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Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#91

Post by monocasa »

gr4vityWall wrote: post #3

Great work. I believe used M1/M2 machines will be favored by young developers as their personal fun laptop in a few years, like the Thinkpad T420 used to be. For different reasons, of course. Do the M4 and M5 GPUs also change a lot from the M3? I hope it's not too much work to get those going once M3 is usable.

Apparently there's changes to boot that are more or less understood, but require some heavy work to handle.

Basically starting with M4 you have a choice between starting with Apple's page table monitor already running in their guarded mode extension, or all apple extensions disabled on the CPU cores.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#92

Post by qdotme »

joleyj wrote: post #24
qdotme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they did with Wine, in a way. They got to the point where sufficient number of third party software developers target the common base between Wine and Windows (Steam/Proton), electing to have broader compatibility rather than catching all the newest Windows-only APIs. I wonder how much similar behavior influence other buying choices. I’ve been eyeing an upgrade from M1 for a while - so far punting on it, mostl…

I guess I wasn't aware that Wine pivoted from trying to be a general purpose, drop-in replacement for Windows to being a platform for games that only supports a subset of Windows functionality. It's much more difficult to keep current and support the full functionality of a much larger competitor's offering when you have to support everything. In my experience it was an all or nothing proposition. Either you emulated…

Or „just enough” for the subset of users that is „enough” to ensure product viability. The absolutism of „all or nothing” is rooted in the strictly-better mentality for replacing something.

For Wine/Proton, the core demographic is essentially gamers, who tend to overlap heavily with engineering population later on, and thus core population for Microsoft to capture and retain. Once Steam removed that vendor lock-in, the corporate discussion became more flexible.

For Asahi (proud Asahi user for 4y now), the added value of „most powerful Linux/Arm64 laptop on the market” outweighs the few things that don’t work on Asahi (HDMI out is probably the only one that occasionally matters for me, but screencasting works well enough). Yes, there are gaps, but they are smaller than things from Linux that are missing on OSX or Windows for me.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#93

Post by Teever »

small_model wrote: post #84

Couldn't Apple make a change that renders all this work a waste of time? i.e. lock out other OSe's from booting for example. I applaud the effort but given MacOs is already a capable unix I don't see the rewards being worth it.

They could which is ultimately why we need regulators in the EU to premeptively ban those kinds of anti-repair anti-ownership kinds of business decisions.

Consumers should be allowed to install whatever software they want on decides they own.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#94

Post by cardanome »

WD-42 wrote: post #43
sohrob wrote: post #2

I often wonder whether the folks at Apple have the Asahi team on their radar. Are they in awe of the reverse engineering marvels coming out of the Asahi project, or are they indifferent to it?

They are aware. They are also aware of the designs sitting in the cabinet right next to them in Cupertino that would make all the reverse engineering instantly unnecessary. Such a monumentally Sisyphean waste of effort in behalf of the Asahi devs in my opinion. If you care about personal computing or Linux, don’t buy a Mac.

The problem is that now one else is currently making hardware that is competitive with apple silicone. Apple is the only one offering both performance and battery time.

I love my Thinkpads, I really do but they are bulky, loud and the battery doesn't last very long. They are not an option for many people.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#95

Post by criddell »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #77
swiftcoder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing beats the 2008-2013 Thinkpad keyboards Maybe so, but 15-20 year old laptops are definitely starting to show their age. An M2 MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is only 4 years old, has a fairly OK keyboard, and is still in striking distance of current high-end ultrabooks when it comes to performance.

The only thing my X230 struggles to do is run LLMs locally. My needs are simple, and I think normal people (i.e. probably not most people on this site) don't have needs that are any more demanding than mine. Granted, this is running GNU/Linux rather than Windows. If you're running Windows then yeah, they show their age.

I think maybe you don't understand what the needs are of normal people. It's only partially about what software they run.

I recommend Mac's to the people in my life because when they have a problem they can take the machine to the Apple Store in the mall. Or if they want to understand iPhoto or Pages better, they can go to the Apple Store and take a class. They like Apple laptops because they look nice, they feel great, sound amazing (for a laptop) and have excellent battery life.

Like you, I have a ThinkPad (a P-something) and, frankly, it kind of sucks. It's all plasticy, it flexes, battery life is a joke, the trackpad is meh, and the fans are almost always running. I do like the keyboard though (I'm a fan of backspace).

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#96

Post by small_model »

Teever wrote: post #93
small_model wrote: post #84

Couldn't Apple make a change that renders all this work a waste of time? i.e. lock out other OSe's from booting for example. I applaud the effort but given MacOs is already a capable unix I don't see the rewards being worth it.

They could which is ultimately why we need regulators in the EU to premeptively ban those kinds of anti-repair anti-ownership kinds of business decisions. Consumers should be allowed to install whatever software they want on decides they own.

I agree, can't see Apple doing it so should be fine. The hope is once M1/M2 is done its less work to get M3-M5 working

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#97

Post by freeAgent »

zozbot234 wrote: post #11
ForHackernews wrote: post #6

This is incredibly impressive and also quite sad. Six years later, we have a very-nearly-right kernel for the M1. Apple is launching the M5. It seems like the future is going to be a world of closed systems and custom silicon, with any free software lagging far behind.

M1 and M2 hardware isn't going anywhere. They're still great machines. And progress will be faster once the project finishes getting their code merged into the existing Linux kernel and distros. They have a first alpha of M3 ready, they're just refraining from releasing it in that state because they're so busy with everything else they're doing - a key difference compared to when they first came out with alpha suppor…

I’m sad because the WiFi on my M1 MBA is dying/dead and there’s no way to replace it without swapping the whole “logic board.” Apple also doesn’t support any USB WiFi adapters in recent versions of MacOS, so it’s now tethered to a wired network connection. I’m just waiting for the M5 refresh to hit at this point. Anyway, all that’s to say that at least some M1 hardware is going to to the trash heap soon :(

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#98

Post by tmikaeld »

barnabee wrote: post #79
gr4vityWall wrote: post #3

Great work. I believe used M1/M2 machines will be favored by young developers as their personal fun laptop in a few years, like the Thinkpad T420 used to be. For different reasons, of course. Do the M4 and M5 GPUs also change a lot from the M3? I hope it's not too much work to get those going once M3 is usable.

I still haven’t felt much urge to upgrade my 64gb MacBook Pro M1 Max. The biggest issue I have with it is macOS Tahoe. Guess I really should be checking out Asahi on it!

Before you do, note that battery time on Asahi is abysmal at best, so if you're on battery often I'd really reconsider.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#99

Post by freeAgent »

qdotme wrote: post #17
joleyj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my software development career was spent working at a small company that sold a product that emulated the operating system developed and sold by a much, much larger company. The work was interesting and when you had a breakthrough or a small victory, it sure felt good. The challenge of keeping up was exhilarating and kept folks motivated to keep pressing forward. But eventually it wears you down. It's nearly…

Except they did with Wine, in a way. They got to the point where sufficient number of third party software developers target the common base between Wine and Windows (Steam/Proton), electing to have broader compatibility rather than catching all the newest Windows-only APIs. I wonder how much similar behavior influence other buying choices. I’ve been eyeing an upgrade from M1 for a while - so far punting on it, mostl…

They never got Office or any Adobe (or similar) apps working, which is a huge miss.

Re: Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19

#100

Post by rowanG077 »

WD-42 wrote: post #43
sohrob wrote: post #2

I often wonder whether the folks at Apple have the Asahi team on their radar. Are they in awe of the reverse engineering marvels coming out of the Asahi project, or are they indifferent to it?

They are aware. They are also aware of the designs sitting in the cabinet right next to them in Cupertino that would make all the reverse engineering instantly unnecessary. Such a monumentally Sisyphean waste of effort in behalf of the Asahi devs in my opinion. If you care about personal computing or Linux, don’t buy a Mac.

If I have learned one thing it's is that current corporate strategy is no guarantee for the future. If you want to purchase a laptop now and want a great linux experience, then the M2 Is a great option. But don't assume that M(n+1) will ever get support.

This reasoning is essentially just as true for any other laptop maker Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Framework, HP etc might also decide to bomb linux support at any time.

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