Comment by jasoneckert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasoneckert | Hacker News Reader

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I own an M1 Ultra Mac Studio that I primarily run Asahi Linux on. Prior to that, I ran a trashcan 2013 Mac Pro 6-core Xeon that I primarily ran Ubuntu Linux on. Thus, I buy Apple primarily for the hardware.

After watching today's WWDC product announcements regarding the Mac Studio and Mac Pro updates, I really don't see myself ever buying a Mac Pro in the future. While I can understand how very large studios may value the additional expandability, a massive case with ability for expensive upgrades just isn't something I would need or pay extra money for.

It looks like Apple has targeted the Mac Studio for the largest number of professionals, while reserving the Mac Pro for a niche high-end market - and in these regards, the Mac Pro is a continuation of the 2019 Mac Pro, whereas the Mac Studio is a continuation of the trashcan 2013 Mac Pro.

Would you mind expanding a bit on your experiences with running linux on mac hardware? Especially the M1, what is your daily experience like? Any pain points or gotchas?

Reason for my question is that I used to run linux on the mac as well (10 years ago), and I love the hardware. I don't think there is anything that even comes close hardware-wise. But currently I am on mac os, well, because it works basically ;) But I would be curious to know if switching over again would make sense now, without too much hassle.

Of course - I have a blog post detailing that here: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/ultimate-linux-arm64-wo...

Thanks, that was a very nice read, and also great news. Maybe I will give it a try this year.

Damn, the Asahi team has done God's work

Was it hard to get Linux to run well on the trashcan? Mine is still my main machine, but there are no more MacOS upgrades for it.

It was trivially simple - boot the Mac from a USB thumb drive that has Ubuntu 20 or later installation media. No need to search for any drivers afterwards either.

You might need to install 'bcmwl-kernel-source' for the WIFI drivers, but other than that I've installed Ubuntu Server on all sorts of Intel Macs and they work perfectly.

Thanks

I have a 2013 Mac Pro running Alpine Linux and a bunch of Docker containers.

Installing any Linux distro is trivial, just boot the installer for your distro of choice off a USB stick. Hold down the Option key when the Mac turns on and it'll appear as a boot option alongside the internal drive and internet recovery.

Thanks

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