At the end of May, Linus Torvalds bought a new computer. The father of Linux moved to AMD, after 15 years using Intel. Still, it is an intermediate step, since its intention is to go to ARM. This is partly why he is happy about one of the last presentations of the apple company: the next version of its operating system, macOS Big Sur, and, more importantly, the Apple silicon.
"Apple Silicon" is the name given by the company run by Tim Cook to the processors you'll use in the Macs of the future. In addition to being manufactured by themselves, which gives them greater control, they will use ARM architecture, and that's good news according to Torvalds. Moving Apple to ARM will help the ARM ecosystem from a software development point of view. And it is that Torvalds was disappointed with the ARM laptops that he had tested in the past, something that he hopes will change in the coming years and believes that Apple will collaborate with its Apple Silicon.
Apple Silicon will boost ARM
Everything according to Torvalds, until now, the development of ARM has been done in the cloud and gives as examples the ecosystem in the Amazon cloud. But development in the cloud is not the best option, at least for kernel developers, saying that «you don't want to just develop for ARM, you want to actually use ARM in your everyday desktop work«.
On the other hand, Torvalds says he was more interested in an eventual desktop Apple ARM computer than a laptop because he thinks of laptops as something you use on the go. Until now, the main reason to buy an ARM was the low consumption, not its performance, which makes the laptop space the most natural. But ARM has the potential to grow beyond low consumption and somewhat more limited power, something that he hopes will be easier thanks to the apple company and its not yet released Apple Silicon.
I believe that more than promoting ARM, it will further drive the interest in developing RISC-V as a free and community alternative to open hardware that will allow the manufacture and distribution of more efficient, safe and powerful processors according to the specifications and requirements, which may be modified by each manufacturer on the basis of design to compete maximizing benefits and reducing costs.
Although I doubt that Torvalds will last long his charm for the new Apple equipment, because surely they will come with components or modifications in the hardware whose drivers Linux does not have. I can already imagine him upset, vociferous and ranting about any modification of Apple that hinders any installation of Linux on those computers.
Seeing an image with Linus dressed as Jobs is the worst bad taste there is xDDDD
Jokes aside, there is an official link in which Torvalds says that, because I really believe that what these brands do to Linus brings it very much to the hoof and especially when it is a brand that will "CAPARATE" officially being able to install Linux on their computers.
I neither understand this thread nor understand the approach of the writer.
Greetings.