Linux Arm64 Silicon

[askewd]

Hey guys, sorry if this has been asked already but struggling to get a clear answer.

I'm contemplating switching from OSX to Linux. Last night I installed Fedora Asahi Remix 43 with KDE plama as a new partition on my Macbook Pro M1 drive and first impressions are extremely positive! I've not set any apps up yet though.

I am a Bitwig user and just wondering is this will work well on the Silicon ARM64 linux?

[BobDog]

Best idea would be to give it a try and see, fingers crossed for you!

[askewd]

ok this is what the LLM says:

Bitwig Studio is actually famous for having excellent Linux support, but their Linux version is currently only built for traditional Intel and AMD processors (x86_64). Your M1 Max uses an ARM64 architecture. Bitwig recently started supporting ARM processors for Windows, but they haven't officially released a native ARM build for Linux yet.

Can it be done?
Technically, yes. In the Linux world, there are translation layers (like FEX-Emu) that let you run Intel-based software on Apple Silicon chips. However, because you are coming from a Mac workflow where you expect things to "just work," I highly advise against doing this for a Digital Audio Workstation. Audio production requires ultra-low latency and rock-solid stability, and running a DAW through an emulator usually introduces stutters, plugin crashes, and major headaches. (goes on to recommend Reaper

So i guess my question becomes - is this accurate? has anybody got it to work with the FEX-Emu, without issues?

[BobDog]

As I said, Fingers crossed, good luck.

I have always thought if you want to see if something works give it a go (10 minutes work?), or ask an expert (Bitwig support in this case).

Don't rely on idiots like me on the internet and definitely don't rely on a machine that puts one word (or token before the AI evangelists get in a tizzy) after another.

[audiojunkie]

Hey guys, sorry if this has been asked already but struggling to get a clear answer.

I'm contemplating switching from OSX to Linux. Last night I installed Fedora Asahi Remix 43 with KDE plama as a new partition on my Macbook Pro M1 drive and first impressions are extremely positive! I've not set any apps up yet though.

I am a Bitwig user and just wondering is this will work well on the Silicon ARM64 linux?

Here's the problem. Bitwig is an Intel-only binary. FEX uses (if I'm not mistaken), QEMU to emulate the Intel architecture. Emulations run really, really slow--much slower than WINE or anything else. So, there is a chance that it would work, but it would probably not be very performant. The same goes for any non-ARM plugins. But, who knows? I haven't researched it too much, so maybe the developers had found a way to keep things performant--which would be really good news! Let us know what you find!




"I’m told I lie constantly when I say Linux is great — which is wild, because I’m apparently “misleading” you with things like: it boots, it runs my audio workflow, it stays stable, it gets updates, and it keeps existing despite being declared dead every year since forever. Also yes, it’s “too hard,” “too niche,” “no devs will ever care,” and “Linus complained once,” so clearly I must be fabricating my entire operating system out of pure delusion."
-----The Delusional Linux Advocate

[gearwatcher]

FEX has worse performance than x86 Rosetta on Silicon when it works because IIRC it's designed to target ARM not Apple Silicon whose one of the "selling factors" is half-hardware emu of some things needed for x86 emu (like endianness, and a few other bobs and bits). Maybe FEX on Apple Silicon can leverage that tho, I have no idea tbh.

I've ran software on Rosetta on my M1 Max MBP and it's surprisingly passable even for Audio (I've ran Ableton in it to test performance) if the whole stack runs in it.

I've tested FEX on Ampere cloud boxes for my work, and the results are hit and miss. It is advertized to work for gaming (and possibly ML and stuff like that) because it is very good at leveraging GPU where things continue to run natively, but for CPU bound code (and most audio stuff is that) it didn't perform up to standards that Rosetta set on my testing.

[fde101]

Rosetta 2 performs a one-time translation of Intel machine code into Apple Silicon machine code after which it runs nearly natively on the hardware itself; Rosetta 2 is not an emulator. That is why code translated by Rosetta 2 runs fast, though not quite as fast as code which was originally compiled natively for the architecture. A Mac DAW compiled for Intel can run acceptably under Apple Silicon using Rosetta 2, though slightly less well than one compiled to run natively on the Apple Silicon chips (reminder that the original Rosetta was used during the transition from PowerPC processors to Intel processors and performed dynamic, not one-time, translation of PowerPC code to Intel code; the original Macs used 680x0 processors, then Apple transitioned to PowerPC, then to Intel, and now to aarch64/Apple Silicon - this is the fourth CPU architecture that has been used in Macs).

A straight emulator such as QEMU will be substantially slower, as the translation is being done per-instruction (by software) as the code is executed, and for a DAW in particular, that is unlikely to provide a pleasant experience, particularly with a DAW that was written for a similar level of hardware.

One that was written for a sufficiently ancient computer such as an 8088 DOS computer or an Atari ST might be able to run acceptably when emulated on modern hardware, as the emulation can be fast enough to actually be faster than the original, due to the performance gap between the original hardware and modern hardware.

[Tj Shredder]

In theory Bitwig could be compiled for ARM, but it would open a can of worms in terms of support requests. ARM on Windows would come first I guess, but even that might be too early as its a too small market at the moment. As you want to run it on a Mac, you do have the obvious solution to run it in MacOS.
Trying to get into the shoes of the developers…

[Skubskuestroem]

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... ARM on Windows would come first I guess, but even that might be too early as its a too small market at the moment. ...

Since 5.3 Windows on ARM is supported:
https://www.bitwig.com/de/support/techn ... upport-69/ (https://www.bitwig.com/de/support/technical_support/windows-on-arm-support-69/)