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A comment on Linux Running on Apple M1. Parent comment

Re:Linux Running on Apple M1 by duskwuff on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @07:03PM (#25853575)
Well... for the price of a Mac Mini, and some, you get a bare motherboard with a small amount of onboard storage (64G eMMC). No RAM, no video, no power supply or case. And it's not like you can just throw an off-the-shelf GPU in, either; neither nVidia nor AMD graphics cards work on ARM devices -- so if you're expecting something you can use as a desktop, you're in for a hard time.
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Re:Linux Running on Apple M1 by floatboth on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @08:24PM (#25854202)
Both amdgpu and nouveau work absolutely fine on ARM devices, why wouldn't they?!

In fact I made the FreeBSD port of amdgpu work on my Macchiatobin :) Absolutely smooth experience btw, video output works even in UEFI (it actually runs the GOP driver from the card in QEMU), amdgpu works perfectly (played vkquake, supertuxkart, openmw, etc.)

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Re:Linux Running on Apple M1 by duskwuff on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:06AM (#25855651)
The results reported at [1] had led me to believe that the AMD/NV ARM drivers were still unready. Am I mistaken? Are those issues specific to BCM283x?

[1]: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-ras...

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Re:Linux Running on Apple M1 by floatboth on Thursday January 21, 2021 @04:38AM (#25857129)
Yes, the BCMwhatever's weird PCIe controller literally returns corrupted data when the driver tries to read from the card, possibly due to not supporting some kind of 64 bit read.
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Re:Linux Running on Apple M1 by StillBored on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @08:39PM (#25854286)
That board is pretty close to the same experience you would get with a random x86 mITX board (once you flash the UEFI firmware on it). It has a m.2 nvme slot, sata, etc. Its one of the lower cost standards based arm boards.

So, yes you have to bring some storage, ram, ps and case. But one can cheap out and probably get all three for <$200, or go crazy and put 64G of ECC, and a few TB of storage in it. The cheaper off the shelf RAM/storage makes it a lot cheaper than a loaded mini with similar specifications.

And as another commenter points out, yes fairly common GPUs tend to work in it. Its not perfect, for that you have to spend more, but the time you will spend fighting with the mac mini+linux is going to be worth the difference.

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