
Linux on the Mac – state of the union - ah-
https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/
======
toodlebunions
>>> "the realization that Apple no longer caters equally to casual and
professional customers as it had in the past [YouTube video]. Instead, the
company appears to be following an iOS-focused, margin-driven strategy that
essentially relegates professionals to a fringe group."

Ouch

~~~
ubernostrum
Except this is largely based on mythology. People seem to equate "pro user"
with "software developer" (and no other roles/occupations at all), and invent
a fictitious history in which the Macbook Pro was jumping up and down on stage
shouting "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!"

Except that never happened. The perceived dev-friendliness of the Macbook Pro
was a historical accident: it turns out that when you build something for use
cases like audio/video engineering (which overlap a bit in their hardware
needs with use cases like compiling software), and happen due to quirks of
your company's history to be shipping a Unix-y operating system, developers
will like it. But aside from providing tools to build applications for Apple's
own platforms, the MBP and other Mac hardware wasn't deliberately catered to
developers.

Meanwhile, the audio/video-engineer types still seem to like the MBP; the
reviews I've read from them are positive about the touch bar and accepting of
the fact that USB C is the future. It's just the developers -- and largely
developers who hated Apple's products anyway and likely will never interact
with the new MBP -- who say that this is proof that Apple has completely
abandoned "pro" users.

~~~
rev12
>>> "Meanwhile, the audio/video-engineer types still seem to like the MBP"

I can't speak to the professional video world, but that's absolutely false in
the professional audio world.

My experience is in the world of composition and sound design; the attitude
towards using Mac for that shifted a while back, due to the lackluster and
non-existent upgrades to the Mac Pro.

No one in the professional audio world that I know, or anything that I have
read, has suggested they are liking the new laptop (which wouldn't get much
use from them anyway).

~~~
coldtea
> _I can 't speak to the professional video world, but that's absolutely false
> in the professional audio world._

Depends on what you mean "professional audio world". If you mean heavy old
style studios, the kind Led Zeppelin might have recorded on back in the day,
yes, but these are on the go (profits and usage wise) anyway, as the industry
shifts.

Musicians, producers, DJs, etc most carry laptops and have home studios based
around them, and most use MacBook Pro's for their stuff (as evident in all
kinds of interviews and live scenarios).

~~~
rev12
I was referring to the composition and post production (sound design,
engineering) world. Mostly because that is the industry I worked in for many
years and still continue to work in (much more sporadically these days).

That's a world that was dominated by Mac Pros around 2010. Around 2013 I
started seeing a shift, myself included, to custom built PC workstations and
that trend is just increasing now. The initial switch, I believe, started with
the lackluster cylinder Mac Pro, but continued due to the obvious failings in
the Mac desktop market.

You speak of home based studios using MacBook pros, but anyone doing that is
obviously not a professional. I will give you the fact that many DJs are using
MacBooks for the mobile rigs, but at home, anyone actually doing professional
audio work is likely using a massive powerful workstation or a number of PCs
(master/slaves).

This notion that MacBooks (or even laptops in general) are super popular in
the professional audio world is fiction made for advertising.

~~~
coldtea
> _You speak of home based studios using MacBook pros, but anyone doing that
> is obviously not a professional._

Tons of musicians/producers/etc have those, while making more money than
professional studios from their productions -- and not just in EDM.

Lots of the work that studios did for even superstar musicians (pop, etc),
nowadays happens in the box, and not just demos and early sketches.

> _This notion that MacBooks (or even laptops in general) are super popular in
> the professional audio world is fiction made for advertising._

Rather the professional audio world is not what it used to be.

I'd consider million-making Bjork or whatever working on their laptop, as
equally (or more) professional than some struggling studio or post-processing
facility.

------
rocky1138
I wish to thank the dedicated people who make this happen. I'm forced to use
Apple hardware at work, but thankfully can run whatever OS I choose. Here's to
the crazy ones.

~~~
monochromatic
What kind of office lets you install a new OS on their machines?

~~~
fulafel
Why not?

~~~
monochromatic
IT burden.

~~~
Spivak
Weird, I would never imagine locking down development workstations -- how
would you ever get anything done? Just one example would be Docker, having
access is equivalent to root so why beat around the bush?

Our office basically treats development boxes the same as BYOD except the
company buys the hardware. IT will do best effort diagnostics and recovery on
those machines but otherwise you're on your own.

~~~
monochromatic
Eh I don't even necessarily mean locking stuff down. But having standardized
images to roll out makes things simpler, keeping patches up to date, etc.

------
s_dev
If Linux could utilise battery as well as MacOS or OS X I'd switch in a
heartbeat. Obviously Apple have some proprietary battery magic as neither
Linux, BSD or Windows can seem to get 50% of the battery life out of MacBook
Pros and this is a significant cost on a laptop - otherwise dual booting for
me will remain the best compromise.

~~~
l1k
First of all, macOS power manages devices too aggressively: I've noticed that
if I ssh from another computer into my MacBook Pro (booted into macOS and
connected to wired Ethernet), the connection becomes unresponsive after a few
seconds of inactivity. I have to ping from the MacBook Pro to a machine on the
LAN to make the ssh connection responsive again. It looks like macOS suspends
the BCM 57765 Ethernet controller and doesn't resume it upon reception of
packets from the LAN. Apple seems to consider macOS purely a client OS from
which one ssh's to the outside world but not the other way round.

Second, there's no proprietary battery magic in macOS, as stated in the
article I already achieve 10.5W idle power consumption on my Ivy Bridge
MacBook Pro with discrete GPU, Thunderbolt and AirPort suspended, wheras macOS
achieves 7W. I've noticed a GPE in the ACPI tables for the Firewire controller
which presumably signals hotplug when the controller is asleep. We're not
using that on Linux yet, we keep the Firewire controller active all the time.
Adding that would probably save another 1W.

So we're inching ever closer to macOS levels of battery life, and I think
eventually we may be able to surpass it because of the sophisticated CPU
pstate management that Intel developers continue to tweak with every new
release.

~~~
navait
> Apple seems to consider macOS purely a client OS from which one ssh's to the
> outside world but not the other way round.

I'm not knowledgeable enough, but this seems a pretty reasonable assumption
for 90% of use cases. And if this assumption holds, is it fair to say. I think
what you're trying to say is "First of all, macOS power manages devices too
aggressively _for me_ "

> It looks like macOS suspends the BCM 57765 Ethernet controller and doesn't
> resume it upon reception of packets from the LAN.

What are the trade-offs of this decision? Could apple not do this and not
change the battery life for anyone? Or would it benefit this case and
adversely affect other cases?

~~~
l1k
For a Linux driver it wouldn't be acceptable to compromise functionality like
this as it's expected to work equally well on big iron as on laptops. So we
have to tweak a lot more to achieve the same level of battery life.

~~~
stinkytaco
Just to understand this, why wouldn't that be an acceptable compromise? As
someone who uses linux on both a server and a laptop, I can tell you that when
my laptop is unplugged, I'd much rather have that battery life than inbound
ssh connection stability. I would imagine this is much the same for the vast
majority of linux users. Could the lack of compromise be part of the problem?

~~~
l1k
If nothing's plugged in then many devices can indeed be suspended in some way,
either by putting them in PCI power state D3hot or by cutting power if the
platform supports it. Plug events are then signaled e.g. by an ACPI GPE
(general purpose event, an interrupt sent by the platform to the OS).

The case I was referring to was with the Ethernet cable still plugged in. They
seem to suspend the Ethernet controller but don't wake it when packets come
in, presumably because the controller doesn't support that. The machine
appears dead from the outside after a few seconds of inactivity.

~~~
zrm
> They seem to suspend the Ethernet controller but don't wake it when packets
> come in, presumably because the controller doesn't support that. The machine
> appears dead from the outside after a few seconds of inactivity.

It seems like that would affect more than ssh connections, e.g. you wouldn't
be able to receive email notifications.

------
verandaguy
I want to extend thanks to the diligent developers and engineers doing work on
this. I'm running Arch on a 2012 Retina MBP with a GNOME desktop, and ignoring
the shortened battery life -- which in my situation is generally possible --
this is an amazingly streamlined and refined experience.

I'd gladly contribute to the work being done if I had the background, (which
I'm currently working on)!

------
sciurus
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126878)

------
gurkendoktor
Sadly, I haven't heard/read anything good about running Linux on the iMac 5K,
which I'm tempted to buy when/if it is updated in 2017. I don't understand
Apple's vision at all, and it wouldn't surprise me if they ruined macOS in the
next five years. Being able to install Fedora in that case would really buy me
some peace of mind.

~~~
l1k
There was a thread on dri-devel a year ago:

[https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2015-Octobe...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2015-October/093294.html)

Back then the probed panel resolution (EDID retrieved by radeon) was
3840x2160, which doesn't make any sense because the panel actually has
5120x2880. It's unclear if this was because of missing/broken MST support in
radeon (Multistream Transport) or if Apple used some proprietary mechanism to
squeeze the panel resolution in a single stream transport. You may want to
contact the person who started that thread (Andreas Tunek) and ask if the
situation has improved with contemporary kernels.

~~~
JoelTheSuperior
If memory serves Apple didn't actually use MST for the 5k iMac and instead
developed a custom timing controller which allowed them to get the 5k
resolution working over a single stream.

It's the same reason why, for example, Windows sees it as a 3840x2160 panel as
well.

~~~
gurkendoktor
Oh, I wasn't aware that Windows was affected too. Apparently it took Apple
some time to bring 5K support to Boot Camp for 2014 iMac model [1].

I guess I'll wait for Apple to actually announce new desktops before I
seriously look into the driver situation...

[1] [http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bootcamp-
update-5k-windo...](http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bootcamp-
update-5k-windows-on-all-5k-imacs.1939481/)

------
scarface74
Serious question. What advantage is there to running Linux on a Mac? OS X is
already certified Unix. Is there any open source software that you can run on
Linux that you can't run on OS X?

------
yuhong
For really old Intel Macs there is the hack of hardcoded framebuffer
addresses, which they did instead of supporting UGA.

------
ttflee
Why not adopt the Windows Subsystem for Linux (i.e., Ubuntu and bash.exe)
strategy?

~~~
nickjj
It needs a lot more time before it's usable beyond demo use cases.

If you're interested I wrote all about it[0] when trying to change my
development environment recently:

[0]: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/i-almost-rage-bought-a-
macboo...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/i-almost-rage-bought-a-macbook-pro)

------
maratc
The basis of this article makes no sense. What developers love about Macs is
the OS and the nice integration between OS and hardware. Even if you hate the
new hardware, it makes sense to continue juicing your current one and see what
comes along next year; it makes zero sense to install Linux on a fringe
hardware (Mac).

~~~
codemusings
I guess it depends on what kind of developers you think of. Unless you're
developing macOS or iOS Software why bother with an inferior software eco
system? Brew is a hot mess. MacPorts is slow as fuck.

~~~
l1k
Personally I've been using fink for >12 years now, I enjoy being able to use
the familiar apt-get and dpkg to manage packages on macOS:

[http://finkproject.org/](http://finkproject.org/)

I even backported the then-current version to MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) last year.
:-)

[https://github.com/l1k/fink/commits/branch_0_38_tenfour](https://github.com/l1k/fink/commits/branch_0_38_tenfour)

------
fbreduc
can't even put linux on a pc, how gonna do a mac?

~~~
choward
Seriously?

