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Linus: '2016 Will Be the Year of the ARM Laptop' (softpedia.com)
jones_supa writes: Linus Torvalds took the stage at LinuxCon Europe in Dublin, Ireland, and talked about a number of things, including security and the future for Linux on ARM hardware. There is nothing that will blow your mind, but there are a couple of interesting statements nonetheless. Chromebooks are slowly taking over the world, and a large number of those Chromebooks are powered by ARM processors. "I'm happy to see that ARM is making progress. One of these days, I will actually have a machine with ARM. They said it would be this year, but maybe it'll be next year. 2016 will be the year of the ARM laptop," said Linus excitedly. He also explained that one of the problems now is actually finding people to maintain Linux. It's not a glorious job, and it usually entails answering emails seven days a week. Finding someone with the proper set of skills and the time to do this job is difficult.
Finally! The year of Linux on the laptop!
I had a Chromebook with an Exynos 5 and wasn't that great, in addition to the hoops I had to jump through to install Ubuntu on it.
I traded it in for a Celeron Cromebook, which is faster. Much better experience, plus the i915 graphics driver is much more mature and has video acceleration support.
This Sig does not Exist.
Not godda happen.
It's like that desktop thing all over again!
Of course the stream of abuse probably doesn't help...
Chromebooks will stay with Atom. They're cheap, efficient enough for laptops, and perform well. Plus manufacturers can use the same base hardware for Chromebooks and cheap Windows laptops if they stick with Atom. The closest thing to "Year of ARM Laptop" will be the Surface clones running android Android.
>Would I say, "the ARM laptop is a clear and present danger to your free time?" Hell, no, I wouldn't! What do you mean I just said it?
-Linus Torvalds, 2016
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
Hmm... could the fact that Linux maintainers keep quitting because they get tired of dealing with assholes have something to do with the problem that it's hard to find people to maintain Linux?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
BWAHAHAHHAH bwahahha bwhahahah BWAHHAH
That way lots of stuff could be farmed out to other people without the actual kernel people even needing to know about it.
I see no reason not to trust this one.
My Surface RT runs bad enough with Windows RT on it. No way in hell I'd install linux!
Almost all cellphones have an ARM-based CPU. Only a handful have an x86 CPU.
Perhaps eliminating profanity and insults on mailing lists and in submission reviews would be a good place to start?
Answer emails seven days a week filled with personal insults and profanity vs. a coding gig that with great pay, professional environment and a sane work week.
It's entirely possible to have code review with no profanity and insults, and have good code come out of it. Keep the review about the code and how it can be improved, and help each other out, since tomorrow it's going to be their code on review and they will know they will mess things up, too.
The issues about working with assholes aside, I suspect the life of a maintainer is difficult, not because it is too stressful, but because there isn't a good way to rotate the burden across people and time. Maintainers take on this enormous burden (and love it..for a while), and then they get burnt out. But then what? Is there an exit strategy? Do they train their successor? Is there a retirement home for maintainers? Can they come out of retirement and contribute? (perhaps at a lower level).
Building the infrastructure that allows people to move through the lifecycle of a maintainer so they always know there are people to follow them and a well established role for them to walk into.
Sort of like life. You are born, as an adolescent you play a bit, then you become an adult, get a family, career, young kids, and find yourself stressed out. Eventually they go to college and you downsize, perhaps getting a less stressful job to be near the grand kids. Then you retire, still visiting on weekends. And then you die.
Build an environment where this kind of support system exists and is encouraged (and perhaps be a little bit less of a jerk -- You can be forthright and honest without eviscerating people), and I suspect the system of maintainers will be better and more robust than any individual might be.
Mike
Maybe if they get that code-morphing thing working, I can get a laptop that will run x86, ARM, you name it!!
I can't see people going for ARM in a laptop unless the laptop is significantly cheaper. Giving up the ability to run x86 software is a big problem for something as expensive as a laptop. Plus, most people expect a lot more from a laptop than they do from a tablet. Does ARM support USB 3 at full speed? Can you hook up an SSD and have it run at full speed? Can you get gigabit ethernet running at full speed. Can the RAM be upgraded using standard DDR 3 or 4 memory sticks?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Linus: Chromebooks are taking over with their Transmeta CPU's running interpreted ARM instructions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At his interviewer who is from Intel.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
locked boot loaders like the MS Windows RT tablets
I suspect Microsoft will pull this one out of thir ass to force manufacturers to make the 'Windows only' vs 'Windows never' choice. And FUD will be invoked to let them know what happens to people who turn their back on the Beast from Redmond.
At some point, the ARM owners will sit down and calculate the lost opportunity cost Microsoft has caused them. And we'll have another round of Microsoft vs DoJ faceoff. The DoJ will take a fall in return for some more backdoors in Windows products.
Have gnu, will travel.
I like Linux and I'm good at systems programming.
I am willing to be a Linux maintainer, but I subscribe to The Joker's philosophy.
If you're good at something, never do it for free!
(Questions asked in order of importance.)
How much does it pay?
And do where I apply?
I installed Linux on my (really my wifes) Chromebook, dual boot. It turns out we never ever boot it to Linux. ChromeOS (aka the browser) does everything we want to do with it. We mostly view regular web sites, YouTube, and use Google Docs.
It won't run Visual Studio, but it turns out you don't WANT to run Visual Studio on a 10 inch screen. Everything we would want to do on a little Chromebook works fine without needing any x86-specific software.
With our Chromebook, we've found that there are certain tasks that you want to do on a little 10 inch notebook, and certain tasks you don't. On a small laptop, a processor good enough for YouTube and Netflix is good enough. You don't want to run Visual Studio on a 10 inch device, so there's no need for a Core i7.
Obviously, it doesn't matter to you that a supercomputer is faster than your desktop, if your desktop is fast enough. Similarly , if an ARM is fast enough for the things you do on a small laptop, it doesn't matter whether Intel offers a more capable processor or not - if the ARM suits your needs, that's enough.
I concur from experience - arm devices like the various Odroids are already here and great fun to use.
It'll be the year of the same grand claims that do not produce any real results.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Looking at the latest in the ARM landscape, we have Apple A9, Qualcomm Kryo, ARM A57, ARM A72, and AMD A12. We can probably expect a small jump in Apple's performance next year along with a second revision of Kryo, but nothing competitive with Intel. A57 is being dropped for the fixed A72 since Apple screwed over ARM (tl;dr Apple shipped a new architecture in 2 years while ARM took almost 4 years for an inferior product -- everyone in the industry knows that design to shipping a new architecture is 4-5 years indicating either ARM screwed over all their non-apple partners (and themselves) by giving Apple a head start or Apple forced ARM to adopt a new ISA when they'd already had a couple years to work on int). Of all these architectures, I think only A72, AMD's A57 implementation, and AMD's A12 are worth focusing on.
A72 is supposedly close to the performance of Intel's core M processors, but I'm willing to bet that the default A72 can't actually compete with Skylake's wide dispatch, SMT, and vector units. The biggest question in this area isn't actually the CPU so much as all the "uncore" parts surrounding it. Even if it could have these things in theory, the companies controlling most of the patents in this area aren't using the A72 (AMD, Intel, IBM, Oracle, etc).
AMD's first generation of ARM processor (launching next year) is an A57 server part, but is probably going to be faster than most A72s in practice because it can be manufactured on a high-performance (rather than bulk) fab process and will have faster buses, faster memory, much larger caches, and even some parts of the core (like the branch predictor) may well be replaced with better systems while AMD's reworking the entire architecture for the new fab. This chip will probably be competitive in the low-power server market, but most likely won't be aimed at anything mobile.
Not much is known about AMD's A12, but for the first time, an ARM company seems to be moving into the higher-performance mobile segment. AMD failed with bulldozer (and has taken the heat for beating that dead horse for the past few years), but they at least had the sense to hire Jim Keller to help them make a couple new, next-gen architectures. While AMD has money troubles, it's in the intellectual property sweet spot to be able to put together a competitive chip. This is the chip I think Linus is wanting, but it's been pushed to 2017.
The complete unknown is Intel. They bought DEC and StrongARM was along for the ride, but they sold it in '97. They then made XScale only to sell it to Marvell in '06. I find it hard to believe that Intel's not experimenting with ARM design again. Even if they could make x86 compete in the low-end (atom has been a failure in that regard), convincing companies to switch will probably prove impossible as the current situation with lots of competing CPU providers works to their fiscal advantage. Apple won't be giving up the freedom to make their own chips (nor will Samsung). That said, I don't think we'll be seeing an Intel ARM chip before 2018-19.
tl;dr -- the current chips can't compete with Intel. The ones that can don't launch until 2017 or later.
I forgot to mention Nvidia's Denver core. They dropped it in favor of A57 and I don't think we'll be seeing it again for a while. The original reason for making it seemed to be for x86 emulation (literally the next generation of transmeta), but their lawsuit settlement with Intel sunk that ship leaving them to repurpose the architecture for ARM. I like the transmeta idea, but like bulldozer it seems a little less good in practice at present. I think we'll see something similar return in a few years, but for now I think fixed-function reigns supreme.
Fuck arm, fuck atom, cause i actually want to accomplish SOMETHING with my pc, not just watch it stutter like fuck to accomplish the most menial task. Oh and most importantly fuck locked bootloaders and UEFI too, how fucking stupid can you be to allow this crap on any consumer pc. It's a game of chess between us and a free computing future and the corporate fascist state about to teabag us with its sweaty balls.
'Nuff said!
2011 was the year of the ARM Linux laptop.
You missed it by that much!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Garter says there'll be 7.2 million chrome books sold in 2015. That's well below Windows Phone sales numbers and if anyone claimed win phone was taking over the world they'd be locked away. Worse, 70% of those sales are in the education market where they're just used as locked down web browsers which is fine but no kid uses it in the classroom and thinks "wow, I have to ask for one of these for Xmas".
I agree that people REALLY don't get how great Chromebooks are, though I boot mine to Linux all the time. It's ARM, and yet it works just fine as a communications laptop.
It's the netbook argument all over again -- most people's use case for laptops is web and email, and it doesn't really matter what processor or OS the laptop is running as long as it works with most websites and email sends and receives ok. There are assumptions there -- that video and other resources used by websites work correctly -- and there's room for some specialized apps like Netflix, but that's pretty much it.
So Linux on ARM as a laptop? Sure. And it'll almost certainly be more reliable, run faster on equivalent hardware, and meet most people's needs who own laptops. There's no technical reason this couldn't happen.
The reason it won't happen is that there's this ninety billion dollar company and this other one hundred eighty billion dollar company that both have a vested interest in this not happening. And they're really good (at least so far) at making sure it doesn't happen.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
He also explained that one of the problems now is actually finding people to maintain Linux.
Linus would have a much easier job finding great kernel maintainers if he was civil, objective, patient and kind on the mailing lists, rather than critical, cynical, foul-mouthed, insulting and belligerent.
"He also explained that one of the problems now is actually finding people to maintain Linux"
Gee, if only you weren't such an asshole, Linus, that problem would've been a non-issue TEN YEARS AGO.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
How so? I thought to run anything but stock Chrome OS, you had to put it into developer mode. And every time someone turns the machine on in developer mode, it encourages the user to accidentally wipe the whole hard drive by pressing space to reinstall stock Chrome OS.
The iPad Pro hits stores in November.
And Microsoft has an ARM version of the NT Kernel. The problem is never the OS, its the fact that the software for x86 can't run on ARM
And apparently nobody has ever ported a compiler to the ARM platform?
It appears that it's harder than it looks. Even Microsoft never got around to porting Visual Studio to Windows RT, an operating system based on NT for ARM architecture. And the legacy APIs on which free compilers such as MinGW (GCC for Windows) rely are restricted on Windows RT. There isn't even a concept of "current working directory", for cricket's sake.
The other frontier is whether the verbose (dare I say) majority devises an alternative to SystemD, or will Cyberdyne make that illegal?
THere is no reason the FOSS base can't draft and setup an alternative that seeks the same lofty goals like fast reboots and consolidated control/access etc...
what other things can we optimize?
They also should used the 4MB L3 g4's
Doesn't matter if the bootloader is locked. All the drivers are binary blobs which have no chance of being updated to future releases. ARM laptops would be a disaster for Linux.
I've been using SystemD alternatives for 35 years; sorry you've only seen fucked up Unix-like things
I remember waiting for this machine so bad... that was announced to be the PC killer a quarter of a century ago
I thought ARM was dead.
Now the "laptop ARM"...
What can go wrong?
Devs only think synchronuous hence Intel (making a lot of energy waste helping the process).
ARM is not a bad CPU, but I guess people will be suprised because they will feel "slow, laggy" or weirdly behaving at high loads... or not smoothly transitioning.
I guess not as much effort has been put than the 1000th man * years for C compiler optimizations, and programming habits from CISC may not yield good results. I am pessimistic.
Simply, no.
Those 2 companies aren't even the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that ARM and its partners are failing to deliver.
64bit ARM was supposed to allow ARM to escape from the hell that every piece of hardware needs a custom boot system because none of the hardware is standardized.
64bit ARM motherboards allowing more than a tiny amount of RAM were supposed to usher in a credible threat to Intel.
Yet here we are in October, years after all this was promised, and nothing has been announced (which means at this point nothing being released this calendar year). It's all "coming soon".
Just like IBM and their "partners" who were going to bring Power8 to the mainstream it is all vapourware and the delays have allowed Intel to threaten ARM in the power usage market before ARM even arrives.
I think it could be possible for Chromebooks to be successful without having a significant home market share. If business with all their software online start finding them acceptable the fact they don't run all possible software locally could be seen as advantage (corporates are in a position to make things like Chrome's remote desktoping work). I could see Chromebooks working well for telesales or even places like libraries which are typical homes for existing thin clients...
He also explained that one of the problems now is actually finding people to maintain Linux. It's not a glorious job, and it usually entails answering emails seven days a week. Finding someone with the proper set of skills and the time to do this job is difficult.
Not to mention someone who will take the massive shitloads of abrasive commentary from him. I don't mind it, but evidently others do.
I'm looking for an ARM laptop:
Does this exist?
All the windows managers for Linux have a few intolerable quirks or deficiencies that kill productivity.
Linux is good for servers, web browsing and maybe the limited selection of games available.
It is maddening that none of the window managers is user-friendly and compounded by small things that are wrong/annoying that a simple setting might fix easily.
You misread that. It's the year of ARM on laptop!
Not totally misread: while any x64 laptop would need Windows in order to be successful, that same software won't run under ARM. So while most Linux software would be available on the ARM, the same won't be true about Windows software, so stating that it would be the year of the ARM laptop is as good as saying that it would be the year of the Linux laptop. Particularly given that the most popular Linux laptop is the Chromebook, whereas Apple probably won't migrate their Macbook Airs to the A9.
However, I disagree w/ Linux. Unlike all other CPUs, that were generally pretty well reined in in terms of instruction set compatibility - there was never much divergence from the base instruction sets of x86/x64, Power, SPARC, PA-RISC, Alpha, Clipper, - the same is not true about ARM. What Qualcomm makes is very different from Freescale, which varies wildly from Allwinner, which is way different from any other vendor, such as AMD or Atmel. So while Linux may well run all of them, maintaining a Linux base for all would require a sub team within the main Linux team willing to do it. Unless ARM Holdings are willing to put one together.
thrash the top end arm based ones.
...of Linus lamenting that it's hard to find kernel maintainers? Wonder why that might be...
they WILL expect it to do every.single.thing.
Yup. Indeed, they will want to do whatever they are used to do on an average laptop...
(That, I agree with you).
Nope its a laptop and therefor should do what laptops should do which according to Joe and Jane is RUN WINDOWS PROGRAMS, when it don't?
And THAT is exactly where your argument completely falls appart.
We're in 2015. Today's Joe and Jane don't give a fuck about installing windows programs. They barely know how to install stuff.
(They mainly know how to click on "ok". They can click and the "Ok/Next" through someting they got in their mail. But, the concept of going to a website, downloading a SETUP.EXE and running it is a bit complicated. Yup, indeed: They're better at catching viruses than installing useful stuff).
They don't even have a clear idea of what a software or an app is.
(They're the kind that will ask you to come by and "install facebook on their machine").
Most of them don't even know how to properly surf, they'll just type URLs into the Google search field at their browser's start page.
4.-GPUs...Will these GPUs run all those Winhdows programs
GPUs that run programs: (And I guess your not speaking about the scientific software simulations that run kernels on OpenCL)
Yes, you're getting a bit the idea of what could go through the head of a random clueless user.
Also, will this "SSD" thingy on the chromebook's advertisement, will it allow them to get more likes for their sex pix on Facebook ?
Will these GPUs run all those Winhdows programs that Joe and Jane WILL expect it to run, because that IS what runs on the laptops at Walmart?
And again you completely under-estimate the cluelessness of today's Jane and Joe.
Then don't give a shit about a "Windows program" is. They have no idea.
Yes, Hairyfeet, your *grandma* will be pissed not to be able to install "Microsoft Encarta 98" of which she has carefully kept (= that she brushes regularily to remove all of the cat's hair that are attracted by static. Just hope she hasn't scratched it beyond recognition) the original installation CD.
(And she'll be pissed, not only because ARM ChromeBooks will be totally unable to run it, but also because nearly every cheap laptop/netbook/etc. built recently doesn't even feature an optical drive where to put this carefully kept original CD)
But that's because she's "Miss CottonFeet" : your grand-ma, from an older generation of user who still needed to think about "software" and installing them.
Today's Joe and Jane not only have no clear idea how to *install* Microsoft Encarta 98, they don't even know what Encarta is to begin with.
If they need to know anything, they'll look it up on Wikipedia.
Or they'll ask google.
As in directly typing "What iz Mircosfot Encarata ?" in their browser's address bar, and hopefully a lot magic is going behind the scene (browser defaulting to main search engine when seeing unkown URL formats, and google auto-correct the lolcat/sms-speak, recognise and parse the request and isolate actual search keywords from useless gramatical clutter, etc.) and return correct answers.
5.-Windows 10? Yeah that is why you are extra fucked as again Joe and Jane have not a single fuck to give about rumors of spying, data collection, all that shit means nothing, for fucks sake they blab their sex lives on FB! What they DO care about very much is Windows 10 LOOKS like Windows 7, and all their programs run on it just fine.
Yes, Hairyfeet, you got it. Showing their sex lives on FB is all what modern users care. Exactly.
The "programs" they want to run are Facebook. And Google. (they are "programs" right ? They use them on their laptop, so they must be "programs". Otherwise it's called an "App" if its on their "samsung iphone"). And eventually GMail (so th
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Joe Sixpack doesn't want to run Windows programs. He wants Gmail and Facebook.
...and pornhub.
Don't forget pornhub.
Remember: the internet is for funny kittens and boobs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So more busted old shit is constantly created and ported to the current MS platform to become the new 'busted old shit' that people need to be able to run on new machines. {...} Until this cycle can be broken, there is zero incentive for microsoft to fully commit to any new architecture, as their major selling point will go away.
If you look at computing history, cycle don't get broken, cycles get replaced by obsolescence.
Microsoft will simply wane in the wake of online service platforms.
(People slowly don't use as much computers to run Windows-compatible software, they use computer to surf online and connect to service)
Back in the early days, big vendors like IBMs held key position in the market. New comer couldn't compete with them.
The *platform* was specific (big iron) machines.
Then came the PC compatible, and the shift of paradigm. People didn't care anymore who did build what computer, as long it allowed them to run the software they needed. Slowly, new name emerged, yesterday's big iron maker where replaced by today's software maker. IBM wasn't followed by a new IBM-wannabe. IBM was followed by Microsoft.
Same today. Microsoft won't be replaced by another software maker. Microsoft instead is slowly getting obsoleted. ...
Facebook, GMail, Youtube, Twitter, Netflix, Pornhub,
It doesn't matter what the software is. As long as it runs a browser, and enables the user to connect to the services that they uses.
Microsoft software provide of today, is getting slowly replaced by on-line service of tomorrow.
The currently emerging big names aren't holding strong position by the software that runs on people (software doesn't matter anymore. Whether it's made by Google, Mozilla, Opera, Apple or Microsoft) they hold they key position by the hoards of data they have/the networking effect/etc. that keep people coming back to their online services even after they repeatedly screw them over.
So over time less and less old cruft will be kept around. Microsoft will have a lower role to play. People will progressively gather around platforms like Facebook and co.
And then after a decade, people will be complaining that giants like Facebook and Google have become difficult to get away from. (even if you access them using software that we haven't even though about today).
Because they hoard data they keep around and which is useful, because of networking effects, etc.
And that nobody has incentive to move to a newer platform because they are held back on the older platform.
And then slowly, instead of a new online service platform emerging (instead of a Web 3.0), some other new paradigm will slowly emerge that has nothing to do with current concept and will make the whole Web 2.0 obsolete.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]