Is there any plan for Mint on ARM?

[dooley]

I previously had a VM of Linux Mint on my Intel Mac, and I’d love to continue this on my Apple Silicon machine. Is there any plan for Mint on ARM? Debian has an arm64 option and it’s great. Why has Mint, which is derived indirectly from Debian via Ubuntu, and directly in the Debian edition, not followed suit? Are there any plans for this? I’ve searched and can find no good answer on this. Any solid intelligence on this is much appreciated. Thanks!

[cretsiah]

The closest to ARM stuff i know of for Linux Mint is in this thread

viewtopic.php?f=251&t=370876

[Moem]

As far as I know, no mention of such a plan has ever appeared on the Mint blog. It's possible that a plan exists, but it's never been spoken about. So the most likely option seems to be that there isn't one.

Of course, it's hard to prove a negative and the Mint team is not in the habit of making lists of all the things they are NOT planning to do.

[gugalcrom123]

Apple Silicon is not ARM-compatible. Sorry.

[Moem]

Apple Silicon is not ARM-compatible. Sorry.

That's incorrect. Most Apple Silicon processors use the ARM architecture.

[gugalcrom123]

Apple Silicon is not ARM-compatible. Sorry.

That's incorrect. Most Apple Silicon processors use the ARM architecture.

Yes, but it's been modified and they don't run normal ARM programs.

[dooley]

The ARM release of Debian runs great as a VM on Apple Silicon, as do the ARM versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Not sure where you’re getting your info, but I’ve actually done this myself and it does work.

[Forge]

Apple Silicon is not ARM-compatible. Sorry.

That's incorrect. Most Apple Silicon processors use the ARM architecture.

Gugalcrom123 is flatly incorrect, and you should be ashamed of yourself for giving out false information as if it is fact. While there are non-ARM functions added to the M1/M2 Apple SOCs (Nueral Engine, Apple's own GPU), they do *not* in any way remove or fail to implement ARM V8.5-A.

The Apple M1 and M2 are fully functional and fully compatible aarch64 CPUs, conformant to ARM v8.5-A. They do not implement aarch32, but that is optional in the spec and omitted by many manufacturers.

They would be ARM v9.0-A, but Apple declined to implement SVE2, which doesn't impair the ability to run ARM code either.

Posted from Asahi Linux, running 5.17 on the metal, on a Mac Mini M1.

[Portreve]

Apple Silicon is not ARM-compatible. Sorry.

That's incorrect. Most Apple Silicon processors use the ARM architecture.

Gugalcrom123 is flatly incorrect, and you should be ashamed of yourself for giving out false information as if it is fact. While there are non-ARM functions added to the M1/M2 Apple SOCs (Nueral Engine, Apple's own GPU), they do *not* in any way remove or fail to implement ARM V8.5-A.

The Apple M1 and M2 are fully functional and fully compatible aarch64 CPUs, conformant to ARM v8.5-A. They do not implement aarch32, but that is optional in the spec and omitted by many manufacturers.

They would be ARM v9.0-A, but Apple declined to implement SVE2, which doesn't impair the ability to run ARM code either.

Posted from Asahi Linux, running 5.17 on the metal, on a Mac Mini M1.

This has me wanting to set up a VM on my MBA and try it out.

[Forge]

If you're running macos, you'll need Parallels or UTM. VMware's trial/test/beta mess doesn't boot any recent Linux kernels, and won't till next release, currently scheduled for "soon".

Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 ARM run great, Fedora, Debian, Arch (via ALARM), Manjaro, Kali, many more. It's not that hard to spin an arm64 ISO.

Would be lovely to have Mint join the fold for the upcoming 21 release.

[rene]

Would be lovely to have Mint join the fold for the upcoming 21 release.

Although not authoritatively in a theoretical sense I in a practical one still feel quite safe guaranteeing that Mint 21 will not.

Perhaps it some day will -- but Mint is a desktop distribution, and fairly specifically primarily geared towards inexperienced Linux users. If I'd had to guess how many such prospective users would buy a for now expensive Apple Silicon system and then install Linux Mint rather than just eat whatever Apple puts on there I'd initially say 0; Portreve there will count as a round-off error. Also today when we see Apple users enter it's basically always trying to repurpose some obsolete, decade old Macbook.

For now ARM Linux is a much more geek oriented sphere; those likely to install e.g. Debian or Arch; not so much I'd say Linux Mint. It's of course always possible that one of the main developers has/gets an M1/M2 and that there's going to be a Mint version basically just for the heck of it but if this is / would be a "business" decision I'd not hold my breath.

[Petermint]

Would that be ARM V5, V6, V7, V8, or V9? Within that, would it be ARM 32 bit or ARM 64 bit? Would it be the built in GPU/all the other bits, or external chips?

I already crash into those problems with my limited set of ARM computers. I have to use either really old software or choose a difference OS for every processor.

[Sumarious]

Mint is a desktop distribution, and fairly specifically primarily geared towards inexperienced Linux users. If I'd had to guess how many such prospective users would buy a for now expensive Apple Silicon system and then install Linux Mint rather than just eat whatever Apple puts on there I'd initially say 0

You're not looking forward enough. Your vision is limited to the now. M1 may be the current ARM offered by Apple, but ARM in general? We're already seeing it in data centers, we're seeing it in tablets, and more and more consumer laptops are going to start shipping with ARM processors just because of their power efficiency.

Who doesn't want an efficient laptop with an OLED display that will last all day on a charge and has included 5G connectivity?

I get tired of having to plug in my laptop and charge it during the drive time to my different on-site and hope it gets enough juice to make it through the jobs I have to get done.

I also wouldn't say that it's primarily geared towards inexperienced Linux users.
I use mint because it's Debian based, and I like its interface.

[Petermint]

Small ARMs are efficient because they are slow and the OS is tuned to that. Long ARMs are efficient because they have two sets of processors, slow for efficiency and fast for those times when you need speed. Intel 12th gen has the same arrangement of fast and slow. Linux needs a few months more of development to handle the scheduling of core usage in 12th gen Intel.

Mobile phones have other savings. The newest bluetooth can run at very low power when next to the other device. I know people who run with bluetooth on all the time without using it and their battery deflates fast from bluetooth searching for a partner. My phone lasts two days and a friend with the same model has to charge twice a day. Her bluetooth is always on plus there are dozens of active applications she rarely uses.

Animated indicators chew power. That is why I uninstall or disable any weather application. The display shows the wrong weather for our area, updates every minute despite the source updating only every hour, and is no where near as useful as the official Web site. The Intel 12th gen can allocate the junk apps to the slow low cores.

The backlight on LCD is another problem. If you use a screen saver to switch on just one pixel, the whole backlight blares white, gulping power. OLED does not have that problem. A friend with a big battery mobile phone has LCD and a heap of applications changing pixels every few seconds. The screen never switches off and the dances with death in just a few hours. The same phone can last a whole weekend when you switch off tweets.

[MikeNovember]

Hi,

There is an Ubuntu server version for arm, but it is a version without graphics interface (command line).

The problem to have a full desktop (Cinnamon, Mate, Gnome...) is to have the graphics drivers available.

Under a Mac with Apple Silicon, you could use Linux in a virtual machine, or use brew as an extra package manager to complete MacOS.

Regards,

MN

[peterdanckwerts]

I have Linux Mint on my laptop and it's rather disappointing that I can't put it on my new M1 iMac using Parallels. I think there will be so many Arm laptops and desktops soon that it makes sense to have an Arm64 version. As MikeNovember says, there is an Arm64 Ubuntu which runs on M1 Macs. Even Windows 11 for Arm runs on M1 Macs using Parallels – and not just running Arm64 programs but X86 ones which Windows runs very successfully using X86 emulation.

[cptnoblivious]

I think if the Mint team is 'full' in terms of work and effort with what they already have going on, they should keep focusing there instead of diluting the effort and making a worse product overall due to being spread to thin.

There are already plenty of distros that work on ARM.

If the distribution of processors really moves significantly towards ARM in the future, I'm sure they'll adjust

[Petermint]

Interesting speed comparison in the latest super computer list. 500,000 AMD/Intel cores is three times faster than 7,000,000 ARM cores.

Here is a list of how many different processors you would have to support if you support "ARM". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_processors

[Crito]

It's about power consumption with ARM. I used to run my Pi 2 with a 3.5" touchscreen off a 10 watt (5V 2A) power bank. I called it my Palm Pi-lot. And you only need to support the instruction set (i.e. ARMv8) not each CPU. It's true graphics can be a problem but most lightweight Linux desktops environments will run fine using LLVMpipe and software rendering. Heavyweight desktops like Gnome and KDE pretty much require hardware accelerated graphics to be usable though.

[CodeMonki]

I just run a Parallels VM with Debian for ARM and then install the Cinnamon desktop interface. I've had zero problems with it on my Macbook Pro, iMac (M1), Raspberry Pi, etc. It's a shame that there is not a native Mint distro, but that's the call the Mint team gets to make, not me.