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Asahi Linux on M3

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#221

Post by philistine »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #49
IshKebab wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect they don't actually care whether or not people run Linux on macs. I mean they used to let you run Windows! Probably the real reason is just that it's extra work - both in terms of producing the docs, and in dealing with complaints when they change things. From their point of view it's extra work with no benefit to them.

Yep, I suspect the goal is to reduce support footprint/burden to the absolute minimum possible, which is also why they don't maintain their legacy virtualization/translation layers indefinitely (Classic mode, Rosetta 1 (PPC → x86), Rosetta 2 (x86 → ARM)). The benefit is being able to make major changes, refactors, etc with relatively little delay and encumbrance. This applies on both the software and hardware layers.…

This is it; why make your own CPU, if you can't make large breaking changes because you've promised Linux support?

Apple is not interested in tying their hardware design to Linus Torvalds.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#222

Post by Danox »

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.

Darwin is out there and you too can license Arm and design something from the ground up if you have the ability and the will…

It’s all there and it’s been 25-26 years no one has bothered maybe that’s Apple is still the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s.

At one time there were many choices in hardware and OS software combined with that hardware that era is basically gone because no one wants to take the bull by the horns and do anything they want someone else to give it to them free.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#223

Post by Danox »

apatheticonion wrote: post #185
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.

I'd imagine it's for IP protection. There's a lot of documentation required to write drivers for hardware; for the GPU, they'd need to share the instruction set of the GPU along with the specifications of the controller. Lots of weird things like power management too. If shared, that's probably enough to create copycat hardware or at least an emulator. Personally, I just want to run Linux on my latest MacBook Pro on…

You can get a team together and do the work… Nothing worth doing is free.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#224

Post by Danox »

lokar wrote: post #141
juiceland wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swift, WebKit, Darwin/XNU, MLX, FoundationDB, Container, Pkl, libdispatch (GCD), CUPS, CareKit, ResearchKit, Kubernetes, Cassandra, Spark, Netty, Solr…

Sure, but other then language tools, databases, printing, container orchestration, what have the Roman’s ever done for us?

If you have the will, and the knowledge all of those tools can be used to your advantage but no one has for the most part they want someone else to do it for them for free.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#225

Post by Danox »

philistine wrote: post #221
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I suspect the goal is to reduce support footprint/burden to the absolute minimum possible, which is also why they don't maintain their legacy virtualization/translation layers indefinitely (Classic mode, Rosetta 1 (PPC → x86), Rosetta 2 (x86 → ARM)). The benefit is being able to make major changes, refactors, etc with relatively little delay and encumbrance. This applies on both the software and hardware layers.…

This is it; why make your own CPU, if you can't make large breaking changes because you've promised Linux support? Apple is not interested in tying their hardware design to Linus Torvalds.

Why would they? Linux on the desktop still has trouble with user friendliness for the general computer using public.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#226

Post by cozzyd »

GeekyBear wrote: post #166
cute_boi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Clang, OpenCL, MLX

Don't they ship a propetietary clang variant with weirdass version numbers? That was true at least at some point. Fortunately most Mac users on my experiments have given up attempting to compile any code in their Macs after SIP etc made it too annoying so rarely have to support them anymore.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#227

Post by jjtheblunt »

vlovich123 wrote: post #47
jjtheblunt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have no idea how you think apple silicon will discontinue support for itself. the hypervisor framework documentation, that i linked above, is pretty clear; the linux builds for arm run extremely fast on apple silicon because hypervisor framework gives them hardware access, in some subsystems directly (memory mapping for example), in other systems through a shim (graphics hardware).

Apple discontinues support for this HW, not Apple discontinues support for running Linux in a hypervisor.

when apple discontinues support for older hardware, it doesn't get OS software updates. that doesn't disable the hardware from running the latest OS before OS updates for the hardware were ended. On the frozen-in-time OS, you'd still have a working instance of apple silicon hypervisor wrapping optimized drivers that make whatever linux arm build you're running still see the hardware.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#228

Post by Danox »

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…

The 1980s was filled with many companies that made the operating system and the hardware, Apple is basically the last vertical company left from that era. Why would they sacrifice that?

Many of those companies from the 1980s were very very good companies, but they gave up in the face of Wintel, Sun, SGI, Digital, Acorn (Arm processor), Amiga, Atari, etc… I would take any of those systems updated to today over Linux.

Only Apple with a mad man at the controls was able to survive (no Microsoft isn’t the reason). I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when Intel said no to designing iPhone chips and then Steve Jobs still mad told his manager group that we have to design a new processor in house that would’ve been interesting, of course everyone in the room probably, said it can’t be done and many are probably saying the same thing about in house memory today which needs to be done.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#229

Post by Danox »

ajross wrote: post #36
smashed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple silicon is winning in performance and power consumption. It's not quite the same as the old Intel based generation, where they were more like premium/well built machines with good screens and hardware. Now some people would like to use that top of the line Apple silicon but without MacOS that comes with it. I doubt this is a huge threat to apple but it's also not a huge market for them. From what I understand t…

> It's not quite the same as the old Intel based generation, where they were more like premium/well built machines with good screens and hardware. Not sure what generation you're talking about? Intel c. 18-25 years ago was wildly ahead on everything, much more so than Apple is now, in fact.[1] Apple Computer, quite famously, straight up abandoned their previous CPU architecture and started shipping Intel chips just t…

Intel have a chance to be relevant today, but they couldn’t imagine a future with smaller better faster, computers the same applies to IBM and Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois. They just couldn’t imagine anything beyond.

Intel was asked to design a chip for a new smartphone. They said no, which was the end…

Note: Intel and Microsoft have trouble competing when the playing field is level.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#230

Post by Danox »

bayindirh wrote: post #144
fsckboy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their Silicon was written to be OS agnostic, Apple's was not. i don't think that's accurate. the M series chips and memory architecture enable capabilities for the OS software to take advantage of, and the software and hardware teams get to collaborate to be ready for a simultaneously launch, but nothing about that is macos specific, just that they're on the same side of a walled garden.

Apple silicon has features specifically designed for macOS or software running on macOS. e.g.: Rosetta 2. From Wikipedia: One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the M1 SoC.[12] The SoC also has dedicated instructions for computing x86 flags. So, Apple always adds one more thing to their hardware to enable their magic. [0]:…

The reason Apple has the in house ability to run on multiple chip systems is because of their history going all the way back to Next and that little handheld from the early 1990s under Scully and all their work with Motorola and IBM over the years, that ability is what separates them from Microsoft who is having trouble getting Windows working with multiple CPU chips. Apple is simply better at it.
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