Not sure what you are getting at here. Getting Linux to run on the M1 already works... it's ARM Linux. It already runs on a VM on the M1 unmodified. I suspect we'll see Linux booting on M1 hardware within 6 months, likely less.
What is going to be a much bigger struggle is getting the drivers for all the various other bits of the architecture working properly. The GPU is the biggie, but networking drivers, power management, audio drivers... the DSP, etc etc.
All of the the things which are going to be difficult to get right on the M1 were an uphill battle on x86 as well. And no, Nvidia never provided documentation for their GPUs, it was a long time before we had good graphics support on Linux. Even audio drivers were a mess. Wifi modems were problematic well into the 2010s.
Most hardware makers still don't document hardware features, the good ones provide binary drivers, and plenty of others rely on known interfaces so they work with older drivers.
> it was a long time before we had good graphics support on Linux
<implying that we actually have good graphics support>
In practice we have _tolerable_ drivers (depending on any given year), typically with terrible power management... and it took 20 years - on a platform that was much more transparent than what Apple will ever provide, given half the chance.
Doing it all again on an even-more-wilfully-opaque platform, built by a company that is GPL-hostile and does not care for interoperability, seems fairly masochistic and self-defeating in the long run. I’d rather see great hackers, as the dude here, spending their time doing amazing things for companies who aim to provide the “good ARM laptop” experience for Linux. That I would pay for. We didn’t really have the chance to do this for x86 since Linux started with zero marketshare; that’s not the case anymore, we have a decent critical mass both in terms of hackers and consumers, we should leverage that imho.
> on a platform that was much more transparent than what Apple will ever provide, given half the chance.
I spent 15 years screwing around with X86Config files trying to get Nvidia support working. The idea that anyone could be less opaque than that seems unlikely. Well into the early 00s I had a laptop with a worthless internal wifi card and an expensive aftermarket card because the internal card had zero support.
I have no idea how transparent Apple is going to be regarding their technology, but it can't be any worse than what we dealt with with Nvidia prior to getting their binary blob solution out.
Apple is one brand, one stack. Even if Apple offers no support at all, that is going to be a hell of a lot easier than fighting hundreds of OEMs building one-off cards and onboard sound/ wifi/ video drivers with no interest in Linux.
I'm not talking up Apple here. But it really seems like people have forgotten what a shit-show driver support was on Linux for decades. And however uncooperative Apple is, just the fact that it's a single monolithic stack is going to make it massively easier.
What is going to be a much bigger struggle is getting the drivers for all the various other bits of the architecture working properly. The GPU is the biggie, but networking drivers, power management, audio drivers... the DSP, etc etc.
All of the the things which are going to be difficult to get right on the M1 were an uphill battle on x86 as well. And no, Nvidia never provided documentation for their GPUs, it was a long time before we had good graphics support on Linux. Even audio drivers were a mess. Wifi modems were problematic well into the 2010s.
Most hardware makers still don't document hardware features, the good ones provide binary drivers, and plenty of others rely on known interfaces so they work with older drivers.