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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#181

Post by Hemospectrum »

unethical_ban wrote: post #39

It sound like there are two major questions: Do the demigods of the Linux kernel - Linus and the core maintainers - personally want the kind of code Asahi is developing to be merged into the kernel? The author writes as if part of his drive was that Linus himself showed enthusiasm for getting Linux on Apple Silicon. If there is interest in the work Asahi has done, then the Linux team needs to describe what they see a…

> The author writes as if part of his drive was that Linus himself showed enthusiasm for getting Linux on Apple Silicon.

Perhaps the author jumped to conclusions after Linus himself started using Asahi Linux on his own laptop for Linux kernel development[0]. Note the praise for the Asahi team in the commit message.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32311150

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#182

Post by School-Cotton »

gpm wrote: post #150
surajrmal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would need to completely reset to do that. Do BSDs even have rust support for their drivers?

For what it's worth, the Oxide Computing people have written illumos driver(s) in rust: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/opte/tree/master/xde

Illumos is based on Solaris, not BSD.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#183

Post by fargle »

echelon wrote: post #56
sphars wrote: post #6

See also the response from the Asahi team: https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/

At the top of the page: > Hi! It looks like you might have come from Hacker News. > Asahi Linux developers are frequent targets of abuse on Hacker News. Despite our pleas, the moderators have not taken effective action to improve the situation. > Overtly hateful content is often flagged on HN and not immediately visible. Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. That preserves t…

seconded. even if it was completely true criticism, which it categorically is not, putting up a half-page banner is extremely gauche and immature.

saying things like "an organized attempt to destroy lives, including of developers in our communities" is patently not true. trolls get flagged. honest nice people who don't agree with you aren't trying to destroy anything and nor do they hate you.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#184

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

alberth wrote: post #28

I wonder how much of this is fueled by the economic model of Asahi. marcan had indicated donations are down, and it's hard to support ones livelihood just from donations alone - especially when they are down. https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/c5a49bcb-45cf-4295-80...

My perspective is it might be a chicken-or-egg problem. I would willingly donate to the Asahi project...if/when I were to buy a Macbook for the purpose of running Asahi Linux on it.

And I've been watching from the sidelines, waiting for Asahi Linux to become "stable" enough to consider buying a Macbook and putting Asahi Linux on it.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#185

Post by bombcar »

chongli wrote: post #68
bezier-curve wrote: post #4

I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's how you crush motivation. There's a deeper issue in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors.

Brigading has no place in open source communities. There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! The fact remains: Rust doesn’t solve all of C’s problems. It trades them off for a whole lot of new problems, many of which are challenging to addre…

The solution will be to rewrite the kernel in Zig!

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#186

Post by saagarjha »

mrtksn wrote: post #168
galoisscobi wrote: post #13

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

Never ever give away anything for free if you intend to support it is an evergreen advice. Selling ads? Using it as a gateway to a commercial product? Selling support? Have some genius business plan that allows you to make money in the future? Fine, give it away no strings attached but expecting that users will be grateful is a mistake developers keep repeating. The free users are just as entitled, even more entitled…

Paying users can be incredibly entitled, sometimes even more than people who don’t pay you a dime. The problem is the moment you accept a cent people expect you to do work for them, regardless of whether the money is actually “worth” how much effort needs to go into a feature. The open source projects I’ve worked on get donations but sometimes people will put up like $10 for their pet feature which takes a week to write. Like, thanks for your contribution, but this actually doesn’t affect my priorities at all.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#187

Post by ThatGuyRaion »

Marcan brings up plenty of good points regarding contributing to kernel.org being stuck in the 1990s.

However, he's got no social skills nor does he have what it takes to man up and understand he won't get his way.

Additionally I doubt that he really is dealing with stalkers to the degree that he is implying; real people don't talk about their stalkers so much. When I was stalked and harassed I kept the details light and didn't provide much in the way of actual community details because I went to the FBI and local police to deal with it. And yes a few people not only got no contact orders, but lost jobs, families, and more over their exposure.

Marcan is extremely talented, but talent doesn't equal "I get to get my way." All the time. This idea that conflicts need to be resolved quickly and in the favor of a golden boy is a millennial/zoomer issue.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#188

Post by mrtksn »

saagarjha wrote: post #186
mrtksn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never ever give away anything for free if you intend to support it is an evergreen advice. Selling ads? Using it as a gateway to a commercial product? Selling support? Have some genius business plan that allows you to make money in the future? Fine, give it away no strings attached but expecting that users will be grateful is a mistake developers keep repeating. The free users are just as entitled, even more entitled…

Paying users can be incredibly entitled, sometimes even more than people who don’t pay you a dime. The problem is the moment you accept a cent people expect you to do work for them, regardless of whether the money is actually “worth” how much effort needs to go into a feature. The open source projects I’ve worked on get donations but sometimes people will put up like $10 for their pet feature which takes a week to wr…

You refund them and it’s solved. You don’t have that option with free users.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#189

Post by jmull »

skydhash wrote: post #137
IshKebab wrote: post #37

Well written. I think the accusations of drama-hunting are unfounded. What else are you supposed to do in the face of persistent "non-technical nonsense"? Linus doesn't seem to care. Definitely a shame. I wonder if it would be in Apple's interests to actively support Linux on Mac. It would make Macs more attractive as developer machines, and I don't see how it would disadvantage them.

> It would make Macs more attractive as developer machines, and I don't see how it would disadvantage them. The only development they want is development inside XCode. Anything else is a hard no.

Are there a lot of dev tools that run on linux but not on Macs?
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