linux-m1 VS linux

Thunderbolt 3/4/USB4 (by the way, what variant really is in there on Apple Silicon?): https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/commit/bfe2acdeff2e5b8bb606997918044c99607f9e79. This is a bring-up commit with some more following, see https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/commits/master

Heh, corellium did it by making a fake PCIe controller:

https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/commit/e501cce95dfcc65...

For anyone else interested: https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/blob/master/drivers/pc...

https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/commit/b8ecd5924678f1c...

Not sure why this would have an impact on VM idling…

Thanks I see it now; https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1/blob/master/arch/arm64/boot/dts/apple/apple-m1-j274.dts

Great progress already thanks to the PongoOS project and the early support for M1 linux project. [0][1]

Getting GPU acceleration is now the real challenge.

[0] https://github.com/corellium/preloader-m1

[1] https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1

You're missing on a lot of things Rust (or any language with non-toy types) can provide. Lock ordering, better accessible complex structures, enforcement of enumerated options, rich description of APIs, and many others. Atomic values are usable transparently https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/blob/97c628055904a7f2ef1... and multithreaded reference counting is easily enforced https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/blob/bd0a1a7d465fcb60685... also issues like type confusion https://www.vicarius.io/vsociety/posts/a-type-confusion-bug-... are less likely if you can easily use tagged unions checked by the compiler.

From the gpu issue tracker[0]:

> For a bit of context -- Google Maps loads images to the GPU at.. inopportune times. While games would typically load their images during a load screen (so slow image loading just means longer loading screens), Google Maps loads when scrolling around I think (so slow image loading means the whole map stutters). I don't think there's a fundamental driver bug we can fix here, but we can make image loading a lot faster which makes the symptoms go away.

[0]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/issues/72#issuecomment-1...

> Is this mostly just a thing to get more young people interested in kernel development...allowing them to start out in less important areas and in a language they are passionate about?

Not likely. At the moment you need to do extra work to get Rust working well. It's not exactly beginner friendly and doing work in the kernel, you'll need to dig into C anyway.

> Or is this a serious proposal about the future of operating systems and other low level infrastructure code?

Serious code already exists, so... Yes?

> Do you just program everything in unsafe mode? What about runtimes?

Why would you? You need that only when interfacing with something that can't hold the Rust compiler assumptions. See for example https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/blob/gpu/rebase-6.4/driv...

The few places that need direct access / unsafe are almost all single-line areas with an explanation.

I think the idea with the M-series laptops in particular is that you can drive the speakers at volumes that actually damage them very quickly ( see https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/issues/53 ). The idea AIUI is that you can use a DSP along with a physical model of the voice coil to get better sound than you would if the speakers were volume-limited.

I am using Asahi Linux and the GPU driver works great, it even supports OpenGL 3.1 (https://asahilinux.org/2023/06/opengl-3-1-on-asahi-linux/). Definitely not alpha, I would say it's close to a "release candidate". Many bugs got resolved, nothing much left (besides newer OpenGL and Vulkan of course, but current state is very stable): https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/issues/72

There aren't really any non-trivial mainline modules, since the Rust support is so new. There's the non-mainline Asahi M1 GPU driver though! It will eventually be mainlined, but IIRC some more Rust support code needs to be mainlined first.

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/tree/asahi/drivers/gpu/d...

You can follow the progress here: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/issues/91