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Apple Helps Asahi Linux

540 points by CraigJPerry 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CyberShadow 5y ago
Some context: "Asahi Linux is a project and community with the goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro." https://asahilinux.org/about/ https://asahilinux.org/about/
shmoogy 5y ago
That's fantastic news. I hope it expedites and stabilizes the project as much as it sounds like it will.
sebow 5y ago
Yes... "helps" as in 'help Asahi grow sales for Apple laptops'. Not saying it's a bad thing, just pointing out the obvious for those who're not seeing it.Apple is well-aware of the state their operating system('s') and ecosystem is, especially to the tech-savy and skeptics around privacy and the shitty general trend that computing follows. In the case that people magically start growing a conscience or care more about these things, they're prepared to switch gears or stop "thinking differently". Arm macs are a nice piece of HW(with the exception of non-upgradable memory due to SoC but it's a understandable compromise given the gained performance of such glued design-choice), however it's a shame we need to pray the Gods for decent ports/development of Linux distributions to make them usable.
reacharavindh 5y ago
Now, Godspeed to get GPU cores working in Linux!! If we can get a usable Linux distribution working in Apple Silicon without too many compromises, the new hardware would make a heck of a laptop.
conor_f 5y ago
The bar is at the floor for "helps". I understand this is very useful to the stability and future of the project, but we should expect more than the bare minimum from big companies in matters like this. Not being actively harmful != helping.
- todd3834 5y ago
  It sounds like they were doing more than just not being actively harmful. They were actively helpful but we can only speculate on their motive.
  - lynndotpy 5y ago
    The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Perhaps this help is profitable to capture the Linux crowd? Personally, I wouldn't consider buying a Macbook unless I knew I could run Linux on it after it EOL. My oldest laptop is 14+ years old and is still useful because I run Linux on it. A 2022 Macbook should make a very nice ssh Linux client in 2037.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      It's also one of the best high-performance ARM machines you can currently buy (unless you go for insanely expensive exotic servers). I consider buying one just to have a low power server.
      - vbezhenar 5y ago
        Actually running server Linux on Mac Mini for some workloads might be very useful and economical thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised to find out many companies buying those babies for their internal needs. It's like HP Microserver.
    - djrogers 5y ago
      > The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Nope. The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely if they can run Linux on it is tiny. Incredibly so. Apple sells over 20 million of these things a year, they’re not looking at a few thousand people who want native asahi Linux as a product center.
todd3834 5y ago
I was really hoping to see Apple acknowledging that they were helping rather than assuming based on code changes that make it seem like they are. However, happy to see the direction this is going. I’m grateful for the work of both sides.
- Nbox9 5y ago
  I would 10x rather see Apple helping than see Apple say they are helping.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Not saying anything and helping is much better than saying you're helping and doing nothing. By not being official, they can probably do more internally.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> By not being official, they can probably do more internally. People don't often think about that, but in some cases it's very true.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  "Microsoft loves open source, so please ignore the way we are stripping hot reload out of .Net 6 to force you to buy Visual Studio instead" would be an improvement? Deeds, not words.
- flyinghamster 5y ago
  Even it for $REASONS it has to be informal, seeing some active help from Apple is a sight for sore eyes. This is absolutely welcome news.
- dagmx 5y ago
  A company saying they're helping has lots of side effects people don't think about: - it means they've made a public commitment to a project, and suddenly will get bombarded by other projects, making them less willing to engage again - any failure of the project to run well will also be a reflection of the company, even if it's outside their control. - it can be seen as an endorsement of a single project, when multiple ones might benefit. Also if that one project becomes problematic it is hard to detangle. - the commitment to it would make it difficult to move in a different, better direction if needed in the future
reaperducer 5y ago
Maybe Apple is headed toward Bootcamp for Linux, since Bootcamp for Windows doesn't exist for the M1. Interesting, since Microsoft is also putting so much work into Linux interoperability these days. Perhaps these are the seeds of convergence. Or at least Linux being the common denominator OS on all machines.
Invictus0 5y ago
Surely Apple can see the value in having devs buying and using its machines... Why not contribute to this project in an even more substantive manner? Share documentation and donate money, it would be a great feel good story that harkens back to Apple's pirate roots.
- markphip 5y ago
  I can only guess ... and my guess is that Apple likes this project and would like to see it succeed but to formally help it creates a situation that in the future could be problematic for them. Imagine their team that builds the MacBook wants to make some change that would bring some big improvement to the platform but it breaks projects like this. Formally helping this project creates a potential burden on the organization that they do not want to have.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    A former Apple engineer basically said as much on Twitter: https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914716454526979 https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914716454526979
retskrad 5y ago
Apple has tried to phase out and slowly kill off the Mac for the last 10 years but people kept buying them for school and work so they have begrudgingly updated it alongside the iPad. Apple was right. Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows belong in corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still use the file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers need or want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their primary computer.
- markild 5y ago
  Regardless of controversy, how is this relevant to the matter at hand?
- samwillis 5y ago
  I don’t believe this for a second. That would have been a completely daft thing for them to do (not that corporations can’t be daft). I think the stagnation perceived with the Mac was a combination of distraction (focussed on mobile), lack of general invasion on desktop in the market, Intels recent problems, and waiting. I believe they were waiting for their silicone to get the point that they could do a proper coordinated refresh.
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    Yeah Apple tried to kill the Mac… and then popped out with the biggest jump in laptop chips in a decade. That chip effort, along with everything that supports it in the new M1 machines was many years in the making.
  - jamil7 5y ago
    As well as Ive having way too much influence and not grokking what the mac is actually used for, trying to turn it into an aspirational luxury product.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows belong in corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still use the file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers need or want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their primary computer. I don't believe most people use a tablet/phone as their primary computer (though maybe their primary web surfing device). I also don't believe most people want their files on someone else's computer. Do you have any studies to back up these assertions?
nvx736 5y ago
I see this as Apple eyeing a server market segment. Unless Linux is fully ported on m1 cpus it can’t be achieved.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  With their super low-power/high-perf chip architecture, this actually makes a lot of sense. I don't think we'd see anything for a really long time, but Apple actually needs to expand into new verticals if they want to continue providing value for the shareholders.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    I don’t give a fuck about apple providing value to shareholders. Following that path is how companies lose their way.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Yup.. Apple needs to grow somewhere. Cars? Maybe in terms of software.. The real margin currently is in cloud hosting. Even more than in appstore fees. They've learned enough from using azure, gcp and aws. Their multi-billion contract with aws will end soon.. They will offer a fast energy efficient public cloud. First the xcode cloud, then their own hosting, and later it'll become public
  - simonh 5y ago
    Apple currently uses commodity PC hardware, from vendors including HP, and Linux as their standard data centre platform. I suppose it's possible they might start experimenting with Apple silicon servers in their data centres, but I doubt it mainly for supply reasons. They need all the 5nm TSMC fab capacity they can get for their consumer products. There's no way there's enough spare capacity to start diverting significant numbers of these chips into their data centres. Maybe one day.
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
dest 5y ago
For context: Mach-O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Basically Apple's equivalent to ELF. I personally think the multi-architecture support via fat binaries is really neat and I kinda wish Linux adopted the format so we could use one binary for multiple architectures.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    You can use one binary for multiple architectures on Linux with a carefully crafted shell script.
  - rollcat 5y ago
    I don't like being cynical like this, but Linux can't even sort itself even on a single architecture: glibc (with the whole versioned symbol mess), musl variants, and so on, before we even consider shared libraries and package managers. Despite all the hard work of so many people, if you aren't running Ubuntu on x86-64, you will very quickly run into real problems running any kind of third-party software.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      It can be difficult depending on your ecosystem, but often you can; when I said I'd like multi-arch fat binaries I was specifically thinking of Packer (and most Hashicorp products, actually), which distributes as a nice static binary per architecture right now. Also musl is quite friendly to static linking.
  - pcwalton 5y ago
    FatELF exists, though not widely used, and would make more sense than adopting Mach-O, which has worse tooling than ELF. Because of tooling, it'd be preferable for Apple to switch from Mach-O to ELF in fact (though they won't do so, because that would require a lot of work and Mach-O is working fine for them).
asimpletune 5y ago
I think Apple recently has kind of pulled a Microsoft, where they're actively trying to turn a new leaf and become more open/listen better.
- nix23 5y ago
  Wait...since when is microsoft listening to anything?
  - morganvachon 5y ago
    Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general to the extent that it helps them expand into larger markets. Linux is to servers as Windows is to desktop computing, Microsoft has finally acknowledged that they can't "win" in the server and cloud market without conceding to that, and have been "supporting" Linux and open source/free software in various ways over the last several years. It's not because they believe in open source and free software, it's more that they realized they can coexist with and even benefit from helping such projects. It's a beneficial means to a selfish end, but it's better than the old Microsoft who just wanted to destroy anything related to Linux and free software out of pure spite.
    - rvz 5y ago
      > Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general to the extent that it helps them expand into larger markets. Yeah. Basically they're smarter this time and found a way to remove the reason to install a Linux Distro on any desktop by just 'extending' WSL2 and adding optimized NVIDIA drivers that are designed only for WSL2. Which means Windows is the best Linux distro then. Why bother with the Linux Desktop since that has failed anyway?
      - morganvachon 5y ago
        Yep. The saving grace is they don't have a need to reach the third stage and extinguish anything; their focus is on developers and server/cloud, they likely don't feel intimidated by "desktop Linux".
goranmoomin 5y ago
Everyone is like how having Asahi makes Apple more profit, so it makes sense in a business sense, e.g... but am I the only person thinking that this is probably just one or two core kernel engineers just feeling good someday and decided to provide this to Asahi? I don't think the high-level people would really know that these changes even existed...
- bestouff 5y ago
  This may have security implications, I highly doubt they would be authorized to make such a change without consulting anyone.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    The shift to moving the Mach-O parsing from iBoot to kmutil has positive security implications. Adding a raw input option on top of that has zero additional security implications. It's a strict subset of the attack surface.
    - uranusjr 5y ago
      I believe parent is not talking about the security implications of the contributions themselves, but the security implications of the act of making contributions as an Apple employee. And it’s a reasonable assumption; from my (not many) interactions with Apple employees in OSS world, they are generally very careful about doing this sort of things, and I would be very very surprised if not at least a few managers know about this beforehand.
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        No Apple employees made any OSS contributions here. They just added a tiny feature to an existing Apple tool that happens to make our lives easier.
        uranusjr 5y ago
GeekyBear 5y ago
There is also good news on the GPU front from Alyssa Rosenzweig. >we're up to a 94% pass rate for dEQP-GLES2 https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1470870852422053890 https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1470870852422053890
fartcannon 5y ago
They're helping by being well wishers, in that they don't wish them any specific harm.
IceWreck 5y ago
If Apple wanted to help Asahi, they would just release drivers for Linux.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
> And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us. This[1] is exactly what I claimed would happen when ARM Macs were announced and people bemoaned lack of support for booting other OSes. I’m glad to see it. 1: specifically that Apple would not prioritize booting other OSes, but that they’d let the community drive the effort, and eventually embrace it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rajishx 5y ago
I think it was something already enabled for internal testings, engineering just left it for the oss comunities since there was no harm for it
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It doesn't have all the properties needed for booting macOS kernels. It's not for booting macOS kernels. And that's all Apple boots. Seriously. It's for us.
alberth 5y ago
I’m confused, so these are code changes in macOS itself? Does the latest macOS provide a firmware update to M1 which is what’s making it easier to install Asahi?
- NobodyNada 5y ago
  The changes are in macOS’s bootloader. Previously, the bootloader was only designed to load a macOS kernel executable, which was stored on disk as a Mach object file with some particular constraints. The Asahi project had to use a rather ugly linker script to generate an executable that “looks like like” a macOS kernel but is actually a first-stage Linux bootloader [1]. In macOS 12.1, Apple engineers changed the format of the kernel image, which broke the Asahi install process. However, they also added a “raw image mode” which allows the bootloader to load things that don’t look like macOS kernels — it’s an officially-supported boot flow for the Asahi project to use going forwards without fear of macOS updates breaking it again. (Plus, it makes that linker script much simpler [2]). [1]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/84acf60c24b8c9e28e6067d53798e935feaa687b/m1n1.ld https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/84acf60c24b8c9e28e60... [2]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/92aca22119a0afda97999ef55819a03767171182/m1n1-raw.ld https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/92aca22119a0afda9799...
  - herpderperator 5y ago
    Ok, but nothing stops them from removing it. It might allow for a raw image to boot in 12.1, but there are no guarantees it won't go away in 12.2. Why is there no concern about that?
    - hraedon 5y ago
      Because it isn't a new problem? Apple could have locked out Asahi at any time, but have shown no inclination of doing so. There's no reason for them to build a feature that facilitates this specific use case and then remove it in a future version. Assuming for the sake of argument that they did, what you're left with is what you had before: having to build the process around format changes to Apple's supported process. The Asahi devs went into this project knowing that they were working around Apple's internal needs, and having to revert back to their original solution and its tradeoffs at some undefined future point isn't an existential threat to the project.
DCKing 5y ago
Apple really has no business getting in the way of this - it would just hurt them on a general purpose computing platform like Macs are. It's quite likely this isn't specifically for Asahi Linux. Some BSDs are also working on booting on this, which might permit Apple some flexibility in future products using Apple Silicon (Apple's Time Capsules, say, have apparently run NetBSD as opposed to an iOS derivative). Apple would also likely be welcoming to Windows for Arm running natively on macOS. While Apple wouldn't probably be justified in coughing up the costs for writing complicated drivers - notably graphics drivers - to make Windows run on it, they have incentives to make someone else doing that as easy as possible. Macs running Windows just sells them some percentage more Macs. As does Macs running Linux/BSD most likely, but that percentage is smaller.
CyberRabbi 5y ago
Heartening to see Apple reaching out to Asahi and providing them with a stable kernel image format. This is proof that Apple cares about open source on the M1
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I wonder what Apple executive will see this post and start asking questions.
pengaru 5y ago
That this happened is neat. That this infinitesimally small consideration potentially interpretable as done deliberately on your project's behalf was worth shouting from the rooftops is pathetic, and speaks volumes to the general state of affairs between Apple and Linux/FOSS.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the people here would rather cash in on a nice coincidence rather than use it as an opportunity to discuss Apple's relationship with libre software.

540 points by CraigJPerry 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Some context: "Asahi Linux is a project and community with the goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro." https://asahilinux.org/about/ https://asahilinux.org/about/

shmoogy 5y ago

That's fantastic news. I hope it expedites and stabilizes the project as much as it sounds like it will.

sebow 5y ago

Yes... "helps" as in 'help Asahi grow sales for Apple laptops'. Not saying it's a bad thing, just pointing out the obvious for those who're not seeing it.Apple is well-aware of the state their operating system('s') and ecosystem is, especially to the tech-savy and skeptics around privacy and the shitty general trend that computing follows. In the case that people magically start growing a conscience or care more about these things, they're prepared to switch gears or stop "thinking differently". Arm macs are a nice piece of HW(with the exception of non-upgradable memory due to SoC but it's a understandable compromise given the gained performance of such glued design-choice), however it's a shame we need to pray the Gods for decent ports/development of Linux distributions to make them usable.

reacharavindh 5y ago

Now, Godspeed to get GPU cores working in Linux!! If we can get a usable Linux distribution working in Apple Silicon without too many compromises, the new hardware would make a heck of a laptop.

conor_f 5y ago

The bar is at the floor for "helps". I understand this is very useful to the stability and future of the project, but we should expect more than the bare minimum from big companies in matters like this. Not being actively harmful != helping.

todd3834 5y ago
It sounds like they were doing more than just not being actively harmful. They were actively helpful but we can only speculate on their motive.
- lynndotpy 5y ago
  The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Perhaps this help is profitable to capture the Linux crowd? Personally, I wouldn't consider buying a Macbook unless I knew I could run Linux on it after it EOL. My oldest laptop is 14+ years old and is still useful because I run Linux on it. A 2022 Macbook should make a very nice ssh Linux client in 2037.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    It's also one of the best high-performance ARM machines you can currently buy (unless you go for insanely expensive exotic servers). I consider buying one just to have a low power server.
    - vbezhenar 5y ago
      Actually running server Linux on Mac Mini for some workloads might be very useful and economical thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised to find out many companies buying those babies for their internal needs. It's like HP Microserver.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Nope. The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely if they can run Linux on it is tiny. Incredibly so. Apple sells over 20 million of these things a year, they’re not looking at a few thousand people who want native asahi Linux as a product center.

todd3834 5y ago

I was really hoping to see Apple acknowledging that they were helping rather than assuming based on code changes that make it seem like they are. However, happy to see the direction this is going. I’m grateful for the work of both sides.

Nbox9 5y ago
I would 10x rather see Apple helping than see Apple say they are helping.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Not saying anything and helping is much better than saying you're helping and doing nothing. By not being official, they can probably do more internally.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> By not being official, they can probably do more internally. People don't often think about that, but in some cases it's very true.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
GeekyBear 5y ago
"Microsoft loves open source, so please ignore the way we are stripping hot reload out of .Net 6 to force you to buy Visual Studio instead" would be an improvement? Deeds, not words.
flyinghamster 5y ago
Even it for $REASONS it has to be informal, seeing some active help from Apple is a sight for sore eyes. This is absolutely welcome news.
dagmx 5y ago
A company saying they're helping has lots of side effects people don't think about: - it means they've made a public commitment to a project, and suddenly will get bombarded by other projects, making them less willing to engage again - any failure of the project to run well will also be a reflection of the company, even if it's outside their control. - it can be seen as an endorsement of a single project, when multiple ones might benefit. Also if that one project becomes problematic it is hard to detangle. - the commitment to it would make it difficult to move in a different, better direction if needed in the future

reaperducer 5y ago

Maybe Apple is headed toward Bootcamp for Linux, since Bootcamp for Windows doesn't exist for the M1. Interesting, since Microsoft is also putting so much work into Linux interoperability these days. Perhaps these are the seeds of convergence. Or at least Linux being the common denominator OS on all machines.

Invictus0 5y ago

Surely Apple can see the value in having devs buying and using its machines... Why not contribute to this project in an even more substantive manner? Share documentation and donate money, it would be a great feel good story that harkens back to Apple's pirate roots.

markphip 5y ago
I can only guess ... and my guess is that Apple likes this project and would like to see it succeed but to formally help it creates a situation that in the future could be problematic for them. Imagine their team that builds the MacBook wants to make some change that would bring some big improvement to the platform but it breaks projects like this. Formally helping this project creates a potential burden on the organization that they do not want to have.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  A former Apple engineer basically said as much on Twitter: https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914716454526979 https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914716454526979

retskrad 5y ago

Apple has tried to phase out and slowly kill off the Mac for the last 10 years but people kept buying them for school and work so they have begrudgingly updated it alongside the iPad. Apple was right. Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows belong in corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still use the file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers need or want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their primary computer.

markild 5y ago
Regardless of controversy, how is this relevant to the matter at hand?
samwillis 5y ago
I don’t believe this for a second. That would have been a completely daft thing for them to do (not that corporations can’t be daft). I think the stagnation perceived with the Mac was a combination of distraction (focussed on mobile), lack of general invasion on desktop in the market, Intels recent problems, and waiting. I believe they were waiting for their silicone to get the point that they could do a proper coordinated refresh.
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  Yeah Apple tried to kill the Mac… and then popped out with the biggest jump in laptop chips in a decade. That chip effort, along with everything that supports it in the new M1 machines was many years in the making.
- jamil7 5y ago
  As well as Ive having way too much influence and not grokking what the mac is actually used for, trying to turn it into an aspirational luxury product.
torstenvl 5y ago
> Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows belong in corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still use the file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers need or want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their primary computer. I don't believe most people use a tablet/phone as their primary computer (though maybe their primary web surfing device). I also don't believe most people want their files on someone else's computer. Do you have any studies to back up these assertions?

nvx736 5y ago

I see this as Apple eyeing a server market segment. Unless Linux is fully ported on m1 cpus it can’t be achieved.

asimpletune 5y ago
With their super low-power/high-perf chip architecture, this actually makes a lot of sense. I don't think we'd see anything for a really long time, but Apple actually needs to expand into new verticals if they want to continue providing value for the shareholders.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  I don’t give a fuck about apple providing value to shareholders. Following that path is how companies lose their way.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Yup.. Apple needs to grow somewhere. Cars? Maybe in terms of software.. The real margin currently is in cloud hosting. Even more than in appstore fees. They've learned enough from using azure, gcp and aws. Their multi-billion contract with aws will end soon.. They will offer a fast energy efficient public cloud. First the xcode cloud, then their own hosting, and later it'll become public
- simonh 5y ago
  Apple currently uses commodity PC hardware, from vendors including HP, and Linux as their standard data centre platform. I suppose it's possible they might start experimenting with Apple silicon servers in their data centres, but I doubt it mainly for supply reasons. They need all the 5nm TSMC fab capacity they can get for their consumer products. There's no way there's enough spare capacity to start diverting significant numbers of these chips into their data centres. Maybe one day.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago

dest 5y ago

For context: Mach-O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Basically Apple's equivalent to ELF. I personally think the multi-architecture support via fat binaries is really neat and I kinda wish Linux adopted the format so we could use one binary for multiple architectures.
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  You can use one binary for multiple architectures on Linux with a carefully crafted shell script.
- rollcat 5y ago
  I don't like being cynical like this, but Linux can't even sort itself even on a single architecture: glibc (with the whole versioned symbol mess), musl variants, and so on, before we even consider shared libraries and package managers. Despite all the hard work of so many people, if you aren't running Ubuntu on x86-64, you will very quickly run into real problems running any kind of third-party software.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    It can be difficult depending on your ecosystem, but often you can; when I said I'd like multi-arch fat binaries I was specifically thinking of Packer (and most Hashicorp products, actually), which distributes as a nice static binary per architecture right now. Also musl is quite friendly to static linking.
- pcwalton 5y ago
  FatELF exists, though not widely used, and would make more sense than adopting Mach-O, which has worse tooling than ELF. Because of tooling, it'd be preferable for Apple to switch from Mach-O to ELF in fact (though they won't do so, because that would require a lot of work and Mach-O is working fine for them).

asimpletune 5y ago

I think Apple recently has kind of pulled a Microsoft, where they're actively trying to turn a new leaf and become more open/listen better.

nix23 5y ago
Wait...since when is microsoft listening to anything?
- morganvachon 5y ago
  Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general to the extent that it helps them expand into larger markets. Linux is to servers as Windows is to desktop computing, Microsoft has finally acknowledged that they can't "win" in the server and cloud market without conceding to that, and have been "supporting" Linux and open source/free software in various ways over the last several years. It's not because they believe in open source and free software, it's more that they realized they can coexist with and even benefit from helping such projects. It's a beneficial means to a selfish end, but it's better than the old Microsoft who just wanted to destroy anything related to Linux and free software out of pure spite.
  - rvz 5y ago
    > Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general to the extent that it helps them expand into larger markets. Yeah. Basically they're smarter this time and found a way to remove the reason to install a Linux Distro on any desktop by just 'extending' WSL2 and adding optimized NVIDIA drivers that are designed only for WSL2. Which means Windows is the best Linux distro then. Why bother with the Linux Desktop since that has failed anyway?
    - morganvachon 5y ago
      Yep. The saving grace is they don't have a need to reach the third stage and extinguish anything; their focus is on developers and server/cloud, they likely don't feel intimidated by "desktop Linux".

goranmoomin 5y ago

Everyone is like how having Asahi makes Apple more profit, so it makes sense in a business sense, e.g... but am I the only person thinking that this is probably just one or two core kernel engineers just feeling good someday and decided to provide this to Asahi? I don't think the high-level people would really know that these changes even existed...

bestouff 5y ago
This may have security implications, I highly doubt they would be authorized to make such a change without consulting anyone.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The shift to moving the Mach-O parsing from iBoot to kmutil has positive security implications. Adding a raw input option on top of that has zero additional security implications. It's a strict subset of the attack surface.
  - uranusjr 5y ago
    I believe parent is not talking about the security implications of the contributions themselves, but the security implications of the act of making contributions as an Apple employee. And it’s a reasonable assumption; from my (not many) interactions with Apple employees in OSS world, they are generally very careful about doing this sort of things, and I would be very very surprised if not at least a few managers know about this beforehand.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      No Apple employees made any OSS contributions here. They just added a tiny feature to an existing Apple tool that happens to make our lives easier.
      - uranusjr 5y ago

GeekyBear 5y ago

There is also good news on the GPU front from Alyssa Rosenzweig. >we're up to a 94% pass rate for dEQP-GLES2 https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1470870852422053890 https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1470870852422053890

fartcannon 5y ago

They're helping by being well wishers, in that they don't wish them any specific harm.

IceWreck 5y ago

If Apple wanted to help Asahi, they would just release drivers for Linux.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

> And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us. This[1] is exactly what I claimed would happen when ARM Macs were announced and people bemoaned lack of support for booting other OSes. I’m glad to see it. 1: specifically that Apple would not prioritize booting other OSes, but that they’d let the community drive the effort, and eventually embrace it.

deleted 5y ago
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rajishx 5y ago

I think it was something already enabled for internal testings, engineering just left it for the oss comunities since there was no harm for it

marcan_42 5y ago
It doesn't have all the properties needed for booting macOS kernels. It's not for booting macOS kernels. And that's all Apple boots. Seriously. It's for us.

alberth 5y ago

I’m confused, so these are code changes in macOS itself? Does the latest macOS provide a firmware update to M1 which is what’s making it easier to install Asahi?

NobodyNada 5y ago
The changes are in macOS’s bootloader. Previously, the bootloader was only designed to load a macOS kernel executable, which was stored on disk as a Mach object file with some particular constraints. The Asahi project had to use a rather ugly linker script to generate an executable that “looks like like” a macOS kernel but is actually a first-stage Linux bootloader [1]. In macOS 12.1, Apple engineers changed the format of the kernel image, which broke the Asahi install process. However, they also added a “raw image mode” which allows the bootloader to load things that don’t look like macOS kernels — it’s an officially-supported boot flow for the Asahi project to use going forwards without fear of macOS updates breaking it again. (Plus, it makes that linker script much simpler [2]). [1]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/84acf60c24b8c9e28e6067d53798e935feaa687b/m1n1.ld https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/84acf60c24b8c9e28e60... [2]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/92aca22119a0afda97999ef55819a03767171182/m1n1-raw.ld https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/92aca22119a0afda9799...
- herpderperator 5y ago
  Ok, but nothing stops them from removing it. It might allow for a raw image to boot in 12.1, but there are no guarantees it won't go away in 12.2. Why is there no concern about that?
  - hraedon 5y ago
    Because it isn't a new problem? Apple could have locked out Asahi at any time, but have shown no inclination of doing so. There's no reason for them to build a feature that facilitates this specific use case and then remove it in a future version. Assuming for the sake of argument that they did, what you're left with is what you had before: having to build the process around format changes to Apple's supported process. The Asahi devs went into this project knowing that they were working around Apple's internal needs, and having to revert back to their original solution and its tradeoffs at some undefined future point isn't an existential threat to the project.

DCKing 5y ago

Apple really has no business getting in the way of this - it would just hurt them on a general purpose computing platform like Macs are. It's quite likely this isn't specifically for Asahi Linux. Some BSDs are also working on booting on this, which might permit Apple some flexibility in future products using Apple Silicon (Apple's Time Capsules, say, have apparently run NetBSD as opposed to an iOS derivative). Apple would also likely be welcoming to Windows for Arm running natively on macOS. While Apple wouldn't probably be justified in coughing up the costs for writing complicated drivers - notably graphics drivers - to make Windows run on it, they have incentives to make someone else doing that as easy as possible. Macs running Windows just sells them some percentage more Macs. As does Macs running Linux/BSD most likely, but that percentage is smaller.

CyberRabbi 5y ago

Heartening to see Apple reaching out to Asahi and providing them with a stable kernel image format. This is proof that Apple cares about open source on the M1

deleted 5y ago

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2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I wonder what Apple executive will see this post and start asking questions.

pengaru 5y ago

That this happened is neat. That this infinitesimally small consideration potentially interpretable as done deliberately on your project's behalf was worth shouting from the rooftops is pathetic, and speaks volumes to the general state of affairs between Apple and Linux/FOSS.

smoldesu 5y ago
Unfortunately, the people here would rather cash in on a nice coincidence rather than use it as an opportunity to discuss Apple's relationship with libre software.