| delayed start.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| Did you try Lima on Mac? I never did compare apples to
| apples, ran an x86 Podman VM and then switched to an
| arm64 Lima VM and had drastically improved performance.
| nicce wrote:
| Lima uses QEMU as well. Performance is not an issue from
| ARM-to-ARM virtualisation.
| shoo_pl wrote:
| Starting from 0.14 lima support vz framework on macos and
| allows you to use rosetta2 for x64 linux binaries :)
| nicce wrote:
| Thanks! Need to test it.
| elcritch wrote:
| The newest release of colima / lima runs Rosetta2 by
| default when running cross arch. The file system and
| networking are flaky but it's fast.
| highwaylights wrote:
| "Once upon a time I tried to make CTF with M2 Pro"
|
| Wasn't the M2 Pro released like a month ago?
|
| Am I that old that a few weeks now counts as once upon a
| time?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I cannot imagine a worse idea than downloading a binary
| artifact promulgated by someone in the competitive infosec
| community.
| nicce wrote:
| Not much different than installing any random pip package.
| They include pre-build binaries too. Infosec tools might be
| even safer.
| eqvinox wrote:
| per statement from Asahi Linux [https://social.treehouse.system
| s/@AsahiLinux/109931764533424...] - you'll have to do a lot of
| your own legwork to get there.
|
| Not having to deal with an entire custom laptop (i.e. getting a
| lot of standard peripherals for "free" after only getting USB
| to work) also helps a whole lot, and note the article
| specifically talks about a desktop mac.
| dougall wrote:
| That toot is about upstream Linux 6.2, not Asahi Linux. If
| you run Asahi Linux (as in the blog post) you get decent (but
| not complete) legwork-free hardware support. Detailed
| breakdown here:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
| psanford wrote:
| I've got an M2 Air. It is very usable, but its far from
| everything working perfectly.
|
| Builtin speaker support is still a work in progress. It works
| if you know what you are doing and are not afraid to damage
| your speakers if you make a mistake. There's been progress on
| this though, so I expect this to be resolved sooner than later.
|
| There's no builtin speakers in the author's mac studio though,
| so I'll give them a pass for this one.
|
| Bluetooth and wifi both work, but their drivers are still
| buggy. I see a lot of errors in dmseg from these drivers and
| occasionally things stop working and require a reboot to fix.
|
| GPU acceleration works, but there is still a lot of work to do
| on that driver.
|
| External displays over the thunderbolt ports don't work yet.
|
| Other things that don't work on the laptops: webcam, touch-id /
| Secure Enclave, some miscellaneous software.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I've been able to daily drive linux only on
| my m2 air since August. I love the hardware and the current
| state of Asahi meets my needs. And its been steadily improving
| over the course of time. But its far from "work[ing] perfectly"
| yet.
| lmedinas wrote:
| Do you have a dual boot ?
| rmorey wrote:
| It's not obvious if you skim the post, but they mention getting
| the Mini in the first paragraph, but later mention they got a
| tricked out mac studio. so just be aware the fawning notes are
| about the Studio, not the Mini (although the mini does rock I
| love it)
| eatonphil wrote:
| Good point. I only noticed the bits about the studio.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I thought the sound and trackpad didn't work although maybe
| that isn't an issue for the Mac Studio.
| gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 wrote:
| Not that hard to believe when you consider the hardware specs
| for Apple machines are so heavily locked down to a very
| specific set of mobo, cpu, and only variability in core count,
| ram amount, hard drive size, etc.
|
| It's not like PC world of mix and match everything.
| runjake wrote:
| It's hard to believe because virtually none of the
| proprietary Apple Silicon platform (except the CPU
| instruction set itself) is documented and involved a
| tremendous amount of reverse-engineering effort by some _very
| bright volunteers_.
| sixothree wrote:
| And yet open source community embraces the hardware with
| fervor.
| sliken wrote:
| It's an appealing platform. Entry level is $600, nice
| memory systems (66GB/sec to 800GB/sec), and nice iGPU.
| The laptops have nice keyboards, nice trackpads, nice
| screens, and great battery life. The desktops are built
| in a solid aluminum chassis and have a single fan
| (instead of the normal 4-8) and are small and quiet.
|
| I do wish apple did a native apple port, but the
| community is making good progress on that front.
| Mike_12345 wrote:
| Vast majority of hardware used by the open source
| community is proprietary and undocumented, and always has
| been. They embrace the challenge of reverse-engineering.
| morrbo wrote:
| Agreed, if anyone wants some good insight, this video is
| fantastic. It gets to the tech stuff about 20 mins in iirc
| and explains some quite surprisingly open aspects of the
| apple ecosystem and some approaches to funky stuff with the
| closed bits.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COlvP4hODpY
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Your italics are strange and makes me wonder if you are
| trying to convey something. My first thought is that if the
| reverse engineering was done anonymously or pseudonymously,
| then the ones best positioned to do it would be actual
| Apple engineers who have insider information and feel like
| sharing with the world.
| Mike_12345 wrote:
| That's typically been the case since Linux started in 1991.
| Reverse-engineering undocumented proprietary hardware has
| been the norm.
| bolangi wrote:
| All sounds good to me. What I don't get is how running on arm64
| would speed up i3. I3 is already fast enough to be unnoticeable,
| hardly performs any expensive operations.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I didn't see OP saying ARM increased performance, just that
| sway felt more buttery/smooth and easier to configure.
| rarafael wrote:
| I believe they're commenting on the fact that the sway Wayland
| compositor seems faster than i3. Might be due to how Wayland
| handles frame rendering, but switching between the two I tend
| to notice a more "snappy" effect from sway
| darthrupert wrote:
| Everything you run on it, though?
| tombert wrote:
| Forgive a bit of ignorance on my end; does Asahi have x86_64
| emulation? It would be cool to play Linux Steam games on Arm.
| merb wrote:
| you can copy over rosetta2 but it's not there by default (i.e.
| you need to dual boot mac into a linux vm with rosetta2 mounted
| than you can copy the rosetta2 binary)
| hias wrote:
| You could try the patched Rosetta2 for Linux + Wine or
| something!
|
| https://github.com/CathyKMeow/rosetta-linux-asahi
| hias wrote:
| Also check this! :)
|
| https://box86.org/2022/12/box64-on-asahi-with-experimental-g...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| qemu-user can emulate x86_64 hardware, but it's not going to be
| as fast as Apple's Rosetta.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I was afraid of; honestly the reason I
| haven't seriously attempted moving to Arm Linux full time is
| because I suspect that it would be great for 99% of stuff,
| but that 1% of ~30 years of x86 legacy junk would be some
| huge blocker that forces me to change to something else.
| nicce wrote:
| Performance will be terrible as you virtualise instructions.
| You can try it with QEMU for example.
| rvz wrote:
| > Everything works... and works perfectly. All the hardware
| (Bluetooth, audio, HDMI, USB, 10G Ethernet, WiFi, and GPU)
| performs flawlessly with the drivers created by the Asahi team
| this past year, and there isn't a single piece of software I want
| or need that doesn't run beautifully in Asahi on this system.
|
| So I am expecting _everything_ from proper GPU acceleration,
| power management and sleep to the Touch ID keyboard to be 100%
| working perfectly fine, all guaranteed then?
| deaddodo wrote:
| OP is using a Mac Studio, which is not a laptop. I don't think
| you can take their claim of it 100% working on their hardware
| and apply it to a completely different machine.
|
| In addition, it's open source software. Not some corporate
| organization selling you a product. Nothing is guaranteed.
| rvz wrote:
| > OP is using a Mac Studio, which is not a laptop.
|
| You're telling me that the Mac Studio has no "power
| management" or "sleep" functionality at all? Not even in
| macOS? Nor does it have a 'GPU' for GPU acceleration either.
| We both know that it isn't exclusive to laptops. Everyone
| knows Touch ID doesn't work, both the seperate keyboard and
| on Apple Silicon laptops (and Intel Macs) and you know it.
|
| > I don't think you can take their claim of it 100% working
| on their hardware and apply it to a completely different
| machine.
|
| Yes I can, and I just did since Asahi Linux is aimed at
| specifically supporting all Apple Silicon machines. OPs
| machine included.
|
| Just admit that the OP is getting carried away with the claim
| that "Everything works... and works perfectly" when we know
| that isn't true. A dose of skepticism is needed to cut
| through wild claims during bouts of hype and euphoria.
|
| Even some have already questioned [0] the _' everything
| works'_ claim and are still waiting for sleep and power
| management support [1].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015538
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35014923
| Maursault wrote:
| > This January, I installed Asahi Linux on Apple's most powerful
| ARM64 system: the Mac Studio with a 20-core M1 Ultra processor
| and 128GB of RAM
|
| Sucker. For the same price, OP could have had TWO Mac Studios Max
| 10-core with 64GB RAM each, which together would absolutely spank
| the Mac Studio Ultra 20-core with 128GB RAM. Why are people
| falling for this!?
| usr1106 wrote:
| Depending on the country you live earth overshoot day is pretty
| soon. 128GB of RAM and other specs for a workstation certainly
| sound like overshoot. I'd wish smart people would use their
| brains and saving resources instead of wasting them.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 640K aught to be enough for anybody.
| detrites wrote:
| Until you're living in a tree and sending this message with a
| carrier pigeon there's some criticisms anyone could level at
| you also. And, what if our future energy saviour just so
| happened to need 128GB of RAM to prove their model in time?
| usr1106 wrote:
| I am typing this on a mobile phone. Maybe 7-8 years old. 2 GB
| of RAM. Sailfish OS, still maintained (not perfectly, but
| better than the competition). Made as a low cost smart phone
| for India originally. Works decently well on many Web sites,
| close to perfectly on HN.
| kjs3 wrote:
| So a small computer. Full of environmentally problematic
| stuff. Just small and old. If that's your 'save the planet'
| plan, keep your condescension to yourself.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The original poster bought both a mac mini and a mac
| studio, I think it is not out of place to mention our
| limited resources on this planet. Not that consumer
| choice can save us (other things are needed), but
| overconsumption is one problem.
| cjdrake wrote:
| Another Arm64 workstation you can buy today:
| https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platfor...
| tbrock wrote:
| Performance isn't there. Why spend 3k on this?
| eatonphil wrote:
| What's wrong with the performance?
| eqvinox wrote:
| M1 Ultra on macOS: ca. 1800 (1C) ca. 24000 (20C)
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20798209
|
| Ampere Altra on Windows: ca. 800 (1C) ca. 12800 (80C)
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20639458
|
| Ampere Altra on Linux: ca. 900 (1C) ca. 44000 (80C)
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ampere-altra-
| max-80-ccore-...
|
| Apparently the key to getting performance out of the Ampere
| Altra is ... to just not use Windows? And have a very
| parallel workload. Yes, a single Altra core is half as fast
| as a single M1 Ultra core. But it really depends on your use
| case and other factors (e.g. power efficiency) which one is
| preferable.
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