marcan
patreon
Stage 1 clear!
🕑 Added 2020-12-01 05:13:26 +0000 UTCI can't believe we hit the kick-off goal overnight. My most sincere thanks to everyone for your support - I'm really looking forward to making this a reality!
The initial goal is a bare minimum to be able to put enough time into this to make it worthwhile, but I can't call this a full-time job yet, so please continue to support the project. Every little bit counts! Support not only allows me to dedicate more and more of my time to this, but also to purchase hardware for testing and to speed up development, and perhaps eventually to sponsor other developers to work on particular areas if the project really takes off. Remember that you don't have to stick to fixed tiers, you can customize the support amount!
I am planning a community live stream soon to talk about the project before things kick off on development, so stay tuned for details on that. This will be open to all patrons (not just the higher tiers).
As I mentioned I will start work in January, and the first Patreon charge is scheduled for Jan 1st. In the meantime, I will order a Mac Mini, which will be the first target (as the simplest/cheapest platform is always the ideal thing to start on, complexity can come later once the basics are in place). It'll be torn down and there's a good chance I will want to poke around at the board level for initial bring-up and reverse engineering, so expect a deep dive into what we can learn about the hardware.
There is a good chance I will want to get another unit shortly after the project starts, both as a back-up (if I kill my sole unit, waiting around for a replacement would be a waste of time and thus patrons' money), and also to simultaneously run macOS while I bring-up Linux. This will be especially important one the basic kernel bring-up is complete, as I will be dynamically probing hardware and drivers under macOS to reverse engineer the system, and having to reboot for that is incredibly inefficient. If there's one thing I've learned during my previous hardware RE and bring-up efforts it's that setting things up to minimize dev/RE cycle time pays back big time.
Thank you to everyone who has offered help with the project privately! As a huge open source project, this is not something I can do alone from beginning to end. I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, so I don't need general guidance on how to approach a Linux port / platform / hardware RE project, but as is always the case, there are many specific areas that are new to me and which I will be learning as I go. This is business as usual in reverse engineering land, so don't worry, I'm not relying on others to hold my hand - but if you do have experience in any of these areas and are willing to jump on, even just to answer questions, send me a message (probably best via IRC to marcan on freenode, or email at marcan@marcan.st). Being able to bounce questions off of someone deeper in these fields can save time and help put the project on the right course from the start.
- macOS/Darwin-specific reverse engineering
- AArch64 bring-up
- AGX graphics architecture
- Linux graphics stack internals (especially the userspace side: Mesa/Gallium/etc as well as shader compilers (LLVM), since most of my past experience is with the kernel side)
Comments
Get er done!!
Don Bright
https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross might be helpful (it is able to cross-compile from linux to macos target using apple sdk)
I am super interested in this project. Both because I am excited about the architecture / hardware platform (and will probably buy an arm mac when there is some linux support), and also for the sheer educational value. I love learning about hardware architectures. Looking forward to whatever info you publish! :)
Mark Szentes-Wanner
I read about your effort on heise.de and immediately came here. With the Playstation 4 testimony I am positive you will achieve your->our goal. As soon as Linux runs on M1, I will by a MacBook Pro.
Ahh, I see it now, in a block called "goals" under the "My membership" tab. Thank you!
Out of curiosity, and forgive me if I missed it, but how long do you see this taking? I’ve never done this, nor do I have any friends who have, so I have no idea of the timescale of a project like this.
Hector Martin
All the info is under "My Membership" in the patron view of the page (yes, it's a terrible name...). There you can see the progress towards the second goal of making this my full-time job :-)
How do we see how close to the goal you are? I just pledged $3/month and I see 575 Patreons but don't see the goal progress. p.s. I won't ever run Linux on a Mac as I like the Thinkpad Trackpoint way too much on my X1 Yoga plus love the convertible tablet/touchscreen with Wacom stylus. BUT, super want to see this competition in the market.
Very excited! Do you have any reading material to get me started on the general topic? Just so I can better follow maybe? Thanks!
rbbtnspc
Lol, the info is right at the About page
rbbtnspc
Hi! Do you intend to write any (even small) technical articles/details along the way? I think there are people who would be interested in reading them.
Make father Linus proud!
Good luck🙏
Good luck with that. I'm a big Linux fan and as such I'll will be very happy to see this project succeed.
Fingers crossed! As an avid Linux fan with a M1 Mac on the way I'd love to see this happen and get updates on all the nitty-gritty details of the architecture.
Good luck!
glhf
Emma (dumb fox)
Very excited to follow this as it progresses! Best of luck 🙂
