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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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anyone who uses Linux on apple silicon or another arm device (self.linux)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by richardisaguy to c/[email protected]

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No, android does not count.

Is there anyone who daily drives Linux on apple silicon or other ARM hardware? If so, then how is your experience, would you recommend it?

For at least 3 years, I've been wanting to get an apple silicon mac to daily drive Linux on, lately I've been seriously considering getting one of these machines, or even other ARM hardware, like the thinkpad x13s or even the new Qualcomm laptops.

I'm pretty much sold on a used macbook air m1 at this point, but I still wish to hear what other people have to say

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[–] PumpkinEscobar 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Ran Asahi for several months, tried it out again recently. It’s good/fine, I just don’t love fedora.

There’s some funkiness with the more complicated install, the AI acceleration doesn’t work, no thunderbolt / docking station.

MacBooks are great hardware but I don’t think they’re the best option for Linux right now. If you’re never going to boot into macOS then I’d look for x13, new Qualcomm, isn’t there a framework arm64 option now or was that a RISC module?

I’m also assuming you’re not looking to do any gaming? Because gaming on ARM is not really a thing right now and doesn’t feel like it will be for a long while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

You aren't stuck to Fedora with Asahi, I'm running Debian on my M1 Pro MBP

[–] richardisaguy 2 points 3 months ago

https://github.com/eiln/ane

I think the neural engine works, but you need an out-of-tree kernel module. The asahi wiki talks about that, they say it is yet to be merged on mainline.

Gaming on arm is absolutely a thing... But not on the M's... About the other chips it's just on its infancy right now, fex-emu(https://github.com/szllzs/FEXEMU) and box64(https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64) are both capable of running wine, and of course steam. Games work, I don't think its 100% of native speed, and the compatibility must not be perfect, but like wine/proton I'm sure it's only going to get better.

The apple silicon devices have 16k pages kernels, while x86 is 4k pages, that would not be a problem if we had 4k page emulation/simulation on Linux, but we don't, seems like macOS's way of emulating 4k pages is wasteful to performance, and the contributors do not wish to make a similar implementation, so we don't get one for now.