Comment on Anyone self hosting on Mac mini M1/M2?
markstos@lemmy.world 3 months agoThere are plenty of Linux containers available for ARM in part because a lot of developers want to run Linux containers within macOS on Apple Silicon.
That has had the effect improving the experience of running Linux directly on ARM servers.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 months ago
That may be, but buying a Mac Mini is like buying a device made from the ground up for Windows, where any other operating system has to reverse engineer 100% of the things to work well, or you have to emulate another OS on it (which comes with its own pitfalls), and it’s 200+€ more expensive than its nearest equivalent.
Every single company I’ve worked at which introduced Apple Silicon to its developers has had headaches with compatibility. The worst I’ve seen was it taking a developer a month to get up and running because the specific component we used didn’t have a build for the specific ARM architecture. Multipass, UTM, podman, docker desktop, all didn’t work until colima and forcing the VM to emulate x86 + forcing docker in the VM to use the x86 image worked. There was a persistent problem with disk IO since it used 9p or whatever. Installing dependencies from scratch meant waiting 30 minutes on the M2.
Why pay a premium for less compatibility and worse specs? Just get yourself something that works, which is cheaper, maybe even supports a company that invests in Linux and its ecosystem, and be able to ask an existing developer community instead of asking the subsection of linux users that run your specific app on however you’re running linux on Appe hardware.
Anti Commercial-AI license
markstos@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I didn’t pay a premium, I got a great deal.
The reverse engineering work was already complete, and all the containers I needed for ARM were available.
These have great performance per watt.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 months ago
That’s great if it’s your experience.
I’m just saying me and others have consistently had different experiences, and OP can get a better experience at half the price, with the same (or better) energy consumption, all while supporting the Linux ecosystem directly.
Anti Commercial-AI license
markstos@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’ve donated to marcan to work on Asahi Linux, which gets upstreamed. That’s direct.
What has better performance per watt than M1 at a better price?
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 3 months ago
That may be, but buying a Mac Mini is like buying a device made from the ground up for Windows, where any other operating system has to reverse engineer 100% of the things to work well, or you have to emulate another OS on it (which comes with its own pitfalls), and it’s 200+€ more expensive than its nearest equivalent.
Every single company I’ve worked at which introduced Apple Silicon to its developers has had headaches with compatibility. The worst I’ve seen was it taking a developer a month to get up and running because the specific component we used didn’t have a build for the specific ARM architecture. Multipass, UTM, podman, docker desktop, all didn’t work until colima and forcing the VM to emulate x86 + forcing docker in the VM to use the x86 image worked. There was a persistent problem with disk IO since it used 9p or whatever. Installing dependencies from scratch meant waiting 30 minutes on the M2.
Why pay a premium for less compatibility and worse specs? Just get yourself something that works, which is cheaper, maybe even supports a company that invests in Linux and its ecosystem, and be able to ask an existing developer community instead of asking the subsection of linux users that run your specific app on however you’re running linux on Appe hardware.