what about Apple M1 ?

[stefaan-cottenier]

So far, VirtualBox + Quantum Mobile was quite a universal solution for my students. But this year, there start to be students who have a Macbook with the M1 processor. Virtualbox is not compatible with this. Two questions : (1) Is there currently a solution you can suggest for people with an M1? (2) If not, is it likely/expected that either VirtualBox or Quantum Mobile will evolve in a way that this problem is removed?

Thanks! Stefaan

[ltalirz]

hey @stefaan-cottenier, thanks for pointing this out.

For this year's course, I would say one possibility is to use the Quantum Mobile docker container https://quantum-mobile.readthedocs.io/en/latest/users/launch.html which should run fine on ARM (despite the warning you will see when launching the docker image).

Given that it looks like virtualbox will not support ARM, it seems we may need to look for an alternative solution for a graphical desktop in the medium term. e.g. vmware recently announced a tech preview for m1

suggestions welcome! I will bring it up in the AiiDA meeting later today

[ltalirz]

@stefaan-cottenier Of course, switching to docker entirely would be an option as well.

My impression in the past has been that novice users find it easier to work with a familiar graphical desktop - what is your impression on this topic? Of course, it is still possible to do graphical applications with docker (installing some extra software on the host, or going through the web browser).

[stefaan-cottenier]

Thanks for the info, Leo. So far, I had only advertised the desktop solution with VirtualBox, which feels quite right for my typical audience (going to linux is already a big step for some of them). Never tried the Docker way so far. That results in a command-line-only environment, right? It’s good that this workaround exists, but I suspect that people who buy a Mac are exactly the ones who prefer a more graphical environment. We’ll see…

Thanks again, Stefaan

Van: Leopold Talirz @.> Verzonden: woensdag 6 oktober 2021 8:46 Aan: marvel-nccr/quantum-mobile @.> CC: stefaan-cottenier @.>; Mention @.> Onderwerp: Re: [marvel-nccr/quantum-mobile] what about Apple M1 ? (#194)

@stefaan-cottenierhttps://github.com/stefaan-cottenier Of course, switching to docker entirely would be an option as well.

My impression in the past has been that novice users find it easier to work with a familiar graphical desktop - what is your impression on this topic? Of course, it is still possible to do graphical applications with docker (installing some extra software on the host).

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[Saumiali]

Hey, so I followed the instructions related to the docker, but instead of healthy, I see unhealthy when I run the health check command. Where am I going wrong?

[giovannipizzi]

This seems an interesting option to run on M1: https://mac.getutm.app There is a Ubuntu 20.04 for ARM (so it's virtualized and fast, and not emulated). Is there anyone with an M1 willing to give it a try? (@ltalirz ? others?) My suggestion would be to download the 20.04 image, install it, see if it works fine (clipboard, interactiveness, ...) and then trying to see if the ansible roles work fine (e.g. testing gcc and some compilation of one of the codes). If it works, we might think about releasing 2 images, one .ova for most machines, and one image for UTM for M1 chips

[ltalirz]

Looks indeed interesting. I have it a quick try and it seemed to work fine (with the ubuntu server image it boots into text-based installation UI) however one would need some automated way of provisioning the image e.g. via a vagrant plugin.

People are looking into this, so perhaps this will soon be possible.

In the meanwhile, docker should work fine - unfortunately, I don't know which issue @Saumiali ran into.

We should soon also have an arm-native docker image for aiida-core (but the x86 one works on the M1 as well; the arm one should just be faster)

By the way, @unkcpz also has an M1 mac, so he may be able to test things as well.

[giovannipizzi]

Good that they are working on it. In any case, if we want to provide support, we can always just download by hand an image, and run ansible in it, at least until when the provisioner is not available. The reason I'm pushing for a VM rather than docker is that I'd like to provide it for future tutorials