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Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#321
post #320
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was on tons user oriented distros.

This is the era where I was the lead on Ubuntu laptop support, and I promise you that dmix was not a trivial option to make things work out of the box.

I always had some Knoppix live CD/DVD which had better defaults than Ubuntu itself on hardware autodetection and setup. I think they used kudzu from RH for a good while plus custom patches.

Bear in mind the Knoppix creator had a blind wife, up to the point to creating A.R.I.A.N.E, one of the best distros for the blind (and it was merged with main KNOPPIX, making the distro one of the best accesible ones out there). Thus, proper audio mixing was mandatory.

With the bundled installer you could install it to as a Debian Testing install in the spot. As I didn't have internet at home, I remember using Knoppix before Debian Sarge because it had a huge amount of things to play and test without worrying about odd hardware setups.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#322
post #279

I really dislike Mac OS. When is Asahi likely to be viable as a daily OS?

I'll put it to you like this: if the current state is not viable for you, then it's possible that it will never be ready.

Fair enough.

I think I'm going back to Linux when this laptop is no longer functioning.

Maybe I'll be returning to Lenovo.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many audio resampling libraries available that can convert from 44.1 to 48 kHz with no perceptible quality loss. E.g. see https://github.com/hasenbanck/resampler#quality-analysis This is presumably what Apple does. You kind of have to anyway or you have the stupid situation Linux used to have where only one app could play audio at a time.

> you have the stupid situation Linux used to have where only one app could play audio at a time When was that? I think my first Linux distribution was Ubuntu 8.04 and fairly sure it shipped with PulseAudio which in mind always been able to play audio from multiple sources at the same time, maybe I misremember?

There was a time when OSS was the only option and ALSA was rarely supported by software. ALSA's dmix also didn't exist from the start.

Around 2000 I was only able to play sound from different apps because my soundcard exposed two sound devices /dev/dsp0 and /dev/dsp1

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have the stupid situation Linux used to have where only one app could play audio at a time When was that? I think my first Linux distribution was Ubuntu 8.04 and fairly sure it shipped with PulseAudio which in mind always been able to play audio from multiple sources at the same time, maybe I misremember?

If you have two audio streams, you can't play them as is on the audio device, you have to mix them together. The same happens with analog speakers as you can't just add two signals together. I believe at one point with Alsa, when an application takes control of the audio device, no one else could play with it. Now Alsa comes with dmix (a digital mixer feature) enabled in its default configuration, so two applications…

Well, good enough it you read the OpenBSD FAQ section on Multimeda for RT throughput and the like.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#325
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As used by commercial hardware and software vendors, "support" can mean anything from "we'll come fix it for you when it breaks, or your money back" to merely "theoretically, it should work, and we won't get in the way of you trying". Likewise, "unsupported" can mean anything from "don't complain to us if it doesn't work" to "we're going to spend significant engineering effort to prevent it from working". A stance of…

We're talking about "people walking into Genius Bar expecting help with Linux" support. It's not philosophical discussion on what support is, there's literally a specific thing discussed here.

That's one of the several forms of support under discussion, under the specious claim that it would become the expected level of support as soon as Apple declared any level of support for Linux. But as the comments you're refusing to understand have explained, Apple could meaningfully "support" Linux in the form of providing hardware documentation, without making any promises to help any customers troubleshoot Linux running on that hardware.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#326
post #321
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the era where I was the lead on Ubuntu laptop support, and I promise you that dmix was not a trivial option to make things work out of the box.

I always had some Knoppix live CD/DVD which had better defaults than Ubuntu itself on hardware autodetection and setup. I think they used kudzu from RH for a good while plus custom patches. Bear in mind the Knoppix creator had a blind wife, up to the point to creating A.R.I.A.N.E, one of the best distros for the blind (and it was merged with main KNOPPIX, making the distro one of the best accesible ones out there). T…

Some of the context here is that that at the time, Ubuntu was aiming to work on as close to 100% of existing PCs as possible to make it available to the largest number of users. Knoppix had a lot of great features and also was very opinionated, and that had an influence on the set of hardware it worked well on by default. I evaluated basically every decision made there in terms of whether Ubuntu should adopt the same ones, and there were several that were just not good choices in terms of supporting the widest set of hardware possible.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#328
post #301
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am baffled by how people commonly parrot that flawed logic. Hint: by not seeling those laptops to Linux users they're not making money at all, neither on hardware nor on services.

By selling laptops to users who will never spend on highly profitable recurring revenue stream Apple would be depleting precious Ram stock for tiny one time profit.

So you're suggesting company would rather not sell a product now but rather wait until a "proper" Apple customer is ready for an upgrade? Product that has a significant profit margin upfront?

Also, have you heard about Apple's multi-billion RAM contracts they sign every few years to lock in the prices and supply?

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#329
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean so could any other hardware vendor? No Mac in history has been locked down in the way you describe, and there's really no indication that Apple would start now. If they were ever going to, the ARM transition would've been the perfect time to do it, yet they invested engineering resources into adding support for booting non-Apple kernels into their bootloader. They could of course release a new line of laptops…

Most hardware vendors don’t make operating systems, so they are not incentivized to limit what software can run on the hardware. For example, intel and AMD contribute a lot of code and engineering hours to open source projects because they WANT people to be able to run that software on their hardware.

What you're saying is true for phones too, yet phone manufacturers lock down their hardware to only allow it to run Google's operating system. The argument that "hardware manufacturers live by selling hardware and don't care what software customers run as long as it's on their hardware" clearly doesn't work.

But if you truly do believe that's a good argument, consider Microsoft's position. They wouldn't want you to run non-Windows operating systems and hold considerable power over the Windows PC ecosystem.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

#330
post #198
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple hardware margins are healthy enough that selling macbooks to linux users is pure profit, so no services lock-in needed. What do you mean by needed? A lock-in is more profitable so is needed to maximise profits.

> What do you mean by needed? A lock-in is more profitable so is needed to maximise profits. You can't lock-in Linux users because vast majority of them won't switch to macOS and ecosystem at large. This is simply a currently untapped market they could easily almost entirely own if they wanted to. With growing Linux popularity, extra 3-4% of the laptop market share is nothing they can ignore in front of shareholders.

I am not convinced they would "entirely own" the market - they have a small range of hardware. Even less so in the long term. That extra few percentage points would be a lot less profitable as they would only have the margin on extra hardware sales so would not add much to profits - not enough for shareholders to care about.

It also risks existing users switching to Linux which could be a huge loss. Apple has a very loyal user base how do not try anything else and the last thing they want to do is risk encouraging them to try alternatives. Losses could be quite significant: if an existing user switches to Linux not only might you lose software and services sales, but you also risk losing future hardware sales (longer replacement cycle, and no barrier to switching to other hardware).

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