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

Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

asahilinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 218 posts

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#51

Post by sys_64738 »

wronglebowski wrote: post #6
hbbio wrote: post #3

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

I do wonder what Apple will do if this gets any sort of traction. I fear they only allow disabling of secure boot/other OS installs due to fear of regulation. Apple wants you running their OS and in their walled garden.

Nothing. Most Mac users are not buying from Apple to run vendor unsupported OSs. It really doesn't matter to corporate Apple what is going on other than to make sure technical documentation isn't leaked.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#52

Post by tcmart14 »

marcan_42 wrote: post #40
LeonM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get your expectations up too high. My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux, and has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt, the external dock, HDMI port, audio and WiFi. For example: when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. BMC support seems problemati…

> My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux I ran the M1 Pro for a whole day during early testing without charging (because we hadn't initialized the USB-C port yet) and didn't even run out of battery. And I didn't even have the power management driver running yet. > has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt We'll see how that goes, but I get the feeling Apple's Thunderbolt controllers are going to be a l…

Love the work! One request though, could future progress reports include a little bit about the work being done for OpenBSD also? I know there is someone on the team who is working on the porting effort to Linux, but is also working on OpenBSD concurrently. Thank you!

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#53

Post by sys_64738 »

retskrad wrote: post #7

Alder Lake, Intel's flagship dekstop class CPU, is only 10-15% faster than the M1 Pro/M1 Max in CPU performance but it requires an insane amount of cooling and the power consumption is frankly ridiculous. Seems like Apple Silion will be 5 years ahead of the competition - similar to how long it took for others to catch up with the first iPhone.

Performance per Watt only matters to Intel when they are leading. Otherwise they brute force to be "fastest". I think that the ARM in Macs is on a different trajectory than Intel. The battery life along in an ARM based Mac is second to none. That's more important to most folks, IMO.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#54

Post by sys_64738 »

chewyland wrote: post #20

I have been running Ubuntu on my 14 inch Mac for a little while now and it works great. This project here is also really exciting. Also, Windows ARM with the recent updates also works well in the new base 14 inch. I've been using it daily, no issues. I have nothing but praise and swiftly switching between 3 OSs sure is neat. This computer is sooo fast. I can see myself using this Mac for many years ahead.

What is Linux graphics performance like? Can you comment on battery life also compared to the Mac OS running?

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#55

Post by marcan_42 »

LeonM wrote: post #43
marcan_42 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux I ran the M1 Pro for a whole day during early testing without charging (because we hadn't initialized the USB-C port yet) and didn't even run out of battery. And I didn't even have the power management driver running yet. > has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt We'll see how that goes, but I get the feeling Apple's Thunderbolt controllers are going to be a l…

Hi Marcan! Amazing to get a response from the man himself :) This is why I love HN. Please don't take my post too cynical, I understand how much work has already gone into getting this far, but also how hard it is to get the last 1% functionality working 'just right'. So, I am just trying to tame expectations here :-) Thanks for the great work! I enjoyed reading the progress reports, and watching the Youtube live str…

Keep in mind that "the last 1%" does not mean "horrible pain points". Will we ever get the last 1% of functionality running? Probably not; there's certainly stuff in these machines that nobody will care about enough to be worth making work (there's also stuff we already support that macOS doesn't yet, so it goes both ways!). But our goal isn't to make 100% of the features of the hardware work; it is to make all the features people expect to work work, and make them stable. We can't do everything - e.g. proper notch support depends on, well, downstream projects supporting that - but we can make it a good experience (e.g. by excluding the strip of screen containing the notch by default).

Will there be bugs? Absolutely. But hey, that's why I'm here, isn't it? Report away, I'll get it fixed :-)

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#56

Post by ur-whale »

RMPR wrote: post #9

This is great and might actually prompt me to get a Mac, as much as I like ThinkPads, this battery life is simply on another level.

> This is great and might actually prompt me to get a Mac

Before you jump in, be aware that actually installing a Linux distro on one of these is not exactly trivial (and many "guides" out there are outdated).

[EDIT]: as a matter of fact, I've been browsing the Asahi site for a "howto install asahi", and there's basically no such thing.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#57

Post by cassianoleal »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10
hbbio wrote: post #3

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

I have replaced my Core i9 with 32Gb RAM with an M1 Air with 16Gb RAM and couldn't be happier.

I work as a platform engineer, code mostly in Go and Python, run VMs and containers as well as some crappy resource-hungry apps like Slack and Signal all day long, and have never felt the need for more RAM on this machine.

YMMV, of course, but 16Gb on an Apple Silicon machine takes you a lot farther than you would imagine. I have co-workers who go by daily with 8Gb M1 machines.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#58

Post by kreetx »

yosito wrote: post #4

As a Linux user coming from Mac, I'm super excited about this, since Apple's hardware is some of the best. As a web application developer and Linux newbie, I don't feel like I have the expertise to be able to contribute to this, but I wish I did.

I don't think being even a linux "old-timer" would help with the low-level stuff that they are doing.

(As the sibling) Supporting on Patreon is what hopefully gets us what we want quicker :)

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#59

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

hpen wrote: post #45
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is. I could understand 20% more, but not two times. Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market. They simply will never be mainstream. My answer was to I wo…

Go to a university and look around at all the MacBooks owned by non tech people. You would be surprised by the fact they are everywhere.

I see Apple users all around me. I also live in a country where $500/month is considered a decent salary. It's the power of their very competent marketing department and nothing else; otherwise you wouldn't see so many iPhone users who spent three months of their total income for the privilege of owning this "status symbol".

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#60

Post by nix23 »

boplicity wrote: post #46
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

> who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 y…

>35 cents per hour to use

WOW that's kind allot TBH.

Post reply on HN