Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by commandersaki on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:08AM (#42075315)

Rosetta 2 for Linux is my favourite feature of Mac at the moment. I've been working on a project for many years that had a hard dependency on a library that only compiled on amd64 architecture. So for the longest time I was dual wielding a Mac and Framework laptop. I really hated switching between the two and moreso using Linux on my Framework; just felt like a bleh experience. When Rosetta 2 for Linux came around, I immediately started using it and was fully productive developing on our Intel only projects. I don't see any perceivable speed loss, t hough we had to adjust some sleeps for a few concurrency/threading tests to accommodate Rosetta.

Apple really did not have to make Rosetta 2 available for Linux. If they hadn't, it wouldn't even register a blip on the users / market share of Macs/MacOS. But it's just one of those hidden gems of the OS, and going by this article they haven't stopped improving on it.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by arghwhat on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:18AM (#42075356)

> Apple really did not have to make Rosetta 2 available for Linux.

The kinda did - offering good Linux dev environments is now a fairly big feature for both of the major Desktop OS's nowadays.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by commandersaki on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:50AM (#42075522)

Most Linux dev environments do not need to be tied down to Intel. In fact it is more performant and efficient if you're working on ARM native on Linux. It was already a good Linux dev env before Rosetta 2 was on the scene, they just enabled more use cases with Rosetta 2.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by iforgotmysocks on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:53AM (#42075541)

I also do not see much need for Rosetta support for Linux as arm64 Linux works fine for most of my use cases. However it is definitely better to have Rosetta support than not having it.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by arghwhat on Thursday November 07, 2024 @01:15PM (#42079243)

This unfortunately only holds when working purely on open source. Shipped binaries for aarch64 are still not super common for proprietary things within the enterprise space.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by pjmlp on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:32AM (#42075435)

And the only way Desktop Linux will actually grow beyond the usual 1%.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by ChocolateGod on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:42AM (#42075483)

I don't think it counts as Desktop Linux if its running in a CLI-only VM targeted at developers on a different host OS.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by cassianoleal on Thursday November 07, 2024 @07:12AM (#42075956)

It works on GUI VMs as well. UTM makes it very easy to use.

I agree it still doesn't help much with the desktop Linux bit though. :D

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by pjmlp on Thursday November 07, 2024 @09:09AM (#42076771)

It may not count, but that is what you will get in most shopping malls as "Desktop Linux" for common folks.

Even if you add Chromebooks as third option, Crostini runs in a VM just like WSL 2, and still has quite a few integration issues to this day.

Netbooks could have been it, but first they were torpedoed with Microsoft's clever move to make Windows XP licenses free for those OEMs, followed by the introduction and wide adoptions of tablets.

OEMs like Tuxedo or System 76 will remain a niche compared to how many people end up running GNU/Linux on desktop VMs.

Before WSL I had long moved away from dual boot into VMWare Workstation.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by the8472 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @02:44PM (#42080145)

WSL runs GUIs too. And so did things like vmware and virtualbox for many years before it.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by anonzzzies on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:46AM (#42075501)

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

so 6%+ then :)

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by arghwhat on Thursday November 07, 2024 @01:09PM (#42079190)

Which, to be fair, is something like tens of millions of Linux desktops. Several orders of magnitude less than the other types of Linux-powered computers out there though.

No one cares what the relative numbers are. As long as there is enough absolute users to justify the effort.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by pjmlp on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:10PM (#42081658)

Yeah, but those other ones don't run GNU/Linux for normies, which was the whole premise of The Year of Linux Desktop meme started on the last century.

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by therealmarv on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:29AM (#42075413)

May you explain how you use it practically? How do you get it working in your choice of Linux?

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by commandersaki on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:44AM (#42075490)

I do it all via docker. I execute `docker --platform linux/amd64 <run|build>` and it uses Rosetta 2 for Linux in the VM (colima sets the rest up automatically).

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by cassepipe on Thursday November 07, 2024 @06:05AM (#42075616)

May I ask what felt wrong with Linux on the Framework ?

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by commandersaki on Thursday November 07, 2024 @09:24AM (#42076875)

I usually post my opinion on every framework thread that pops up just to add a bit of diversity, you can see my most recent post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41551909#41554801

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by wslh on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:33AM (#42075447)

Curious about your setup, especially regarding GUI support: are you running Rosetta in the GUI VM? I haven't tried Rosetta yet myself, and I'm considering options for a stable Linux VM (not frequently creating and removing VMs). I'd appreciate any insight!

Also, reading through this thread has given me an "aha" moment about the under-the-radar innovations Apple is building. Many people criticize Apple without understanding these aspects, and I’m not an Apple fanboy. I had similar realizations with Microsoft’s .NET, which I still believe is incredible underrated.

Lastly, how does running the Linux VM impact battery management efficiency?

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Re:Accelerating the Performance of Rosetta in Linux VMs on A... by commandersaki on Thursday November 07, 2024 @05:47AM (#42075509)

I only run Rosetta 2 for Linux via `docker --platform linux/amd64 <run|build>` which triggers the rosetta helper in the underlying docker VM to do the right thing. I use colima for a docker VM which sets up Rosetta 2 automatically.

I don't know anything about GUI use; I don't run Linux for GUI stuff.

Linux VM affects battery proportional to how much you use it. For example when I build our projects that take 12 minutes running across all cores, I'm using the laptop at 100%. When I'm not using docker, the VM is idle, and therefore doesn't really impact battery whatsoever.

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