Live data from Hacker News

Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

asahilinux.org

51–60 of 242 posts

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#52
post #41
post #38

> Please stop Thinking Different Considering how much better m-series CPUs are, i’d say actually keep thinking different.

AFAWK, M6 CPU is a die shrink of M5, so unless something M7 present that will significantly improve CPU performance. The ARM C1 CPU core that is available to everyone has pretty much matched up to Apple. And that is all things included from performance, power, die size etc.

Can you just use normal acronyms instead of something like AFAWK? Why not AFAIK? Do I need to know every acronym there is on the internet?

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#53

Everyone is free to work on whatever they want, but... I wish the amount of time and brain power spent on this project was instead used to work on something more friendly to the Linux community. For example to improve Strix Halo GPU and NPU support.

People who work on Asahi want exactly that - working on black box hardware with no specification.

Most likely they just not interested in working on well maintained drivers that require 1000 times more effort to upstream code.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#54

Is Asahi an LLM-hostile project? I'd imagine this is something that would be benefitted tremendously with a Fable class model

Using LLMs in a project like this is also somewhat illegal, because LLMs may have inside information about apple devices and it's not allowed to use it.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#55

Is Asahi an LLM-hostile project? I'd imagine this is something that would be benefitted tremendously with a Fable class model

Using LLMs in a project like this is also somewhat illegal, because LLMs may have inside information about apple devices and it's not allowed to use it.

do you have a source for this? it doesn't really make sense to me

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#56
post #26
post #21

I have immense respect for the incredible work that the Asahi team does, but at the rate that Intel and AMD have been catching up on power efficiency I wonder whether anyone will really _have_ to run Linux on M series laptops. There was a clear case for it back when Apple silicon absolutely dominated anything else you could buy but with Panther Lake I'm not so sure that Apple's lead will continue to be big enough to…

But, power efficiency isn't the primary reason I'd like Apple hardware with linux software. Display quality, trackpad quality, overall form factor, and very high RAM space in a laptop would be the primary reasons I'd go with Asahi Linux.

This is exactly why I run asahi. There really is not a laptop that comes close to the hardware quality of an apple laptop. I have even sacrificed x86 at the altar which is a much bigger step than battery life imo.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#57
post #28
post #21

I have immense respect for the incredible work that the Asahi team does, but at the rate that Intel and AMD have been catching up on power efficiency I wonder whether anyone will really _have_ to run Linux on M series laptops. There was a clear case for it back when Apple silicon absolutely dominated anything else you could buy but with Panther Lake I'm not so sure that Apple's lead will continue to be big enough to…

> wait several years for full Linux hardware compatibility I'm not convinced it's only "several years". Asahi was launched in January 2021. So 5 and a half years ago. Asahi, as far as I can tell, supports most of M1 and M2 features, so generations launched in November 2020 (6 years ago) and June 2022 (4 years ago). I would be very surprised if a decade from now the story won't still be the same thing: 90% of features…

> 90% of features for systems half a decade old

This can be a good tradeoff. An M1 Ultra still runs circles around 90% of consumer hardware sold today, and with Linux it has easily another 10+ years. Now support for M3 is coming.

> Asahi is doing incredible work but it's still 5 people in a garage vs the huge corporation.

Not sure why the "vs" scenario, this is a project that makes no promises. And I think they do have some support from Fedora / Red Hat fwiw.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#58

Everyone is free to work on whatever they want, but... I wish the amount of time and brain power spent on this project was instead used to work on something more friendly to the Linux community. For example to improve Strix Halo GPU and NPU support.

I agree with this sentiment. If someone wants to do a bunch of reverse engineering, maybe they could try to get full mainline support for older Qualcomm mobile phone/tablet SoCs and minimize/get rid of BLOBs?

All the fun of reverse engineering and we know the processors already run Linux...

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#59

Is Asahi an LLM-hostile project? I'd imagine this is something that would be benefitted tremendously with a Fable class model

Using LLMs in a project like this is also somewhat illegal, because LLMs may have inside information about apple devices and it's not allowed to use it.

That's nonsense, then it would also be somewhat illegal to use it inside Apple, being trained on GPL licensed code (and it's not even a possibility here but a known fact)

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at the rate that Intel and AMD have been catching up on power efficiency Have they? What AMD or Intel laptop with Linux on it can hold a candle to and M4 air or an M4max pro? Genuinely curious, cause I found none...

No idea but my Framework 12 goes for days without charging. I really haven't seen any real world need for M chips. Granted Im not compiling large projects on a train all day but who is.

raises hand, but point taken when painting with broad strokes
Post reply on HN