Early Work Is Underway On Reverse-Engineering The Apple M1 GPU

[torsionbar28]

I can never understand why people waste their time on trying support something that was designed to not be supported like stuff from Apple and Nvidia.
If users want to use hardware with Linux, they should just buy Linux and open source friendly hardware.

Precisely. Doing this difficult work sends the message to these companies that they don't have to bother with those FOSS people. "The FOSS people will figure it out on their own, they'll do it for free, and we don't have to waste any resources helping them". If instead, we focus on rewarding the FOSS-friendly companies with our dollars, that sends a clear message to the rest, that "FOSS Unfriendly" = "no sale".

Personally I just dropped $1600 on a loaded Galago Pro laptop from System76. It's a really nice machine! Are there possibly slightly cheaper options out there? Sure. Are there options that have more features? Sure. But System76 support is amazing. They are first and foremost a Linux hardware vendor, so I can be certain that *all* the features and options on this machine are 100% Linux compatible, and will work out of the box. Vote with your dollars.

[Vistaus]

I can never understand why people waste their time on trying support something that was designed to not be supported like stuff from Apple and Nvidia.
If users want to use hardware with Linux, they should just buy Linux and open source friendly hardware.

I agree, but not everyone has a choice. If you're boss gives you a MacBook and you have to use it, but he does allow dual-boot, then you can install Linux on it as well. Sure, you could also take a Linux-only laptop with you, but who the hell carries two laptops for one job? (unless you're an IT specialist, but I'm not talking about those people)

[BingoNightly]

But this is free software, and beggars can't be choosers.

Bingo

[bridgman]

I agree, but not everyone has a choice. If you're boss gives you a MacBook and you have to use it, but he does allow dual-boot, then you can install Linux on it as well. Sure, you could also take a Linux-only laptop with you, but who the hell carries two laptops for one job? (unless you're an IT specialist, but I'm not talking about those people)

I always thought the reason for those really small laptops was so you could take two of them with you when travelling, one for Linux and one for Windows.

[MadeUpName]

It's a free world and what people do with their time for the most part doesn't matter to me. Having said that what makes these devices interesting is their graphics ability and I have serious doubts that this project will get any where near 100% performance from the graphics engine with out technical documentation and support from Apple. If reverse engineering graphics devices was easy Linux wouldn't have hobbled along with 3rd rate drive support for as long as it has.

[microcode]

tbh that sounds very risky. and it will probably take too much time.
but kudos for the effort. hope there will be some interesting findings

Risky how?

[jo-erlend]

tbh that sounds very risky. and it will probably take too much time.
but kudos for the effort. hope there will be some interesting findings

Too much time? For what?

[M@GOid]

I must disagree with lumping Nvidia and Apple together. They are actually very different. Nvidia fully supports Linux and works very hard to ensure their hardware works with it... what they dont do is fully embrace the open source religion.

I must disagree with you a bit. While Nvidia indeed work hard to have their devices working on Linux, they do not fully embrace Linux. Their shenanigans with kernel drivers and Wayland support shows they embrace themselves, not Linux. Intel and AMD fare much better on the definition of "fully support Linux".

And Opensource is not a religion, is one of the most successful ways to develop software.

[flower]

Too much time? For what?

to get a useful mesa driver bevore apple has released so much hw updates that it is outdated

Risky how?

well apple likes lawsuites when someone uses their devices for something they didnt intended

[bavay]

shmerl I have immensely benefited from Alyssa's previous work on the RockPro64 (reverse engineering of the GPU to the point that Arm started helping by contributing documentation, the code now works very well), so I would not be too negative. The challenges are there, but Alyssa's track record too!