Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

asahilinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 414 posts

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#161

Post by machello13 »

fsflover wrote: post #150
machello13 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that seems like a total non sequitur to me. What about that (an outage + a failure to correctly handle the outage on the clientside) suggests Apple is planning to lock down macOS like iOS, either in terms of hardware or software? Or rather, maybe you'd like to explain what you think Apple would have to gain from doing something like that?

You cannot start any non-Apple applications unless Apple explicitly allows them and keeps a list of what and when you are running. Looks totally fine...

Again, I'm having trouble making the leap from this:

"Apple checks which macOS applications I run in order to verify that the developers credentials are still valid and not expired/revoked, but only for macOS apps and not executables in general, and you can still open apps that are not signed with a Developer ID using a manual bypass" (which is certainly not ideal but seems like a reasonable security compromise. There's no evidence they're keeping a list of this information anywhere.)

to:

"Apple will lock down macOS and make it utterly impossible to run any executable or even scripting code that hasn't gone through a strict review process"

Since you're unwilling (or unable?) to explain that leap without just spouting pithy 3-word comebacks, I guess we're done :)

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#162

Post by macintux »

r00fus wrote: post #98
actuator wrote: post #40

It seems so amazing to me that Microsoft saw the ARM opportunity with Windows RT, released 8 years back but somehow managed to not succeed with a stellar ARM laptop story. Maybe Qualcomm is more to blame here for never progressing as well as Apple has done on chips but maybe the software experience was just not there. We would probably already have good ARM laptops running linux distros if Windows on ARM had taken of…

Perhaps it's because the M1 is not just a random ARM chipset. For those wondering why Apple has a market cap of $2T this may be a good reason. They have the ability to stage, time and deliver something like the M1 Mac whereas other massive corporations like Microsoft, Google, Intel, etc simply can't.

Watching Apple vs the rest of the industry when it comes to long-term strategy reminds me of Marvel vs DC in the film industry.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#163

Post by zinekeller »

nereid wrote: post #127
actuator wrote: post #40

It seems so amazing to me that Microsoft saw the ARM opportunity with Windows RT, released 8 years back but somehow managed to not succeed with a stellar ARM laptop story. Maybe Qualcomm is more to blame here for never progressing as well as Apple has done on chips but maybe the software experience was just not there. We would probably already have good ARM laptops running linux distros if Windows on ARM had taken of…

Yes, Microsoft locked the laptop to avoid Linux to be installed.

With the RT, yes it was indeed locked as the market pattern and target at the time (with iPad and Android tablets) have been to lock the system at the benefit of better curation and more integrated experience (well some will point out and argue that this was more of a lock-in, but obviously a Windows without malware was a goal also). The newer ARM attempt however were a complete reversal: Microsoft had dropped the focus on phone and (to an extent) tablet markets and even recent first-party Surface have unlockable boot systems, something that was impossible with Surface RT devices.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#164

Post by balozi »

pkulak wrote: post #92
balozi wrote: post #78

This is one of those things that sound interesting but only from a technical point. Why would anyone take on this level of risk? In a few years they will be complaining on HN about being kicked off Apple silicon.

Then just pop Mac OS back on it and sell it for 80% of it's new value. Really almost no risk at all, as far as I'm concerned.

However noble, the risk I see is for untold man-hours and resources that will be expended on an ill-fated adventure. This project requires tons of positive tech-community spirit, which apple isn't exactly known for.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#165

Post by samatman »

Wohlf wrote: post #103
midrus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst apple product is still far ahead of most non-apple alternatives. At least laptops wise.

I really don't find them any better than the competing products in the same price range these days, but you do you.

Resale value is the closest thing to an objective measure we're going to get.

The butterfly keyboard era Macs took a nosedive in this metric, because they were bad computers.

I have what turns out to be the last Intel 16" MacBook Pro which Apple will ever build. I suspect the Intel part of it will make its resale value kind of grim, but the keyboard, speakers, monitor, build quality: all great.

MacBooks traditionally resell at a significant premium, because they're good computers with a long useful life. I expect this will be true for the M-series as well, although it's too soon to know.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#166

Post by zinekeller »

marcan_42 wrote: post #137
Teknoman117 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at that Bootcamp is a BIOS emulation layer. You don't need to go through the bootcamp process to run operating systems with native EFI support such as Linux, Windows 7+, etc.

I don't think recent Intel macs even support "Boot Camp" (CSM) any more. You need to go through UEFI, Boot Camp now is just a software wizard for getting UEFI Windows installed.

You're totally correct, it is indeed just putting the drivers on the installation media and partitioning magic.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#167

Post by ogre_codes »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #153
ogre_codes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of time, money and effort invested to support a platform whos creator is unwilling to provide support. If Linux only ran on hardware which the creator was willing to provide support, Linux would not exist. Linux was created in spite of Intel, Nvidia, AMD, etc etc. Support from the makers only came later. Linux was originally an OS created by people who wanted to do things the OEMs and commercial vendors didn'…

Fully agree. Sometimes the uphill battle gets tiresome tough.

> Sometimes the uphill battle gets tiresome tough.

Yep.

Apple hiring just one engineer and giving them access to internal resources would be massive. Or just giving them an engineering contact for support.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#168

Post by benjaminl »

ksec wrote: post #136
kmeisthax wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's outright said it's a matter of Microsoft agreeing to license Windows on ARM for consumers. Right now putting Windows on an ARM Mac is about as legal as Hackintoshing.

If I remember correctly Windows on ARM is still limited to 32bit Apps. And you can actually download Windows on ARM from Microsoft Insider Preview for Free. And run it on top of Parallels Desktop 16.

Windows on ARM supports 64bit ARM apps.

What you were possibly remembering was that Windows on ARM when it was first introduced only supported emulating x86 apps. Although x64 emulation is currently in preview.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#169

Post by SXX »

blinkingled wrote: post #96

This is good of course but it's an uphill battle - just reverse engineering the Apple GPU and making a decent driver for it in itself is going to be a huge problem. Look at nouveau - we still don't have any way to reclock NVidia GPUs. Getting good experience and good battery life with reverse engineered hardware is impossible. Then there's going to be new gen hardware and firmware updates for existing ones to keep up…

On top of what Marcan posted: keep in mind that back when Nouveau development started Linux open source graphics stack was young and had no mature drivers to look at. Only in last 4 years graphics stack feature and performance parity thanks to Intel, AMD and Valve.

Today LLVM is well-developed for GPU drivers and there is tons of other ready-to-use code for OpenGL and Vulkan implementation. E.g RADV was initially created by two developers only and now it is better than AMD official Vulkan implementation.

On top of this modern GPUs are now less complex to develop drivers because they'e decoupled from display controllers and hardware no longer have fixed pipelines.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#170

Post by ogre_codes »

mhh__ wrote: post #126
ogre_codes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This took time and resources to make happen. This isn't some switch a rogue engineer pulled while management wasn't looking. Not only did it take time and effort to implement, they've also documented it. > When have Apple been open about anything recently? Darwin, WebKit, Swift, LLVM, This effort. Apple keeps iOS fairly tight the Mac, not so much.

Apple aren't upstreaming their backends to LLVM, for example

What happened to "When have they been open about anything?"

Wonderful moving goal post here.

Post reply on HN