| 22 Apr 2025 |
 Alyssa Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
also, consider the case where an issue in Rust is blocking for Linux. to interact with the Rust project to fix it will involve their support tiers, which include proprietary platforms Yeah, but we do have other options in that situation. | 17:46:40 |
 emily | so insofar as we need to interact with the wider FOSS world the same considerations reappear | 17:46:51 |
| Alyssa Ross | and I'm not sure I've ever seen that come up in practice | 17:47:37 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
Yeah, but we do have other options in that situation. temporarily at least yeah but maybe not long term. we don't have the resources to fork Rust because they want to do something that breaks us because of macOS | 17:47:40 |
| Alyssa Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
temporarily at least yeah but maybe not long term. we don't have the resources to fork Rust because they want to do something that breaks us because of macOS We basically did this for QEMU for Darwin for a period of years :P | 17:48:13 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
and I'm not sure I've ever seen that come up in practice I think all of this would come up a lot less in a situation where we truly had a tier 1 kind of user/contributor split and general support quality | 17:48:22 |
| Alyssa Ross | (Not saying it was a good idea, just that I've never seen or had the experience of having to break Darwin out as part of contributing upstream from Linux.) | 17:49:00 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
We basically did this for QEMU for Darwin for a period of years :P well, yes. I won't defend that. tbf I was thinking of bigger things than a handful of reverts though | 17:49:05 |
| emily | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
(Not saying it was a good idea, just that I've never seen or had the experience of having to break Darwin out as part of contributing upstream from Linux.) I think this is partly a function of upstreams like Rust having more resources for those platforms though | 17:49:50 |
| emily | like if Rust had comparable Darwin investment it wouldn't be tier 1 there either | 17:50:07 |
| emily | also something something microarchitectural patents something something RISC-V guy who is convinced running an x86 QEMU VM is illegal :P | 17:51:18 |
| emily | not entirely a farce: Intel do shake down people over x86 emulation! | 17:51:42 |
| emily | (ok, generally corporate people) | 17:52:02 |
| emily | anyway, I respect people who don't want to test stuff on Darwin and favour being an environment that is welcoming to people with strong views on software freedom - albeit I don't think we will/should ever get to the point of Guix there. I'm just unconvinced there's a practical obstacle to maintaining pluralism on the matter even in a world where Darwin is tier 1. | 17:54:18 |
 Tristan Ross | So we want to consider x86_64-linux-gnu` as the only tier 1 platform? | 17:55:14 |
| Tristan Ross | * So we want to consider x86_64-linux-gnu as the only tier 1 platform? | 17:55:25 |
| emily | that's the only thing I can imagine making sense as a description of the status quo, yeah | 17:56:30 |
| Tristan Ross | Cool | 17:56:37 |
| Tristan Ross | https://pad.lassul.us/9yYTVp73QBul7dCm6tCWsw?view I've made changes to this now, I'm basically using it to draft things until I have a clear way to PR this into the documentation. | 17:57:56 |
| emily | which is x86_64-linux > aarch64-linux >> aarch64-darwin > x86_64-darwin >>> everything else | 17:59:00 |
| Tristan Ross | Yeah, I think we could see aarch64-linux become a tier 1 platform if adoption grows more. | 18:00:11 |
| Tristan Ross | It's not going to be anytime soon but it'll likely happen at some point. | 18:00:40 |
| emily | maybe depending on how the server market shifts | 18:01:25 |
| emily | desktops would require a change in Microsoft priorities | 18:01:39 |
| Tristan Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
maybe depending on how the server market shifts Yeah, basically Ampere, Graviton, and NVIDIA's ARM chips lol. But I think it's mostly Ampere or Graviton. | 18:02:51 |
| Tristan Ross | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
desktops would require a change in Microsoft priorities Yeah... Apple Silicon is a thing but I'd consider it a niche | 18:03:16 |
| Tristan Ross | I think Pi's are an easily accessible option but not much performance there. However, I do see it being a simple setup for people. | 18:03:55 |
| emily | the difference is that there don't need to be any convenient options for x86 since it's what everyone already has | 18:05:17 |
| Tristan Ross | Yeah, which is how Apple was able to do it. Forced adoption. | 18:06:10 |
| Tristan Ross | If companies forced Arm more, there'd be more convenient hardware. | 18:06:41 |
