I'm not sure why the author didn't attempt to dive deeper into the error message he saw. amd_vcn_dec sounds like it's an issue with the GPU's video decoding logic. If there's a timeout when trying to process a decode request, it may be that power management for the GPU is buggy somehow. Given that this is a server build and idle power consumption is likely not a big deal, I'd suggest pinning the GPU power state to see if it resolves the issue (see amdgpu.ppfeaturemask and amdgpu.runpm kernel parameters).
I don't understand the kernel problem. Why did he feel he had to rebuild the kernel weekly? When the amdgpu stopped working why couldn't he just go back to the last working kernel?
I presumed that as a kernel developer, he would run the kernel he runs, which would require rebuilding periodically. Daily doesn't make sense, monthly is too infrequent given the rate of change in the kernel.
My speculation though. When I was building an app I was using, I used to run a recent stable build on my device instead of just the one released in the Play Store. Simplifies having to keep multiple devices.
He said he needed patches to make the GPUs work. Kernel package auto-updated does not have those patches and overwrites the custom kernel he built every time there was an update available.
> there was no org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia in Flatpak repositories for AArch64
All he had to do was build some packages from source, right? It's really worth learning how to do this, since it removes a lot of constraints.
And the kernel patch should land in the kernel pretty soon, I hope? He won't have to run a patched kernel forever. Should be possible to get that in a release in a year or so?
I'm not surprised at the outcome. These Ampere system single core/thread performance is pretty low and that is where you feel it. The OS/software simply cannot allocate the threads across enough cores effectively to make up for this difference.
This is why things like the Apple M Series feels so fast, because while they don't win the multi core performance especially when going up against a 80 core beast like this, they have single thread performance exactly were it is needed.
Maybe we will need 80 cores in future, that is cool but for daily home use it is still just way too much for what we need.
Fascinating! I've been running the laptop version-ish of this experiment with the 14M9610, and my major complaint is Device Tree sucks. It's been explained to me why all of ARM can't just enumerate devices like PCs do, but it still sucks. This means every ARM device starts off in custom kernel territory, which makes all sorts of hacks okay to begin with, since you need a custom kernel anyway.
ACPI does exist for Aarch64, but is only really used for Windows client devices, and server hardware - though I think the Ampere hardware in the article would use ACPI not DT.
If you want to run Linux on one of the modern Qualcomm Windows laptops, you still generally end up needing to use device tree.
I see the problem, but I don't see a clear analysis on the actual source of the problem. I assumed the issue was mainly single core performance, but he is also suggesting context switches could be the cause?
So could you fix that with a new scheduler? Or you just need another SoC with better single core performance? I could imagine that the latter already exists, just not in soc with >16 cores.
My naive view is that such high core count system comes with tradoff on core size and interconnect/memeory bus complexity.
And I mean.. my phone is a middle lower end device and for sure I can play youtube videos (maybe in a popup as well) and run the browser without noticing that much difference from my laptop.
I don't think youtube playback is a relevant comparison since it uses ~0 CPU. Pretty much all phones have hardware accelerated decoding. Lots of TVs and streaming devices use an ancient Android phone SoC yet they too can play YT and run a browser. The entire UI is often a local web app.
I wonder if a source-based distro like Gentoo would have made OP's life slightly easier. Portage for instance should allow you to maintain a set of patches to automatically apply when you update your kernel. Those flatpak problems also shouldn't exist there.
I just setup Gentoo on a Lenovo laptop last week. It was the least painful process for a Linux laptop of my entire career. Everything just works. Even sleep and the fingerprint sensor for sudo. LLM tuis replaced Google entirely.
I can't even say there was any pain whatsoever. The experience is now more akin to MacOS circa 10.6.x years.
Driver support for that particular Lenovo is 100%. You just recompile. The issue is more to do with the CPU not being as good as say an AMD AI Max or an M4.
I use a DGX Spark every day as my daily driver and it's great. I barely use the "AI" facilities of it, but as an Aarch64 desktop Linux, I have no complaints.
Wasn’t booting other operating systems supported from early on (two months after release of M1)? It was reverse engineering the graphics hardware that took time and effort.
True, but they had to implement their own bootloader chain and because of such overhead they need a lot of effort to port to each new apple SoC generation
Has anyone ever pretended that (non-Apple) ARM hardware running Linux makes for a remotely suitable desktop experience for the general public or are you shadow boxing here?
My speculation though. When I was building an app I was using, I used to run a recent stable build on my device instead of just the one released in the Play Store. Simplifies having to keep multiple devices.
All he had to do was build some packages from source, right? It's really worth learning how to do this, since it removes a lot of constraints.
And the kernel patch should land in the kernel pretty soon, I hope? He won't have to run a patched kernel forever. Should be possible to get that in a release in a year or so?
This is why things like the Apple M Series feels so fast, because while they don't win the multi core performance especially when going up against a 80 core beast like this, they have single thread performance exactly were it is needed.
Maybe we will need 80 cores in future, that is cool but for daily home use it is still just way too much for what we need.
If you want to run Linux on one of the modern Qualcomm Windows laptops, you still generally end up needing to use device tree.
The only problem is that distributions currently tend to package them together, but that shouldn't be obligatory.
Why? Device tree is great. You can patch it yourself if something doesn't work, add overlays, etc.
So could you fix that with a new scheduler? Or you just need another SoC with better single core performance? I could imagine that the latter already exists, just not in soc with >16 cores. My naive view is that such high core count system comes with tradoff on core size and interconnect/memeory bus complexity.
And I mean.. my phone is a middle lower end device and for sure I can play youtube videos (maybe in a popup as well) and run the browser without noticing that much difference from my laptop.
I believe Ubuntu also has semi official X1 elite support, no idea if they're working on the latest generation.
Even. Setting it up is a pain: https://github.com/Jeremiah-Hawley/Linux-on-Snapdragon
It can run Windows well though.
I can't even say there was any pain whatsoever. The experience is now more akin to MacOS circa 10.6.x years.
It is called Apple Silicon.