Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by mbreese on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:48PM (#25249622)

You do know there is a version of Windows for ARM64 already, right? It was largely hampered by the speed of the available CPUs, but it does exist.

What I’m really curious about is how the ISA for the M1 is different from the CPUs Windows for ARM already supports. And as others have mentioned — I think GPU support will be more difficult, but I don’t have any data to support that.

But, it’s not like alternative (and mainstream) OSs don’t exist for ARM64. Maybe with some faster ARM64 CPUs, this could be the push to really make ARM a viable architecture for more than just Macs.

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Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by CountSessine on Sunday November 29, 2020 @10:04PM (#25250366)

You do know there is a version of Windows for ARM64 already, right?

You do know that there's no software available for it, right? Without software, arm64 Windows is not a viable operating system for an arm64 laptop. ARM Windows is as relevant as MIPS Windows or Itanium Windows without the huge ecosystem of software you get on x86.

And who goes bankrupt first to build this platform? Is it the laptops makers who lose millions investing in laptops that almost no one will buy because there's no software for them (actually, they already did that). Or is it the software devs who lose millions porting their software to laptops that no one owns? When Apple says the future is ARM, everyone knows the hardware will be coming and they'd better fire up their IDEs. There's no such confidence in ARM Windows.

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Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by nordsieck on Monday November 30, 2020 @06:13PM (#25260269)

> When Apple says the future is ARM, everyone knows the hardware will be coming and they'd better fire up their IDEs. There's no such confidence in ARM Windows.

Pretty critically, Apple was able to modify their chips so that they can efficiently emulate x86 code. Microsoft will not be able to do the same.

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Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by thayne on Sunday November 29, 2020 @11:03PM (#25250623)

There is plenty of linux software that runs on arm64 though. Even if windows remains the dominant deaktop OS, there is certainly a niche for developers and other who would want to run linux on a high-performance arm64 laptop. And then there is chrome OS.

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Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by frankchn on Monday November 30, 2020 @12:24AM (#25250969)

I don't think the "developers who want a high performance ARM laptop" niche is large enough for any serious hardware manufacturer to address.

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Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by CountSessine on Monday November 30, 2020 @12:59PM (#25256728)

You can't design a desktop-class CPU for a market niche. Even board-level design doesn't scale that way - every good linux laptop on the market is actually a Windows laptop that's had linux installed on it and benefits from the economies of scale in the Windows market (as much as it saddens me to say this, typing this on a thinkpad running fedora 33).

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