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Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple saves itself a lot of the trouble with superior build quality. With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use. With my old iPhone 12, 2019 16-inch MBP or my 2022 MBA? Not a single issue. The housing is simply constructed so tight and, being made of solid metal, rigid that the housing bears the torsion load and not the tiny PCB solder pads. The only problem I have with…

> With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use. What are you doing to these machines?! I work in the safety and security biz, including in the field , and my trusty HP EliteBook 2730p is still rocking along on its first USB ports. That machine is over 15 bloody years old!

That is a convertible laptop that meets MIL-STD-810F standards on vibration resistance, it’s not really a fair comparison. Also, the change from dedicated charge ports to USB-C charging increased USB port usage considerably.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#152
post #5

> Thanks to the combined efforts of mildsunrise and chaos_princess, we discovered that ACE3 has pretty much the same register set as CD3217, only wrapped in a SPMI interface instead of addressed over I2C. Both the SPMI interface and ACE3 itself are now working in Asahi Linux, bringing USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt support to all M3 series devices. When I got my M3 Pro MBP, I got it with the intention of eventually installi…

> other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life. Then why bother installing a different OS?

There might be no reason while the hardware is latest and greatest, but installing a different OS can keep old hardware going for longer. My 2014 Macbook Pro is uncomfortably slow on the last supported MacOS but works perfectly fine when running the latest Fedora.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#153
post #135
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of how open source development works, right? We buy hardware and we use software people wrote for free. What am I missing?

A lot of hardware gets Linux support because the hardware manufacturer itself (Intel, AMD, Mediatek, NXP, Marvell, etc) takes responsibility for writing and upstreaming Linux drivers. This is how companies like Lenovo or Dell can offer systems with Linux preinstalled.

Sure.

When you make a big chunk of your revenue selling Enterprise Servers, you can no longer rely on drivers written by volunteer labor, as they did in the past.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#154
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…

Yeah, I'm optimistic we're getting really close to "forever laptops" once competing hardware catches up on efficiency.

What do I need any higher specs for, other than battery life?

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Unfortunately, the state of non-Apple hardware makes your parent’s comment a defensible position. Btw, using Linux in general means having “some unpaid volunteer do it for you”

I'm using Intel Thinkpad. And I'm pretty sure that Intel does a good amount of work upstreaming Intel support in Linux. So I'm not sure that using Linux in general means having some unpaid volunteer do it for you. In fact I believe that most Linux development nowadays is pretty far from unpaid volunteer work.

Regarding state of non-Apple hardware. Well, my laptop just works. Literally zero hardware or compatibility issues. Maybe Macbook is faster in artificial benchmarks, but in my day to day usage, Thinkpad is more than fast enough.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#156
post #5

> Thanks to the combined efforts of mildsunrise and chaos_princess, we discovered that ACE3 has pretty much the same register set as CD3217, only wrapped in a SPMI interface instead of addressed over I2C. Both the SPMI interface and ACE3 itself are now working in Asahi Linux, bringing USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt support to all M3 series devices. When I got my M3 Pro MBP, I got it with the intention of eventually installi…

> other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life. Then why bother installing a different OS?

Or why bother buying an expensive machine in the first place...

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#157
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…

Intel has stopped pushing clock speeds to such ridiculous extremes, so battery life is getting better.

However they still have to nail single core performance on chips that can operate without a fan before they can be said to have caught up.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#158
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of hardware gets Linux support because the hardware manufacturer itself (Intel, AMD, Mediatek, NXP, Marvell, etc) takes responsibility for writing and upstreaming Linux drivers. This is how companies like Lenovo or Dell can offer systems with Linux preinstalled.

Sure. When you make a big chunk of your revenue selling Enterprise Servers, you can no longer rely on drivers written by volunteer labor, as they did in the past.

You don't need to write performant 3D graphics drivers for servers. Intel, AMD, Nvidia does it anyway. Apple is the only Linux-hostile company.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#159
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: OSX has the only sane copy paste shortcuts. The linux standard of "sometimes ctrl-c/v, sometimes shift-ctrl-c/v, and if you mess up you might kill your task" is preposterous.

Ctrl/Shift+Insert are the actual standard, from IBM's CUA.

I know those from growing up with QBASIC and EDIT.COM, but I think the only software I've used that actually supports them is the Windows conhost (the default UI for command-line apps).

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use. What are you doing to these machines?! I work in the safety and security biz, including in the field , and my trusty HP EliteBook 2730p is still rocking along on its first USB ports. That machine is over 15 bloody years old!

That is a convertible laptop that meets MIL-STD-810F standards on vibration resistance, it’s not really a fair comparison. Also, the change from dedicated charge ports to USB-C charging increased USB port usage considerably.

> Also, the change from dedicated charge ports to USB-C charging increased USB port usage considerably.

I never needed one, but a good USB-C adapter (or maybe even small dock) with power passthrough should solve this. Burning through whole machines because a single USB-C port cakes out after just three years is an awful lot of waste.

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