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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

#121

Post by p0w3n3d »

inventor7777 wrote: post #107

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.

This is defence mechanism I guess.

People were screwed so many times by so many companies, they have been taught the hard way to behave like that: either make a lot of noise and hate in the first stage, or just agree that some functionality has been removed to milk more money etc.

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

#122

Post by zarzavat »

hollow-moe wrote: post #35
GeekyBear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple designed a bootloader for Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to run an unsigned OS without degrading security when you boot into MacOS. This wasn't an accident. Macs have always allowed you to run another OS. iDevices have always had a locked bootloader. People shouldn't confuse the two.

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…

That's just a normal part of Mac development. Apple sees documentation as a net negative for them, something that can constrain them in the future. So they only document the major highways and leave everything else as an exercise to the reader.

If you're using an unstable API they expect you to figure everything out yourself. It doesn't mean that they don't want you to use it though.

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

#123

Post by joelthelion »

hollow-moe wrote: post #35
GeekyBear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple designed a bootloader for Apple Silicon Macs that allows you to run an unsigned OS without degrading security when you boot into MacOS. This wasn't an accident. Macs have always allowed you to run another OS. iDevices have always had a locked bootloader. People shouldn't confuse the two.

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…

> Can't help but to think the goal of this wasn't to actually allow third-party OSes, but for development purposes

Could also be pretending to be open while making sure nothing dangerous actually gets made.

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

#124

Post by bigyabai »

inventor7777 wrote: post #117
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When Microsoft futzes with the MBR and locks out Linux users, we complain. When Apple futzes with the APFS partition flags, we complain. It's not that hard to understand.

> why would they, or any major OEM?

Apple Silicon doesn't expose any obvious ACPI-equivalent power management interface. Apple could very easily document that hardware without exposing proprietary devicetree drivers, but someone internally must love watching Asahi users suffer through cpuidle. There isn't likely to be advanced power management drivers for Apple Silicon on Linux within this decade.

At the very least, I think it's fair to expect Apple to document breaking iBoot changes. They don't have to, but they feed a dog's dinner to their power users when they don't.

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

#125

Post by lathiat »

antonkochubey wrote: post #95
amiga386 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>ARM based systems, including the Apple M series, don't. You're thinking of old SBCs, most likely. ARM SystemReady devices (which is a requirement for Thunderbolt 4+ on ARM, so Macs are included) have +/- same level of auto-configuration and hardware resource discovery as x86 PCs.

Most of the ARM Servers support this, in any case.

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

#126

Post by adrian_b »

kjs3 wrote: post #84
vsgherzi wrote: post #10

It seems like this is a bug, apple went through the trouble to allow something like asahi to be possible in the first place. I doubt they're purposely trying to break it.

You get clicks for "Apple bad", not for "there was this boot flag and once we figured that out problem solved".

The boot flag was undocumented, like most features of Apple devices that are required knowledge for being able to port another operating system to them.

Because of this lack of documentation, every release of a new version of Apple hardware or software may require the restarting of the reverse engineering work, like in this case, just to keep working the alternative operating system.

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

#127

Post by adrian_b »

inventor7777 wrote: post #107

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.

It was not a bug, it was just another undocumented Apple feature.

However, when a company sells a device, as opposed to providing it for lease, I do not believe that it has the right to not document any feature of the device that is relevant for its usage, like it should also not have the right to impose any constraints on how the owner should use what has been bought.

Obviously, the owner of any kind of things may not use them to perform illegal acts, but that is a constraint imposed by the valid laws, not by the seller of the things.

Today, far too many companies claim to sell things, but they also attempt to control what the owner may do with them. I avoid to buy such things, but my choices are limited by those who buy them, allowing these policies to be beneficial for the sellers.

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

#128

Post by cromka »

bigyabai wrote: post #100
ajaimk wrote: post #88

It’s a beta… Apple is very pro Asahi

> Apple is very pro Asahi I don't believe that Apple has ever acknowledged the project at all, let alone promote it. Apple is neutral towards their work as far as I can tell.

> I don't believe that Apple has ever acknowledged the project at all, let alone promote it. Apple is neutral towards their work as far as I can tell.

How do you draw that conclusion based on their public indifference? If they acknowledged it and promoted, you could assume they are pro Asahi. But them not acknowledging it doesn't imply they aren't anti Asahi.

If they actually wanted that project to succeed and bring more diversity to Mac dev ecosystem, they'd help the project outright. Meanwhile they continue to exploit Linux for their dev purposes while still locking you into the macOS. This is their clear strategy, i.e. to make you continue to use macOS even when you prefer Linux as dev platform, just based on what they showed during WWDC. They aren't neutral.

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

#129

Post by cromka »

duped wrote: post #26
Teever wrote: 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…

I don't think it's unreasonable for a device manufacturer to tightly couple it to the software they design to run on it.

No one said otherwise. Apple tightly coupling macOS is not mutually exclusive with Apple publishing specs for allowing to support other OS on that hardware.

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

#130

Post by cromka »

carlosjobim wrote: post #14
Teever wrote: 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…

The EU is not some kind of god that will make others do your bidding if you pray enough to them. You've been misguided into following a false religion. For every niche thing you wish that Apple or other third parties do only for your own enjoyment, there are hundreds of millions of other people who want different niche things. Buy the products that suit your needs and wants, and companies have incentive to make them.…

> For every niche thing you wish that Apple or other third parties do only for your own enjoyment, there are hundreds of millions of other people who want different niche things.

We're talking Apple publishing specs for their hardware. That's not some "niche, particular, random" feature each persons asks for. We're all asking the same thing. Same thing that IBM did and what made the PC and IT industry as we know it.

> You've been misguided into following a false religion.

You're being misguided by your patronizing attitude.

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