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macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

phoronix.com

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Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#111

The comments there are absolutely insane lol, especially now that we know it's a bug. I did not realize that some people were still so anti-Apple. I'm of course not saying that there's not a small element of truth in many of the comments, but talk about some straw man arguments.

I did not realize all the tech companies had completely changed their behaviors to be granted the benefit of the doubt.

Sure they don't do EVERYTHING we think they do, but they do so much, and so much more we DON'T know about...

Anyway, Apple could help the Linux team in months to close huge amounts of functionality gaps but ... they don't.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#113
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are specialized in running macOS and its app ecosystem and integrating with other Apple devices. Apple don't advertise Linux compatibility.

So what you're saying is it would be acceptable for Microsoft and PC manufacturers to lock down their hardware to running Windows only? Most ship with Windows so why not?

[deleted]

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#114
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Secure Enclave is equivalent to a PC's TPM AMD PSP is little more than an embedded TPM. The capabilities are significantly different vs. Intel ME.

> AMD PSP is little more than an embedded TPM Again, you've got some reading to do. > the subsystem is "responsible for creating, monitoring and maintaining the security environment" and "its functions include managing the boot process, initializing various security related mechanisms, and monitoring the system for any type of activity or events and implementing an appropriate response". Critics worry it can be used…

Now explain to me how Apple's Secure Enclave does not do this:

> the subsystem is "responsible for creating, monitoring and maintaining the security environment" and "its functions include managing the boot process, initializing various security related mechanisms, and monitoring the system for any type of activity or events and implementing an appropriate response".

It implements TPM or something similar. It is used in the boot process for a secure boot chain. And the last generic point is probably just that it implements the hardware random number generator for the CPU, which Secure Enclave also does (in a different way).

I could worry about Secure Enclave being used as a backdoor and being a security concern, too. Doesn't mean it actually is!

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#115
post #6

I wish the EU would regulate this kind of stuff. A consumer shouldn't be restricted from installing their own OS on a device that they bought, be it a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or server. A company the size of Apple should also be required to release proper documentation that enables the porting of operating systems to these kinds of devices. The reverse engineering work that the Asahi team did is remarkab…

There was a brief period of time where you could buy your car like this. You'd purchase a rolling chassis from one manufacturer, and commission a coachbuilder to put a body on top. Many premium brands such as Bugatti, Rolls-Royce and Jaguar (Swallow) started in this fashion.

Today, outside of a few niche areas such as motorsport and commercial uses such as buses and coaches, nobody buys a vehicle this way. If you walked into your local Ford or Toyota and asked for a rolling chassis they would look at you as if you were insane, and rightly so. Integrating the development of the chassis and body into a single unit (both philosophically and literally [0]) has given us cars which are lighter, faster, more efficient, more featureful and safer by every measure.

We had our coachbuilding period in personal computing and it's all but over[1]. Nobody asks for the hardware and operating system to be sold separately for their washing machine, their TV, their microwave oven, PlayStation or Tesla EV. And yet for some reason some still cling to the idea that tablets and smartphones are personal computers rather than recognising them for the appliances they are.

As Steve Jobs allegedly said, design is not how something looks, design is how something works. How a feature works on a highly evolved device like an iPhone is a function of tightly coupled and carefully designed hardware and software.

Having this design process take place in different teams inside different companies, selling in different commercial models would not lead to a better outcome, it would be worse, much worse. The staggering commercial success of both iPhone and iPad is all the proof you need.

If hobbyists want to hobby, more power to them! But it's not something any government needs to regulate into existence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_frame#Unibody

[1] Servers/Linux are the commercial vehicles in this analogy

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#116
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, your “us” is not very big compared to your “not us.” I like Linux as a server OS (and would pick it over Windows or MacOS for that any day of the week that ends in y), but as a desktop OS it’s just more work than I care to exert (in fact, Windows also exceeds my tolerance for fiddliness in a desktop OS). My general preference is for “you don’t have to” over “you can” as much as possible which is th…

macOS and Windows are both such a chore for development, though. WSL was the closest I got to an "it just works" dev environment, but it exposes just how bad native toolchains like Cygwin and git bash are. macOS is hardly any better, and once you manage to install all of the GNU utilities it just feels like a poorly-supported Linux distro. It's a bunch of wasted effort to imitate a fraction of Linux's power. So what…

I don’t use Windows so I don’t have advertisements on my desktop. I have had very little friction with using MacOS for development.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#117

The comments there are absolutely insane lol, especially now that we know it's a bug. I did not realize that some people were still so anti-Apple. I'm of course not saying that there's not a small element of truth in many of the comments, but talk about some straw man arguments.

I did not realize all the tech companies had completely changed their behaviors to be granted the benefit of the doubt. Sure they don't do EVERYTHING we think they do, but they do so much, and so much more we DON'T know about... Anyway, Apple could help the Linux team in months to close huge amounts of functionality gaps but ... they don't.

I am not (purposefully) granting them the benefit of the doubt.

In my comment I simply noted that the comments there are extremely anti-Apple yet without any solid arguments behind them, and I also noted that the whole thing is just because of an APFS flag which could be fixed from Asahi's side. The main reason I made the comment is because I am shocked at how poorly backed the arguments are.

As for Apple not helping the Linux team, why would they, or any major OEM? Apple is perfectly happy with https://github.com/apple/container

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.

Yes, more weird than that. x86 PCs have fairly standardised boot and autoconfiguration (UEFI and ACPI). ARM based systems, including the Apple M series, don't. You just have to know what's there (device trees), and Apple isn't going to tell you. Hence why it's difficult to make another OS run on it, because you first need to find out what hardware's even there, and how to talk to it. It's initialised by Apple before…

It's true that UEFI and ACPI cover a lot of ground whose equivalent on Apple Silicon is undocumented. But note that Linux on x86 does still rely on lots of reverse-engineered drivers to talk to various devices - not necessarily on servers which are designed to run Linux, but very much so on desktops and (especially) laptops.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#119
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like the certification requires those UUCP binaries to be in /usr/local, that's just where you have to put them on macOS to be able to `chmod +s` them, which is what the certification actually requires. Less arbitrary, but even more clearly obsolete and bad practice for a modern OS.

Oh, that makes more sense. I'm still not sure why you couldn't give the binaries setuid in their default locations, given that compliance testing also requires SIP to be disabled - but, in any case, at least they aren't setuid by default. Anyways, "real UNIX systems must implement UUCP" is still extremely silly.

Disabling SIP still leaves the root filesystem as read-only and signature-checked (this is referred to as SSV, 'signed system volume'). There is a separate command to disable SSV, but it breaks the ability to install OS updates and is rarely used. /usr/local is one of the paths that's redirected to the read-write data volume.

Re: macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M series macs are weird tho, yes the bootloader allows it but absolutely no documentation on the hardware, drivers etc. Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes, but for development purposes(and ye they could hide the feature behind apple account with paid dev license) or anti-anti-trust measures à-la Google with Firefox: in front of a jury of normal people they can simply sa…

> M series macs are weird More weird than the opaque Management Engines on Intel or AMD chips that can take full control of your system at any time that you have no control over? > Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes Apple has explicitly stated that allowing third party OSes is exactly the purpose of the new bootloader.

Did Apple state it? I remember it was one of the lead engineers who worked on Apple Silicon, which I guess could count as an Apple statement
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