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Asahi Linux on M3

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#81

Post by GeekyBear »

izacus wrote: post #58
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they can just share a pdf. I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You hav…

> I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open. Oh please - Apple provided a full suite of Bootcamp drivers for their hardware just a couple of years ago, not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.

In the beginning, Bootcamp had a real job.

It allowed a machine running Intel's EFI firmware (as Intel Macs have always done) to boot an OS that only understood the older BIOS standard.

Once Microsoft and the various PC vendors started supporting UEFI directly, Bootcamp was just a bundle of existing Windows drivers from the component vendors.

If you put a specific Broadcom Wi-Fi chip in the Mac, Bootcamp included Broadcom's Windows driver that was best suited for that chip.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#82

Post by oblio »

Aurornis wrote: post #52
whatever1 wrote: post #5

Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.

> when they can just share a pdf. I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You hav…

> The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny.

Right now, yes. But Linux support is like freedom of speech in a dictatorship.

Everyone makes fun of it and says it's useless but fundamentally the powers that be are deathly afraid of it ever turning the tide.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#83

Post by BloodyIron »

bigyabai wrote: post #56
Krish1577 wrote: post #2

Reverse-engineering Apple's custom silicon is basically the modern equivalent of repairing a spaceship while it's actively launching. Incredible work by the Asahi team!

Makes you wonder who's choice it was to launch a half-finished rocket. AMD and Intel's rockets sit on the launch pad with GPU/CPU drivers shipped for Linux before T-10.

Their Silicon was written to be OS agnostic, Apple's was not.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#85

Post by smith7018 »

oblio wrote: post #82
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they can just share a pdf. I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You hav…

> The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny. Right now, yes. But Linux support is like freedom of speech in a dictatorship. Everyone makes fun of it and says it's useless but fundamentally the powers that be are deathly afraid of it ever turning the tide.

Sure but that's not really their point. They're not saying that Linux is a joke nor that it's useless; they're saying that the amount of people installing Linux on their Macs is so small that it wouldn't make financial sense for Apple to support them. Knowing how much an engineer gets paid, even staffing a small team to supporting Linux would cost Apple a couple million each year. That's not even taking support into account.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#86

Post by wat10000 »

ajross wrote: post #15
whatever1 wrote: post #5

Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.

> Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? Because then they'll have to compete with Linux, which opens them up to someone else making a cheaper computer that does the same stuff. I mean, I'm typing this on a junky Raptor Lake laptop I found on eBay for $220. Would I buy a Neo or MBP to replace it just to run the same software stack? Probably not. If you believe OS X is the best environment and…

How does providing the specs to run Linux on a MacBook open them them up to competition from junky used eBay laptops?

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#87

Post by wat10000 »

izacus wrote: post #59
BowBun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, not sure why you are being downvoted. Contribute to open source with the energy you have to call out missing features.

Apple could contribute as well, like Intel does for their Thunderbolt controllers. Why are you demanding a user does that for free instead of the big corp that made the platform?

The platform already supports it.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#89

Post by mikestew »

cute_boi wrote: post #67
robertoandred wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a long long history of supporting open source.

can you please tell us what have they done for open source except LLVM.

Probably took me less time to search “Apple open source” and click the first link than it did to type your question:

https://opensource.apple.com/

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#90

Post by smith7018 »

bel8 wrote: post #66
biorach wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here. The person you're replying to didn't say that. Please don't misrepresent and please keep it respectful

Regardless, saying it would be too much effort for Apple is laughable at best. Even more so when Apple used to release such docs in the past when it was much less financially capable. They just don't care.

Bootcamp on Intel Macs was a different story because Apple's hardware was mostly an assortment of other vendors' hardware (with some custom components and set up). That means they could bundle drivers for Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, Realtek, Marvell, Synaptics, etc plus a couple of their own (the camera, the touchpad, the mouse, etc) and call it a day. Since the hardware was x86-64 it mostly just worked. That's an immensely different world from their custom hardware. They would need to write Linux drivers for all of their networking chips, each of their processors, their GPUs, work around Linux/Windows' 16KB memory page issues, their neural engines, the SEP, their DCP, the interrupt controller, IOMMU, their custom storage drivers, etc. You're vastly underselling or misunderstanding the size of the situation.

They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.

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