Do you see native Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) coming to M1 Macs?

[Robospungo]

My biggest concern with purchasing a M1 Mac is the relatively short support timeframe (6-8 years). My current PC is 11 years old and runs fine on Windows 10.

Once Apple drops support for the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, for example, I’d like to have the option of booting Windows or Linux to continue to get use out of the machine.

I personally see Windows on ARM coming to M1 Macs natively one day (within 3 years?). Not sure about Linux.

What do you think? Have no interest in running an OS through parallels, etc.

 

[leman]

Windows will never run natively on Apple Silicon IMO due to lack of drivers and zero incentive for either Apple or Microsoft to support said drivers.

Linux native support is being actively developed and is progressing at an astonishing rate. There are kernel patches for M1 support which show just how much custom hardware Apple is using.

 

[Slartibart]

Both are there already. You are probably referring to booting directly in either of both or are you referring to running a particular software?

 

[Robospungo]

Both are there already. You are probably referring to booting directly in either of both or are you referring to running a particular software?

I'm referring to support like we see with Windows booting on Intel Macs through boot camp. I think that's probably inevitable, but I wonder how long it will take for Linux to install easily enough that anyone can do it.

 

[Robospungo]

Windows will never run natively on Apple Silicon IMO due to lack of drivers and zero incentive for either Apple or Microsoft to support said drivers.

Linux native support is being actively developed and is progressing at an astonishing rate. There are kernel patches for M1 support which show just how much custom hardware Apple is using.

Id' be shocked if Windows isn't officially supported and running via boot camp within 3 years. Apple already expressed its willingness.

 

[Slartibart]

I'm referring to support like we see with Windows booting on Intel Macs through boot camp. I think that's probably inevitable, but I wonder how long it will take for Linux to install easily enough that anyone can do it.

You can as of iPadOS 14.x run Alpine Linux on a e.g. 2020 iPP as an app*. I do. That’s as easy as it gets in my book, anyway. 🥸

*yep, no jail break.

 

[jdb8167]

Id' be shocked if Windows isn't officially supported and running via boot camp within 3 years. Apple already expressed its willingness.

Apple’s willingness seemed to be limited to running Windows on Arm in a virtual machine, not dual booting. As @leman said, there is the issue of drivers. It is unlikely that Apple would write them like they do for Intel and it is unlikely that Apple supplies enough technical information for Microsoft to write them without Apple’s help.

 

[ADGrant]

My biggest concern with purchasing a M1 Mac is the relatively short support timeframe (6-8 years). My current PC is 11 years old and runs fine on Windows 10.

Once Apple drops support for the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, for example, I’d like to have the option of booting Windows or Linux to continue to get use out of the machine.

I personally see Windows on ARM coming to M1 Macs natively one day (within 3 years?). Not sure about Linux.

What do you think? Have no interest in running an OS through parallels, etc.

Linux already runs on ARM and can already be virtualized on M1 Macs. Booting directly to Linux might take a while but people are working on it.

I don't know if anyone is working on booting ARM Windows on an AppleSilicon Mac. Microsoft does not sell retail versions of ARM Windows currently, just Intel Windows. This may change but Microsoft has a habit of abandoning its ARM experiments.

 

[Apple_Robert]

You can as of iPadOS 14.x run Alpine Linux on a e.g. 2020 iPP as an app*. I do. That’s as easy as it gets in my book, anyway. 🥸

*yep, no jail break.

How does that happen?

 

[jdb8167]

How does that happen?

Most likely UTM using x86-64 emulation.

 

[11235813]

Your device doesn't become obsolete because Apple doesn't list it as a supported device for the new OS. You can install Big Sur on unsupported Macs with a simple procedure, for example. In a few years, which device you're using will be completely irrelevant anyway, since everything will be running on a browser.

 

[wyrdness]

Id' be shocked if Windows isn't officially supported and running via boot camp within 3 years. Apple already expressed its willingness.

That won't happen. It would cost a lot of money to make this happen and Microsoft or Apple would have to pay for it. Apple definitely won't, as its not in their interest to have Windows running natively on Mac. Apple is only supporting virtualisation. That leaves Microsoft. Apple have indicated that they'd be willing to provide the technical data required to write the drivers, but I expect that they'd want $$$ for access to it. Then Microsoft would have to employ a team of software developers just to write and maintain the drivers for Apple hardware. I just can't see Microsoft being willing to do that, especially when Windows runs happily on Apple Silicon with virtualisation. If they're going to spend money on Windows for Arm, they'd be better off spending it on general improvements, not Apple-specific ones.

So if you think that this is going to happen, then who do you think is going to pay for it, and what benefits will they get from it?

 

[Robospungo]

That won't happen. It would cost a lot of money to make this happen and Microsoft or Apple would have to pay for it. Apple definitely won't, as its not in their interest to have Windows running natively on Mac. Apple is only supporting virtualisation. That leaves Microsoft. Apple have indicated that they'd be willing to provide the technical data required to write the drivers, but I expect that they'd want $$$ for access to it. Then Microsoft would have to employ a team of software developers just to write and maintain the drivers for Apple hardware. I just can't see Microsoft being willing to do that, especially when Windows runs happily on Apple Silicon with virtualisation. If they're going to spend money on Windows for Arm, they'd be better off spending it on general improvements, not Apple-specific ones.

So if you think that this is going to happen, then who do you think is going to pay for it, and what benefits will they get from it?

Why are you acting like Windows and Office haven't run natively on the Mac for over a decade?

And you're asking me how Microsoft benefits by having it's software run on more hardware? Is that an actual question? If Apple didn't see a benefit of giving its users the option of running Windows natively on occasion, then why did they create and maintain boot camp since 2007? Why do they run Office natively on the Mac?

I used to post here years ago and predicted around the time of the iphone 4s that the "retina display" would eventually come to every Apple product, including the iMac. Your attitude reminds me of the tsunami of replies I got, all saying it would NEVER happen and it would be too expensive and a GPU could never be powerful enough to push that many pixels (yes, people literally said this).

The very next year, the retina display had been brought to the MacBook. Then two year later, it was brought to the iMac. It was something so blindingly obvious to me, but many people had their brains sealed shut and seemingly couldn't fathom anything that didn't currently exist, even when it was right on the cusp of happening.

 

[thenewperson]

I used to post here years ago and predicted around the time of the iphone 4s that the "retina display" would eventually come to every Apple product, including the iMac. Your attitude reminds me of the tsunami of replies I got, all saying it would NEVER happen and it would be too expensive and a GPU could never be powerful enough to push that many pixels (yes, people literally said this).

The very next year, the retina display had been brought to the MacBook. Then two year later, it was brought to the iMac. It was something so blindingly obvious to me, but many people had their brains sealed shut and seemingly couldn't fathom anything that didn't currently exist, even when it was right on the cusp of happening.

Those are very different situations so I'm not sure what the point is bringing it up other than back-patting. Apple has to put in a lot more effort in making drivers available for Windows to work on ASi Macs compared to Intel (which, as far as I'm aware, wasn't even completely their work). They aren't sharing the internals of their hardware (so far) so MS really can't do anything to create drivers for it. Apple isn't in 2006 anymore and they probably don't think it'll help much to put effort into making Windows run on ASi Macs. They may do it, but it's looking very unlikely

 

[wyrdness]

Why are you acting like Windows and Office haven't run natively on the Mac for over a decade?

There are many logical fallacies that people fall into when making bad arguments. 'False equivalence' is one of them.
My point is that Microsoft won't sink a vast amount of time, effort and money into making Windows run natively on M1 when that is of very little benefit to them, and Arm Windows already runs very nicely in Parallels. That's a very different scenario to porting applications, such as office, to Mac.

 

[leman]

Why are you acting like Windows and Office haven't run natively on the Mac for over a decade?

And you're asking me how Microsoft benefits by having it's software run on more hardware? Is that an actual question? If Apple didn't see a benefit of giving its users the option of running Windows natively on occasion, then why did they create and maintain boot camp since 2007? Why do they run Office natively on the Mac?

Windows software already runs on M1 Macs - I have Parallels running right now and it’s working great.

The questions you have to answer is a) what benefit would MS have from booting Windows on ARM Mac natively b) are they willing to introduce significant patches to their kernel in order to support custom Apple hardware as well as maintain the complex driver stack and c) how are they going to convince Apple to give them internal documentation that is required to write all these patches and drivers?

It’s a different thing for Linux, since that is a community of idealists and hackers who are not bound by corporate restrictions and enjoy poking around in hardware. Also, they have much more flexibility due to the tools being open source. Their driver stack is simpler (they don’t need to support DX12 for example), and they don’t really care that much about user experience, because they are targeting the Linux nerd and not an average consumer.