Corellium Posts Very Early Linux Port To Apple M1 Macs

[OneTimeShot]

So you did not even read the title of the article that your posting comments for?

yes - and I read the blogs, and took a quick look at the source code on their GitHub site? What's your input?

Maybe you can point me to a location where they are distributing the binary? Or did you not click on that?

[OneTimeShot]

They've already distributed a "very early beta" build.

Also distributing broadcom binary blobs, and possibly a custom busybox build

I note that you linked to Twitter, not to binaries. Any reason for that? Let's guess...

[Aryma]

waste of time and talent

[GruenSein]

waste of time and talent

First of all, it is up to everyone to decide if spending time on something is worth it. If whoever is working on this wants to run Linux on their M1 Macs it is worth it.

Secondly, I respectfully disagree with you in a general sense, too. The M1 is arguably the best currently available ARM SoC targeted at customers. The M1 Macbooks are nice machines. How is it a waste of time to make Linux available on it? Isn't being able to run Linux almost anywhere one of the things the Linux community is typically proud of? Why not use this machine in the future to have a light yet powerful laptop with a decent screen and lots of battery life for your Linux needs? Most mainboard vendors don't help supporting coreboot either. Nonetheless, they make decent mainboards on which people would like to run free software. Is coreboot a waste of time?

[WorBlux]

How is it a waste of time to make Linux available on it? Isn't being able to run Linux almost anywhere one of the things the Linux community is typically proud of?

Because the chip designer/vendor has offered exactly zero support of documentation, and could lock you out of all these devices with a simple firmware update. The only assurance you have is a weak public statement that they won't interfere, but no real contract, dev kit.... etc that would give anyone any standing to sue should they buy the device to run linux and later be locked out (see the PS3 fiasco where there was a lawsuit required for compensation that only gave them 10% or the purchase price back). And Apple isn't advertising it as a feature anywhere.

They don't make money from their hardware, they make money from their walled garden, they have little reason to help any alternative OS. At best these developers are just spending thier time and attention on a project to build an anti-trust defense for one of the richest companies on earth, and that has almost zero transfer of utility outside of apple systems, and that could be cut off at any time should it actually threaten apple profitability.

I can understand Coreillium wanting to do it and paying thier own devs to do so. Even if they do get cut off later, understanding the silicon better helps their core business model. But AsahiLinux as a community project trying to bring a "polished linux experience". I don't really get that.

[WorBlux]

And as far as coreboot goes... there are applications with cooperative vendors, and components tend to get re-used and iterated on, so it's rare that porting a board is completely useless down the line. And the devs aren't aiming for a "polished coreboot experience" on these boards. Many of these boards require soldering and an external flashing hardware. The end goal has always been to integrate with vendors. However on the M1, Apple is the only vendor, and they seem quite unlikely to want to integrate.

[CommunityMember]

They don't make money from their hardware, they make money from their walled garden

Actually, they do make a profit on their hardware, if you compare what the equivalent sales price is of competitive offerings (at least when they were running x86 where it was easy to compare the BoM prices). The walled garden (only Apple hardware can officially run MacOS (yes, we all know about hackintoshes)) is a way to make sure you pay that premium if you wanted/needed to run MacOS.

[aspen]

I note that you linked to Twitter, not to binaries. Any reason for that? Let's guess...

Let me guess, you're some sort of troll. Had you bothered to check the twitter links, you would've found that the first one is the Corellium CTO linking to the binary. Their server is currently down (any connection to downloads.corellium.info times out), but since I doubt you're capable of clicking on a link anyways, let me copy-paste what the tweet says:

Here is a very early beta of Linux on the m1 for *advanced users only*. https://downloads.corellium.info/linux.macho if you don't know how to run this then wait till tomorrow when the more complete release with USB, SMP is posted (with instructions).

[stormcrow]

I don't think it's really that surprising Corelium has done it. The basic M1 (excluding the GPU) is a fairly standard ARM64 core with mapping to manage power better and custom extensions including those needed to run x86_64 little endian instructions without having to do software flipping. That's my educated guess built on those people writing code specifically to run on the hardware reporting what they're finding.

For example, here's an article talking about running ARM64 assembly language code on the M1: https://smist08.wordpress.com/2021/0...e-hello-world/

Most of the porting effort is going to come from people reverse engineer the GPU component of the M1.

Generic response to some of the above comments: hardware hackers don't care if you think their efforts are worthless or useless. They're going to do it anyway. Just shut up and get out of their way. Hackers work on projects because they personally find them interesting and report their results and code to like minded individuals. If you don't care, why are you bashing their work or even reading about it? No one is torturing your puppy to poke and prod an Apple M1 chip. Stop being a troll.

[milkylainen]

I don't think it's really that surprising Corelium has done it. The basic M1 (excluding the GPU) is a fairly standard ARM64 core

My thoughts too. Like pretty standard ARMv8.6-A, probably UEFI and ACPI?