Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project • Hacker News Board

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#411

Post by krunkcoin » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #348

nindalf wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teensiest bit of cooperation Apple did put in the effort to cooperate when they added support to boot other OSes. Apple hasn’t prevented anyone from running Linux, they simply haven’t written Linux drivers for their hardware or provided a manual to do so. Most of the effort in Asahi Linux is going to be writing drivers for hardware that hasn’t had Linux drivers written for it. It makes sense that a Linux driver doe…

Apple never added support to boot other OSes on arm macs.

Incorrect. Apple's original presentations on Arm Macs suggested that booting other operating systems would be supported, and recently this has been confirmed by two of the engineers who worked on it.

https://twitter.com/NikolajSchlej/status/1339790008589242369 https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914714055368704

Although you cannot turn off secure boot on Arm Macs, Apple has deliberately provided a path by which you can prove that you really want to chainload to a user provided bootloader not signed by Apple. From there, obviously, it will be possible to load the kernel of another operating system, such as Linux.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#412

Post by Grustaf » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 8:26 AM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #410

Grustaf wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying they have any moral objections to locking the macs, it just doesn’t make any financial sense. Enough people want to run windows or linux for them to make the effort to make that possible. It’s also more in the spirit of PCs to have this possibility. For phones, basically nobody wants to run android on an iphone, so it makes no sense to make it possible. Keep in mind that they don’t lock down iOS becaus…

How do you know the number of people that want this, and how large is the number of 'enough', and what other numbers come in to play? (Number of incidents, number of happy users, number of systems to support, number of binaries to consider during upgrades, number of sales... and is 'enough' a percentage? An absolute number? And how high does it need to be? And to what degree does it need to align with the goals of th…

My argument is that Apple wouldn’t be losing money by allowing people to install Linux on macs, it’s not about “preventing people from using macs without paying for iCloud”.

But in general, running Windows or Linux on macs is not uncommon, it’s definitely not just for hackers.

I don’t have any numbers at all but I’m sure nobody would doubt that it is orders of magnitude more common than people wanting to run homemade OSs on iphones.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#413

Post by vaxman » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #276

vaxman wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This project is obviously a farce, but I would not say Apple is against Linux insofar as supporting it on the backend. Their own backends are designed for raytracing/render farms and will probably always run macOS though.

Why is it a farce? I don't get what you mean. Hector Martin is really good. Of course it might not actually go anywhere, it doesn't even have a commit yet, literally just a logo and webpage, but let's see.

Look up actual dictionary definition of “farce”

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#414

Post by mtrower » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

jd3 wrote: post #235

wmf wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darwin isn't a good OS.

Fair point! I guess what I'm getting at is the fact that, even though Darwin isn't great, we know that it's building and running on all production M1 macs, can run X11, etc. which generally seems like what this project is attempting to do. I'm not a systems software engineer[0], so I'm not positive where the new drivers live for the M1 (are they in Darwin? proprietary/exclusive to macOS?), but if those drivers are av…

This is actually a really good point; I tend to forget about Darwin. If I was in a situation where I owned Apple Silicon, I'd definitely want to look into this. While I have my own flavor preferences, I'm generally happy to work in whatever Unix environment is available to me. Thanks for bringing this up; it may become important to me in the future.

But wmf is right; a critical mass of people want Linux and accept no substitutes. To a lot of people, especially younger folks, "Unix" means Linux, and that's that.