Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

asahilinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 258 posts

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#71

Post by jeroenhd »

mmcnl wrote: post #63
jeroenhd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a digital services company that happens to sell hardware. Their big money maker is their app store, and no Linux user is ever going to buy apps from the app store. They still have the Darwin kernel open,but more and more of the open core is moving to closed components, a recipe for what Google started doing to Android. Now that they're no longer the hipster underdog, I don't think they care much about the br…

This is just plain wrong. Apple generates most revenue and profits with hardware and it's not even close.

Apple's profit margins on many services are at 76% (according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/01/13/apples-de...), over twice that of their hardware sales. Margins are higher on reselling licensed content (their Spotify and Netflix alternatives), but their customer base for those is still rapidly growing according to their 2025 report.

Tim Cook said it himself: Apple is not a hardware company (https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-is-not-a-hard...).

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#73

Post by smith7018 »

amelius wrote: post #62
JSR_FDED wrote: post #6

I’m in absolute awe that a handful of motivated people can crack these problems

[flagged]

These people are singlehandedly saving _millions_ of laptops from going to the landfill one day. That's a valiant effort and they're doing it wonderfully. Regardless, one of the points of Linux is to install it on as much hardware as possible. Do you think people that managed to get it installed on iPods, PS5s, Wiis, Chromebooks, routers, Nintendo Switches, etc. should all stop just because they're doing something unsupported? Most of those cases were met with friction by the original OEM. If anything, Apple has been pretty laissez faire about the whole thing compared to Nintendo and Sony who will ban your console if you hack it.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#74

Post by preisschild »

rbits wrote: post #68
amelius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do you mean? You mean not on Apple hardware? That exists, that's basically every other Linux distro in existence.

Apple could also support open standards like UEFI/dt/acpi. Asahi uses lots of workarounds (including pretending to be MacOS) to be even able to boot the linux kernel. This would projects such as Asahi a lot easier and more reliable.

And I'm not even talking about drivers

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#75

Post by smith7018 »

realusername wrote: post #25
simonmales wrote: post #10

Will this forever exist as a Fedora "remix". Or will we find the support in upstream so I can one day run Debian-based distro? I think the last time I used an RPM-based distro was almost 2 decades ago.

Upstreaming something like this is a monumental task, even small changes can take ages. It will take a while.

They've actually been focusing on upstreaming for what feels like 2 years now. It's really slowed down progress but it's important for the longevity of the project. They still have so much left to upstream but little by little it's happening

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#76

Post by WD-42 »

sneak wrote: post #8

It is baffling to me that Apple, ostensibly a hardware company (that happens to be pursuing services revenue the way a crackhead pursues crack), ridiculously flush with cash, doesn’t throw 2 or 3 of their thousands of FTEs on this. The goodwill/brand marketing alone is worth their comp, and it will absolutely move units as well. Linux people LOVE laptops, and Apple makes the best laptops by a parsec. It seems like 10…

Or they could just make their schematics available and save 99% of the reverse engineering the Asahi team has to do.

1000s of hours of work for what is just sitting in a drawer in Cupertino. But they won’t.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#77

Post by mmcnl »

jeroenhd wrote: post #71
mmcnl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just plain wrong. Apple generates most revenue and profits with hardware and it's not even close.

Apple's profit margins on many services are at 76% (according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/01/13/apples-de... ), over twice that of their hardware sales. Margins are higher on reselling licensed content (their Spotify and Netflix alternatives), but their customer base for those is still rapidly growing according to their 2025 report. Tim Cook said it himself: Apple is not a hardware company…

Hardware revenue is 3x the services revenue, even with half the margins it still generates more profit than services. I get that Apple would like to increase service revenue but they are a hardware company at heart and their financial statements show it too

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#78

Post by watermelon0 »

urbsgpw wrote: post #61
Grombobulous wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food for thought: Apple’s services make more revenue than Macs and iPads combined, and they do so at a higher profit margin. There’s your answer. I don’t agree that Apple makes the best laptops by a parsec. Not anymore, many alternatives are closing the gap. This is aided by the fact that Apple hasn’t touched the MacBook Pro chassis in 5 years, making it quite dated especially with the underutilized, oversized notch…

Never thought I'd think about switching from Apple. M1 was handsdown the best buy ever and I was sure my next laptop would be an Apple as well. But looking at framework, this looks really nice. Apple-ish but without some of the drawbacks (also, while windows stinks, not really a MacOS fanboy tbh). Makes me kinda regret I was lazy and locked myself in using Apple passwords app.

FYI Apple Passwords supports exporting of items including Passkeys, which can be then imported in e.g. Bitwarden.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#79

Post by scarlehoff »

jeroenhd wrote: post #71
mmcnl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just plain wrong. Apple generates most revenue and profits with hardware and it's not even close.

Apple's profit margins on many services are at 76% (according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/01/13/apples-de... ), over twice that of their hardware sales. Margins are higher on reselling licensed content (their Spotify and Netflix alternatives), but their customer base for those is still rapidly growing according to their 2025 report. Tim Cook said it himself: Apple is not a hardware company…

If you read the last link you'll see he just means Apple could slash its hardware margins (if needed) and still make tons of money.

As we saw recently, they decided they are, after all, a hardware company, since they decided not to slash their margins...

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#80

Post by bri3d »

sneak wrote: post #8

It is baffling to me that Apple, ostensibly a hardware company (that happens to be pursuing services revenue the way a crackhead pursues crack), ridiculously flush with cash, doesn’t throw 2 or 3 of their thousands of FTEs on this. The goodwill/brand marketing alone is worth their comp, and it will absolutely move units as well. Linux people LOVE laptops, and Apple makes the best laptops by a parsec. It seems like 10…

It’s less a question of people and more one of "Why doesn't a hardware company want to give away their IP design documentation?"
Post reply on HN