Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead • Hacker News Board

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#751

Post by bscphil » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:21 PM UTC

lillecarl wrote: post #739

michaelt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He needs to stop fighting with the winds he can't control. Users gonna be users, and people gonna be people. Everyone won't be happy, never ever. Right - but it kinda sounds like he's facing headwinds in a lot of different directions. Headwinds from Apple, who are indifferent to the project, stingy with documentation, and not inclined to reduce their own rate of change. Headwinds from users, because of the stripped…

Another uphill battle that I haven't seen anyone mention is just how good mobile AMD chips got a year or so after the M1 release. I wouldn't buy a Mac to run Linux on it when I can buy a Lenovo with equally soldered parts that'll work well with the OS I wanna run already.

And some of these Lenovos are relatively upgradable too. I'm using a ThinkPad I bought refurbished (with a 2 year warranty) and upgraded myself to 40 GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD (there's another slot too if I need it). It cost me $350 including the part upgrades.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#752

Post by sph » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #102

prododev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is every successful product, small, medium, large. I've never ever worked on a big corporate or small personal project and not experienced this. The secret is to have a healthy system for taking in those requests, queueing them by priority, and saying, "you are 117 in the queue, you can make it faster by contributing or by explaining why its higher priority". You can't let feature requests get to you, the moment…

I always tell this story about working with sales at a job where I worked in tech support. Sales would call me up and ask why I hadn't talked to their client about their very important ticket. I would tell them: "I have 5 P1 tickets, 8 P2 tickets, and dozens of P3 tickets. Your ticket is a P3 ticket." They would ask that I change it to a P1. I would. Then they would call me an hour later asking me about the ticket an…

In my experience, when it's other people deciding the priority of your tasks (usually your boss), the distribution is 150 P1 tickets, 3 P2 tickets and 1 P3.

This is when the underrated skill of saying NO pays off massive dividends. One long-term client once told me the thing he appreciated the most, compared to most other consultants, was that I wasn't afraid of pushing back on his requests and saying no (within reason). Probably the most valuable feedback I have ever received.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#753

Post by zoogeny » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

I read this entire post because the man deserves not only to have his say but also to have his say listened to.

That said, I detect a lot of one sided thinking in his post. He took on an incredibly difficult challenge, faced huge opposition, made incredible technical accomplishments and he feels entitled to a standing ovation. When what he receives is criticism, entitlement and obstructionism he takes it personally. If he did all of this work hoping to get accolades, fame, clout, influence then he did it for the wrong reason. There is a mismatch between his expectations and the reality of the world.

In the best of worlds, we do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because we hope for a pat on the back once it is done. In dharmic religions (e.g. Buddhism), one of the principle mental states one is to aim for is detachment from the outcomes of our actions. Suffering is attachment and Martin is clearly suffering. The other thing in Buddhism is recognizing the suffering in others, and I see a distinct lack of that recognition in Martin's post here. He acknowledges his own abrasiveness but not once does he show compassion for the maintainers who have suffered everything he has suffered, perhaps even from actions Martin himself has done.

Martin has several outcomes he wants, mostly his changes (including the inclusion of Rust) being welcomed in the Linux kernel. He is attached to those outcomes and therefore takes it personally when those outcomes are not achieved. Taking a step away from this attachment is a very good step. IMO, his desire to push for these outcomes has been a significant contribution to the toxicity.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#754

Post by porphyra » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

freetime2 wrote: post #692

> For a long time, well after we had a stable release, people kept claiming Asahi Linux and Fedora Asahi Remix in particular were “alpha” and “unstable” and “not suitable for a daily driver” This is still my position on Asahi Linux: that it is not something that I would use as a daily driver nor recommend to others for use as a daily driver. > “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use moni…

I feel like Asahi is pretty nice as a lightweight daily driver for web browsing, web development, and stuff like that. Obviously, heavy duty tasks like gaming, CAD, photo/video editing, etc are not quite there yet. I bought an M2 Macbook Air and run Asahi Linux full time and it's surprisingly smooth and bug-free (even smoother than my Arch Linux desktop tbh).

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#755

Post by MisterTea » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

fransje26 wrote: post #507

ecshafer wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust, which is a language I really enjoy, generates more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years.

It must be said that from an outsider's point a view, in quite a few aspects it very much sounds like a cult. Get an HN article about C++, and you can be certain the comment section is going to deteriorate at some point into a religious war mentioning Rust. Get an article about Rust, and there is going to be drama in the comments. As a programmer that could potential consider Rust, it is off-putting.

You can also be certain when reading a Zig post you will see "Why would I use Zig over Rust?" or "Isn't Zig unsafe?"

They cant help but proselytize. Its like talking to my recent born again christian friend who cant help but steer every conversation to Christianity and reciting scripture. It's infuriating.

Though TBH it very much feels like the cult of OOP that rocked the 90's. And look where that paradigm is now ...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#756

Post by caspper69 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

huimang wrote: post #669

caspper69 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many of them are still relatively young. There is nothing wrong with youth, but it can contribute to over-zealousness. Also, for many of them, Rust is the first systems language they've ever touched. And that fact alone excites them. Because now they can "dream big" too. But they have bought into the whole C/C++ are by default insecure and therefore garbage. In their mind, no mortal could ever write so much a…

> But they have bought into the whole C/C++ are by default insecure and therefore garbage. In their mind, no mortal could ever write so much as a single safe function in those languages. No one thinks this except some strawman that you've devised. No point in reading anything else in this comment when this is so blatantly absurd and detached from reality.

I'm sorry sir/mam, but that is simply not true.

All you have to do is read comments from members of the Rust community online, in every public forum where Rust is discussed in any way.

Understand, I am not trying to villainize an entire community of software developers; but for you to say something that's blatantly false is to just stick your head in the sand.

You should try and read the words people write. Opinions are not formed in a vacuum.

Edit: to be clear- I have no problems with Rust the language beyond some ergonomic concerns. I am not a Rust hater, nor am I a zealot. I do advocate for C# a lot for application code though. But I do not deride others' language preferences. You should not dismiss my observations because I used hyperbole. Obviously not every Rust dev thinks you can't write a secure C/C++ function; don't pick out the one hyperbolic statement to discredit my entire post. Bad form.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#757

Post by caycep » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

Scaevolus wrote: post #226

bayindirh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Putting my dusty Linux Distro Maintainer Hat on] First of all, I wholeheartedly applaud Marcan for carrying the project this far. They, both as individuals and as a team proper, did great things. What I can say is a rest is well deserved at this point, because he really poured his soul into this and worn himself down. On the other hand, I'll need to say something, however not in bad faith. He needs to stop fighting…

Marcan's career as a developer includes lots of development on hostile systems where he's jailbreaking various consoles to allow homebrew. Asahi Linux is similar, given how hostile and undocumented Apple Silicon is, but it has a great amount of expectations of feature completeness and additional bureaucracy for code changes that really destroys the free-wheeling hacker spirit.

Why not develop a distro based on BSD/darwin kernel then?

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#758

Post by ants_everywhere » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

swfsql wrote: post #748

ants_everywhere wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speaker doesn't understand the audience question and doesn't respond to it. The audience member points out that they shouldn't encode the semantics into the Rust type system because that would mean that refactoring the C code breaks Rust, which is not an acceptable situation. The speaker responds to this by saying essentially "tell me what the semantics are and I'll encode them in the Rust type system." That's ma…

I disagree, they didn't straight out pointed this, because this is nonsense. Semantic changes can break anything, even if it's some intermediary API. There are more breakage in rust due to the type-system-related semantics, but ideally a C dev would also want their system to break if the semantics aren't right. So this is a criticism on C..? So following this argument, they don't want Rust because C falls short? Nons…

Here are the software requirements (inferred from the commenter):

- (1) the C code will be refactored periodically

- (2) when refactored internally it can break C code, but the change author should fix any breaking in C

- (3) Rust must not break when (1) happens

It's the Rust devs' job to meet those requirements if they want to contribute. It looks in the video like they don't understand this, which is pretty basic.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#759

Post by sph » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #744

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…

from what I've seen of his grandstanding on the LKML suggesting to bully people on social media, I've lost all respect for the guy. He is a person in power considering all his social media clout, and this is how he uses it. I'm glad he realizes that it's time to sit back and reflect. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. He will be of much more use to the community, and more importantly himself after confront…

There are two types of VIP developers: those that stay in the shadows and do their work (think the Bram Moolenaars and Daniel Stenbergs) and those that seem to spend their entire time picking fights on social media and writing very emotionally charged blog posts that routinely reach the HN front page, because gossip and drama sells.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#760

Post by uecker » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 10:36 PM UTC

MrJohz wrote: post #662

uecker wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, this whole situation seems entirely weird to me. All this stuff such as Unix, Linux, and C ecosystem was build by C programmers and maintained for decades mostly voluntarily, while most of the industry pushed into other directions (with a gigantic influx of money). It is completely amazing that Linux become so successful against all the odds. Certainly it also then had a lot industry support, but I used it a…

I believe the Rust for Linux project was started by a Linux guy, rather than a Rust guy, and many of the Rust for Linux maintainers have come at this from a perspective of "we are Linux maintainers who want to use Rust" rather than "we are Rust users who want our code to be in Linux". I think it's important to be wary of simplistic narratives (such as "C vs Rust"). Maintaining a complex piece of software comes with t…

It is entirely unclear to me where the value actually is. It seems google is funding it for some reason. And some people clearly have a lot of opinions that this is "the future". People had similarly strong opinions about various other things in the past.