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Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#141

Post by drdexebtjl »

rvz wrote: post #85
drdexebtjl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one buys Apple Silicon laptops to run Linux because they can barely run Linux. But if they could, Apple would sweep the market for Linux laptops. Macbook hardware completely outclasses even the high end options.

> No one buys Apple Silicon laptops to run Linux because they can barely run Linux. Almost no-one bought Intel Macs for dual-booting Linux either (Unless you are Linus Torvalds and a tiny amount of people who use Linux on Intel Macs). > But if they could, Apple would sweep the market for Linux laptops. Not true. They cannot even run Windows on them. The entire point of Intel Macs was for running Windows on a Mac whic…

Windows on the Mac requires cooperation from Microsoft and Apple, and benefits Apple’s competition. It was always a strategy to get Windows users to switch sides, not to sell hardware.

Linux on the Mac requires only Apple’s initiative, and does not benefit their competitors.

> Not true. They cannot even run Windows on them.

Why does the Linux laptop market care about running Windows?

> Dual booting

I’m not talking about dual booting at all. Before Apple Silicon, if you wanted to buy a laptop to run Linux, the Intel Macbooks have always been a top-tier recommendation.

The market isn’t large, but it’s a soft power they’re giving up. Walk into a big tech’s office and you’ll no longer see only Macbooks, and it’s not because they have to run Windows.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#142

Post by cromka »

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…

> 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.

That's not what you said. Their margins on software and hardware are irrelevant to what they, as a company, make most money off on — which was your original claim on which you are wrong and got called out on.

So annoying when people can't just admit they're wrong and instead gaslight people with their changed narrative.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#143

Post by cromka »

figmert wrote: post #11
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…

Because Apple is not just a hardware company anymore. They track users and they sell ads. Sure, they are not at the same level as Meta and Google, but their ad platform is not insignificant anymore. Also that same software platform allows to get more money out of their users via their App Store. Selling hardware with the software that helps them track means more revenue than the same hardware with the software.

> Because Apple is not just a hardware company anymore. They track users and they sell ads. Sure, they are not at the same level as Meta and Google, but their ad platform is not insignificant anymore.

And this is related to MacBooks how exactly?

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#144

Post by debugnik »

dandellion wrote: post #119
nosioptar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have high standards. Torvalds often crosses that line into outright toxicity. I've written a few kernel patches that I never tried to upstream for that reason.

You'll never be able to agree on where that line should go. First because there's a cultural component to it. I'm from Spain so I can only talk for myself, but while he uses rude language, nothing I've ever read from him ever seemed particularly offensive. And second because any activity involving a large group of people will need some amount of toxicity if only to prevent other toxic people from derailing it, and si…

> nothing I've ever read from him ever seemed particularly offensive

You may have missed the "retroactively aborted" one.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495

To be fair, he's got much more self-control now.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#145

Post by bigyabai »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #6

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

Many of the problems aren't cracked whatsoever. For instance, Apple Silicon's PSCI power management interface is a mystery. PSCI code exists in other Linux devicetrees, but nobody knows how Apple implements theirs. So for the better half of a decade, Asahi users have relied on a hack to prevent their battery from draining constantly. We still don't have any prospective solutions, to my knowledge.

This is the weal-and-woe of reverse engineering. It's awesome that these machines now have native Vulkan 1.2 drivers, but it took years to get there. There are still unsolved problems 7 years after Apple Silicon hit shelves, and most newer hardware is broadly unsupported. The lesson here is a reiteration of what Linux users have always said - proprietary drivers suck.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#146

Post by w10-1 »

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…

Apple open-sourced their container tooling and they also support Linux in their Virtualization framework. Anyone can run any compatible Linux now in a VM, with bare-metal speed but limited to virtio devices. To me it's baffling that more people don't run Linux this way.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#147

Post by jagged-chisel »

drbawb wrote: post #131
jagged-chisel wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … the ability to boot an arbitrary OS is an intentional part of the design of M-series Macs. What? Where do you get that?

The Apple Platform Security[1] white paper describes the secure boot process for Apple silicon. The Mac boot process is significantly more configurable than the iOS boot process, and it allows operating in reduced security modes. (Including running locally signed operating systems.) Apple knows how to build an iPhone: if they wanted to lock down a Mac they would have simply done that. There's something like nine page…

I guess I'm missing something then. The Asahi blog says "Apple’s boot tooling will only work with what it considers to be a “valid” macOS installation inside an APFS container." Sounds very adversarial to "the ability to boot an arbitrary OS."

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#148

Post by LtWorf »

GTP wrote: post #110
LtWorf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the company that rescinds your contract if you exercise the rights granted to you by GPL licenses? What about it?

They still have people working on FOSS, right? I didn't know about what your saying,but if this is the problem, then what if I gave Canonical as an example?

Isn't canonical the company replacing GNU coreutils with a broken and full of CVE replacement because it doesn't have a copyleft license?

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#149

Post by simonh »

bigyabai wrote: post #138
simonh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What good does that bring if Apple shuts down the project? How could they do that? They could cease providing the facilities the project relies on in newer chips, but the existing chips, er, exist. They could stop making chips all together and go back to intel. It's not a useful hypothetical. >Also, I don't believe Apple has no backdoors and such. They basically made it impossible to be root on your iPhone, so you d…

> How could they do that? iBoot? Asahi needs iBoot to boot third-party volumes for Linux to run properly. Apple controls iBoot; if they burn an eFuse and disable third-party volumes in a "Security" update, Asahi cannot fight back. You cannot boot macOS with an unsigned iBoot firmware, so writing your own bootloader isn't an option. If a fuse is burned, you also cannot downgrade to older firmwares. The entire system i…

iBoot firmware exists and is already in our hands.

Any manufacturer could put an eFuse in any of their hardware and lock it. No hardware can be proven not to have such exploits. That's the first point marcan makes in that post.

Re: Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

#150

Post by bigyabai »

w10-1 wrote: post #146
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…

Apple open-sourced their container tooling and they also support Linux in their Virtualization framework. Anyone can run any compatible Linux now in a VM, with bare-metal speed but limited to virtio devices. To me it's baffling that more people don't run Linux this way.

> To me it's baffling that more people don't run Linux this way.

Why? People have been using Orbstack, Lima and Docker long before Apple shipped first-party container tooling. The virtualization support was never ever a problem.

For actual dedicated server usage, macOS itself is the problem. You want to be running Proxmox on baremetal, nobody wants to administer headless macOS machines by-hand.

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