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OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org

81–90 of 377 posts

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#81
post #63
post #3

Its been more than a year I'm running asahi on my macbook air and I can't stress how grateful I feel for enjoying such wonderful freedom. I don't feel like ever going back to x86 to be honest, at this point there is nothing lacking or unable to run and when the neural engine drivers come online now that the GPU is starting to mature people will be able to juice out every last bit of computation this machine is capabl…

> at this point there is nothing lacking or unable to run Sure there is. You just haven't run into it yourself. Faster, cooler and more power efficient hardware is great. I just don't think that it makes up for depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to do so. And the incompatibilities with ARM are not negligib…

> depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to do so

You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it.

A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user space). That work will benefit everyone using Arm systems, not just folks running asahi on Apple hardware.

Its good for there to be more hardware architecture competition! I'm glad I can run my server workloads on the Arm servers in AWS that are 20% cheaper than the equivalent x86 machines. I'm glad that I can run the software I like (linux) on legitimately nice hardware (m2 air). You can make different decisions on what architectures are best suited for your needs, but the competition in the market improves the options and prices for everyone.

I've been using Asahi since the fall of 2022. When I first started using it a lot of software was broken because of bugs in that software that had never been exposed before (specifically around page sizes larger than 4k). All of that software has now been fixed. Support for linux/arm will only continue to improve as more people use it.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#82
post #76

When Vulkan drivers are ready maybe the Asahi Linux perhaps also be ready to run some SteamVR apps https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/blob/mast...

I'm surprised that Vulkan wasn't the target, which could then have something like Zink layered on top for OpenGL.

Zink requires a fairly advanced Vulkan driver, with many complex optional extensions. A basic Vulkan driver wouldn't cut it. So getting basic OpenGL working is much less work, especially since they can share a lot of work with Mesa's existing OpenGL drivers.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#83
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked You can only have so many flexibility in design with modern hardware — they are not fitting things into 5 cm “thin” chassics anymore. How exactly are such a thin device be repairable? Similarly to how old car motors could be tweaked with, you need s…

> But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction? I would dispute this claim, e.g. Apple settles iPhone slowdown case for $500m[1], just the first link I found looking for "planned obsolescence apple" on DuckDuckGo. This is not exclusive to their iPhones as one can find wit…

Which was about a very stupidly communicated, but genuinely good intentioned misshap. Iphones older devices with old batteries had cases where they no longer could provide sufficient voltage to the phone and thus it would reboot randomly for people. To fix the issue, they decreased CPU frequency so that it would no longer drain so high peak power.

But they should have made it an option (it is one now on these devices) instead, they might have even come out good from it (as an android manufacturer wouldn’t even care about such an old device at the time).

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#84
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be. I don't think it's hostile, I think they're just hands-off; they throw the hardware over the fence and say, "if you wanna make use of it, here's our software; if you don't like our software, sorry no docs but you're free to write your own". Which is exactly what's happening. I mean it would be nice…

First, personally I don't care what hardware or software people use, if they are happy with the tools that they using then that's good. That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked. As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made…

“I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.”

They are very much still doing that

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#85
post #74
post #49

Sorry, but what's the point? Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out of the box? Why are Linux enthusiasts putting so much effort into supporting hardware from companies that - at best - ignore Linux? This question is also valid for other manufacturers, btw, not just Apple. So much time wasted doing free labor for hardware companies that will just break your stuff with the next hardware iteration…

The point? There are no other ARM laptops that are even close to being competitive right now. I want a good fanless laptop. My only choice is Apple. Asahi made it possible and I now have a great experience. What's the problem?

[deleted]

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#87
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, personally I don't care what hardware or software people use, if they are happy with the tools that they using then that's good. That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked. As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made…

> Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked You can only have so many flexibility in design with modern hardware — they are not fitting things into 5 cm “thin” chassics anymore. How exactly are such a thin device be repairable? Similarly to how old car motors could be tweaked with, you need s…

"But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?"

Why reply that criticism of Apple must be purely an emotional one? Kind of diminishes your argument here.

Immediate search result for repairable phones:

https://www.androidcentral.com/best-sustainable-repairable-p...

https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4

Here's a laptop that you can upgrade:

https://frame.work/

Lifetime for Apple isn't as long as you make it out to be when batteries need replaced and software support for hardware ends:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/macos-sonoma-drops-s...

"Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won’t be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example)."

Apple could just release stuff that didn't break so easily too so no need to risk changing out a screen if it ain't broke. There are plenty of ways to increase security of the device without making it less consumer friendly.

Additionally since the context here is whether Apple has been hacker friendly or not, why shouldn't you be allowed to upgrade and change the hardware of YOUR device? As in, you want to put in more storage or change the screen to one that's better in some manner (maybe it's just cost) then you ought to be able to.

That is it should be the device owners choice whether or not to replace their screen with one from Apple or a cheaper one.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#88
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"New firmware-based battery charge control, which offers fixed a 75%/80% threshold setting. To use this, you need to update your system firmware to at least version 13.0, which you can do by simply updating your macOS partition to at least that version or newer. This new charge control method also works in sleep mode." This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a feature implemented by Apple and now supported…

> This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a feature implemented by Apple Yes, battery charge control is a hardware(/firmware) feature supported on other modern laptops as well, such as the Lenovo ThinkPads, but it's not a standard so it requires explicit driver and OS support. OpenBSD recently added support for this as well for both of these implementations (Apple silicon and ThinkPads). https://marc.info/…

If your laptop firmware doesn't support it, here is one trick if you have a removable battery:

Put a piece of paper over one of the batteries middle contacts. That will make the firmware think the battery is overheating. It will then refuse to charge, but will still happily discharge.

You can do that to keep your battery at 80% while still on AC power. Handy if you operate from AC power 99% of the time, yet don't want your battery to die from being stored at 100% charge and hot for many years.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#89
post #49

Sorry, but what's the point? Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out of the box? Why are Linux enthusiasts putting so much effort into supporting hardware from companies that - at best - ignore Linux? This question is also valid for other manufacturers, btw, not just Apple. So much time wasted doing free labor for hardware companies that will just break your stuff with the next hardware iteration…

For me, the Macbook Pro 14 with a 10-core M1 Pro I am typing on has my favorite keyboard and trackpad I've ever used on a laptop (2nd place was the 2013 MBP and this feels the same). It has the best display I've ever set eyes on.

The battery life is the best of any laptop I have ever used by far.

And the performance for number crunching is as high as any x86 machine I had previously and per watt it blows everything out of the water. And it is dead silent while doing so, whereas every x86 'work' powered laptop I ever used would wind up sounding like a jet engine with my workloads.

So for someone who runs linux.. if they want to run it on hardware that is this nice (to me at least)... this is it. This is worth it. It's worth developing for.

Also, Apple is going to stick with the M-series SOC's for a long time now that they have switched. And they tend to keep hardware interfaces for a long time too. So the development of Asahi now will bear fruit for... at least the next decade I'd say.

I still use OSX for daily activities, but the kernel Asahi is developing may be my plan to stretch this 2021 M1 MBP 14 out hopefully to the year 2030, as MacOS moves on. My 2013 intel i7 Macbook Pro made it to 2021... 8 years of daily use and world travel. I was beyond the moon with that product performance and I'm expecting similar from these new macbooks based on my current 1.5 years of use.

Re: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

#90
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"New firmware-based battery charge control, which offers fixed a 75%/80% threshold setting. To use this, you need to update your system firmware to at least version 13.0, which you can do by simply updating your macOS partition to at least that version or newer. This new charge control method also works in sleep mode." This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a feature implemented by Apple and now supported…

> This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a feature implemented by Apple Yes, battery charge control is a hardware(/firmware) feature supported on other modern laptops as well, such as the Lenovo ThinkPads, but it's not a standard so it requires explicit driver and OS support. OpenBSD recently added support for this as well for both of these implementations (Apple silicon and ThinkPads). https://marc.info/…

I am on macos 13.3.1 and have noticed this feature for at least a couple of months, maybe longer. It says Charging On Hold (Rarely Used On Battery)
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