Arch Linux Based EndeavourOS Begins Providing ARM Builds

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Jumbotron Macs have a teeny-tiny 13% market share for desktops and laptops. Very few people care what processors their inferior products use.
And my goodness, moving to ARM processors will only assure their market share deteriorates even further.

Ahhhh.... you must be less than 30 years old. Apple has been down to just 2% global market share in the past, so 13% and growing is quite the accomplishment. This is why Apple was the FIRST company in the history of mankind to reach not only 1 Trillion dollars in valuation but just recently 2 Trillion dollars.

Since you were not probably not born in 1997 you don't remember that Apple was on the verge of extinction with Michael Dell of Dell computers stating that if he were Steve Jobs he would liquidate the company and give all the money back to shareholders.

And what was the secret sauce of that comeback and particularly Apple's rise to 2 Trillion dollars in valuation? The iPhone and iPad. Running on ARM. Apple's marketshare did NOT deteriorate....it SHOT UP! And now with MacOS and Mac laptop and desktop hardware also converging on ARM Apple will be the THE FIRST computer company in history to achieve FULL CONVERGENCE across their entire software and hardware stack. There is NO WAY that is going to cause Apple's marketshare to deteriorate.

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Their users are sadists. Apple has changed architectures and dropped software compatibility enough times that their users like the pain.

And each time Apple grew. And Microsoft and the wider computer industry and portable computing industry copied and followed.

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It is time to push powerpc ...

Push it where? IBM got out of the PC business when they abandoned Apple...(yeah...it was IBM NOT Apple that abandoned PowerPC on Mac). And IBM abandoned the console Gaming business. They and the OpenPowerPC world don't have NEARLY the tooling and resources much less the CPU designs to come even close to ARM in winning design builds by consumer hardware maunfacturers or even "Green" HPC and Supercomputing. "Big Iron" HPC and Supercomputing ala Power 10. Sure thing. Power efficient computing along with the tools, licensing and marketing in order to topple ARM in the consumer space. No way. And not for another 15-20 years if ever.

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Why? Microsoft actually makes a PC line with some ARM devices, various Surfaces, and those ARM ones have never been that popular. They even come with custom ARM CPUs now-a-days.

Problem is -- No one really wants an non-x86 Windows device that isn't a Windows Phone because we don't expect our phone to play Skyrim or to run Photoshop so they've never been popular. Unless they (meaning anyone) come out with damn good virtualization and/or emulation stack that can run most x86 code at near native speeds on ARM, ARM won't be a 100% viable replacement for x86 devices anytime soon. x86 basically means 30+ years of proprietary software and games that no one wants to give up.

The reason ARM and Linux work so well is they both fill the same niche of "doesn't rely on the aforementioned 30+ years of proprietary software and games". Walled-garden Apple has changed architectures and dropped so much software over they years that their users don't care when it happens anymore. Microsoft, OTOH, has always been into ensuring old software runs on newer operating systems so their users expect all that software to work when they buy a Microsoft computer. Unless they come up with that magical stack, MS ARM devices will only ever be useful to "I can has MS Word and E Mail" users.

Dateline: September 23, 2020

"Microsoft has today announced a partnership with Qualcomm under which the company will extend the App Assure with FastTrack testing platform to developers working on developing apps to run well on ARM-based Windows 10."

https://www.gizmochina.com/2020/09/23/microsoft-qualcomm-help-developers-arm-windows-10/

Dateline: July 15, 2020

"Following the announcement about porting OpenJDK to Windows 10 on ARM devices, Microsoft today revealed that it will bring WPF support to Windows 10 ARM in 2021. Microsoft also revealed that WPF is now part of Developer Ecosystem and Platform team under Windows. This transition will allow both WinUI and WPF frameworks to stay aligned and remain future-proof. "

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-wpf-support-windows-10-on-arm/

Dateline: August 4, 2020

"Not only is Apple disrupting the MacBook and Mac market with its move to ARM-based processors, it’s also going to have an impact on the wider marketplace. Microsoft will be forced to accelerate its Windows 10 on ARM project to allow its partners to stay in touch with Apple. And Google will have to consider the danger to its Chromebook project . "

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2020/08/04/apple-macbook-pro-arm-intel-google-chromeos-chromebook-comparison/#480320de23a9

Tick Tock Linux and FOSS world. You're getting left behind.

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Another write up on ARM's new V1 platform and update to their Neoverse platform now called N2. This is from The Next Platform which is a sister site of The Register.

https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/09/22/arm-expands-its-server-universe-with-updated-neoverse-roadmap/

[ms178]

Push it where? IBM got out of the PC business when they abandoned Apple...(yeah...it was IBM NOT Apple that abandoned PowerPC on Mac). And IBM abandoned the console Gaming business. They and the OpenPowerPC world don't have NEARLY the tooling and resources much less the CPU designs to come even close to ARM in winning design builds by consumer hardware maunfacturers or even "Green" HPC and Supercomputing. "Big Iron" HPC and Supercomputing ala Power 10. Sure thing. Power efficient computing along with the tools, licensing and marketing in order to topple ARM in the consumer space. No way. And not for another 15-20 years if ever.

I argued along your lines in another thread a few days ago, IBM's efforts with POWER seem to me half-hearted at best. If they wanted to capitalize on Intel's relative stagnation in the broader PC space they would need to be far more aggressive. But there isn't even a cheap developer system out there using their tech, RISC-V is way better here and they seem to better know how to grow an ecosystem around your ISA. And that is where ARM is already miles ahead of both - while there is still a lot of work left to succeed on the desktop. Windows on ARM is not a success story right now and Microsoft has to invest more into it to get a chance to succeed with it, as long as you don't get most of your apps you care about in native binaries, they won't.

[CochainComplex]

Push it where? IBM got out of the PC business when they abandoned Apple...(yeah...it was IBM NOT Apple that abandoned PowerPC on Mac). And IBM abandoned the console Gaming business. They and the OpenPowerPC world don't have NEARLY the tooling and resources much less the CPU designs to come even close to ARM in winning design builds by consumer hardware maunfacturers or even "Green" HPC and Supercomputing. "Big Iron" HPC and Supercomputing ala Power 10. Sure thing. Power efficient computing along with the tools, licensing and marketing in order to topple ARM in the consumer space. No way. And not for another 15-20 years if ever.

...because ARM is going to be in the hands of Nvidia and Apple both of them are not known to be very open lately. Indeed PowerPC is a very niche architecture but still one which is at the moment usable on Desktop and Server.
Therefore it should be pushed to get out of the corner.

RISC-V - I don't know much about this arch.

Well I'm not so sure if IBM abandoned the PowerPC on Mac. However Cell was/is a nice processor. But according to game devs difficult to handle therefore the most studios demanded a more x86 like structure to develop. (Plus porting to PC is also easier)

[novhack]

I'm one of the people that was using Antergos and then migrated to EndeavourOS. It's a really neat system and a great successor of awesome Antergos.

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...because ARM is going to be in the hands of Nvidia and Apple both of them are not known to be very open lately. Indeed PowerPC is a very niche architecture but still one which is at the moment usable on Desktop and Server.
Therefore it should be pushed to get out of the corner.

RISC-V - I don't know much about this arch.

Well I'm not so sure if IBM abandoned the PowerPC on Mac. However Cell was/is a nice processor. But according to game devs difficult to handle therefore the most studios demanded a more x86 like structure to develop. (Plus porting to PC is also easier)

IBM did abandon Apple. So did Motorola. Remember the AIM alliance. Apple, IBM Motorola. This was the tech partnership in the 90's to take IBM's POWER design and put it in Apple's desktops and laptops and also leverage that into putting PowerPC chips in several consumer electronic designs such as game consoles, routers, NAS devices, automobiles, etc. However, IBM in the end had no desire to push the thermal and design evelopes Apple required for their Power Macs and also had no interest in getting those power and thermal requirements down to the point where an IBM G5 chip could be used in a high end Mac Book Pro where only the lower power and lower performance Motorola G4 could be used. Apple was beginning to REALLY feel the pressure of Intel's new "Core" design and later "iSomeMeaninglessNumber" CPUs as they had BOTH much lower power AND high performance. You could have one with the Motorola G4 or the other with the IBM G5. But you could not have both. So Apple saw the writing on the wall with the abandonment by IBM and the inability of Motorola and left the AIM alliance and went with Intel.

Until this year. Now Apple gains BOTH Silicon and Hardware independence AS WELL AS full Silicon, Software and Hardware convergence. They are the ONLY computer company in the world and the first ever in history to achieve this. And Apple was able to do this by standardizing on ARM and with their acquisition of PA Semi over 10 years ago they were able to put together a Silicon team to extend and OUTPERFORM all other ARM licensees in the Consumer Space by a MILE....including Qualcomm. And with the upcoming A14 X Apple Silicon SoC they will approach the performance of some of the higher end ARM Server chips out there now from the likes of Ampere and Cavium. Not to mention start outperforming at least half if not 60% of all Intel "iSomeMeaninglessNumber" CPUs in Single Threaded, Multi-Threaded, Inference and A.I benchmarks.

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I argued along your lines in another thread a few days ago, IBM's efforts with POWER seem to me half-hearted at best. If they wanted to capitalize on Intel's relative stagnation in the broader PC space they would need to be far more aggressive. But there isn't even a cheap developer system out there using their tech, RISC-V is way better here and they seem to better know how to grow an ecosystem around your ISA. And that is where ARM is already miles ahead of both - while there is still a lot of work left to succeed on the desktop. Windows on ARM is not a success story right now and Microsoft has to invest more into it to get a chance to succeed with it, as long as you don't get most of your apps you care about in native binaries, they won't.

"Microsoft has today announced a partnership with Qualcomm under which the company will extend the App Assure with FastTrack testing platform to developers working on developing apps to run well on ARM-based Windows 10.

The App Assure with FastTrack program from Microsoft is available to qualify developers or customers without any cost. For those who are unaware, App Assure is a program designed to help customers, developers, and independent software vendors address application compatibility issues."

https://www.gizmochina.com/2020/09/23/microsoft-qualcomm-help-developers-arm-windows-10/

"Following the announcement about porting OpenJDK to Windows 10 on ARM devices, Microsoft today revealed that it will bring WPF support to Windows 10 ARM in 2021. Microsoft also revealed that WPF is now part of Developer Ecosystem and Platform team under Windows. This transition will allow both WinUI and WPF frameworks to stay aligned and remain future-proof. Microsoft WPF team published the following as their roadmap through 2020 and into 2021."

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-wpf-support-windows-10-on-arm/

"It's been a few years, but Microsoft seems to have finally committed to a native ARM64 build of Microsoft Teams. Now, if it could do that for all its apps."

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-teams-arm64-will-happen

"Microsoft is now working with vendors on bringing more apps to Windows on ARM computers."

https://www.windowscentral.com/qualcomm-microsoft-app-assure-program-2020