17 ms·

Asahi Linux alpha release

587 points by robbiet480 5y ago

lambda_dn 5y ago
Does bluetooth work? If you can't use airpods with a mac it's a no go imo
- sliken 5y ago
  Heh, way lower than accelerated GPU for me. If you really hard up get a USB dongle that works well with Linux.
  - musha68k 5y ago
    Same here. I wonder if Proton is tightly bound to x86_64? My first generation M1 is pretty capable as a low to mid-tier games machine but even with stellar Rosetta 2 performance it's ultimately held back by still too few Mac ports in general.
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      An arm port of proton would let you run what? Solitaire?
      - musha68k 5y ago
        Something more like "Death's Door" or "Valheim" would be something that interests me personally :) So yeah, I have no idea how Proton works.
        tedunangst 5y ago
        So proton is basically wine, and wine is not an emulator, so there's the first clue. :) It doesn't change cpu architecture.
        musha68k 5y ago
        From the release note above, I guess FEX would have been the "Rosetta 2" for Asahi but seems to be also out of the question ATM so you are right no Proton indeed for the time being. I didn't know Proton was WINE-IS-NOT-an-EMULATOR based thanks for info :) >There is a category of software that will likely never support 16K page sizes: certain emulators and compatibility layers, including FEX. Well, too bad...
        floatboth 5y ago
        Eventually 4k page size kernels will work too (but 16k has better performance)
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      The "FEX" mentioned needing 4k page size is about running x86* games on ARM64 much like Rosetta2, including Proton. Really need the GPU though, the standard desktop is already extremely taxing even though the CPU is extremely fast.
      - musha68k 5y ago
        Thanks, just read up on that as well - too bad :/ On the desktop side: I always assumed x11/xorg derived GUIs were purely software rendered? Has Wayland finally landed? Sorry I'm lagging behind >10 years of Linux on desktop.
        nrdvana 5y ago
        It's a big ball of wax with more details than I'll ever memorize, but I know for a fact that for the last 20 years or more X11 GLX has had "indirect contexts" where the application feeds the OpenGL requests over the display socket and the server renders them (possibly) hardware-accelerated. "direct rendering" is where the X11 client negotiates with the X server to make a direct connection from the application to /dev/whatever to talk directly to the kernel driver of the graphics card to do rendering that bypasses the X server. The whole thing with Wayland is just a new generation of coders saying "hey all this pile of new apis on top of old apis on top of older apis spanning back 40 years designed for hardware that no longer exists is insane. We need to start over." They aren't wrong, but they also haven't reached feature parity with the old stuff yet, because doing hardware accelerated 3D graphics over a pipe to a remote host was a pretty amazing feat of technology. Edit: to be a little more specific, Silicon Graphics company's whole business was accelerated graphics, and they were in business since 1982, and invented most of X11, or at least its extensions.
        zamadatix 5y ago
        In regards to acceleration pretty much all major Linux desktop environments have hardware accelerated compositing these days regardless if X11 or Wayland is being used. In regards to Wayland landing or not it has become the default for Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, RHEL, and many others but a lot of apps still rely on the XWayland compatibility layer to run. The Asahi Desktop install option currently defaults to an X11 Plasma session, I assume for simplicity at this stage, but Wayland works fine as well. Even if you try a desktop environment that requires accelerated rendering and has no native software fallback it'll work via a software rasterizer like LLVMpipe until real GPU acceleration arrives.
- robbiet480 5y ago
  According to the post, Bluetooth does not yet work, but this is only a alpha release.
  - lambda_dn 5y ago
    I would switch to linux if they could get BT to work. Macbook Air M1 owner here I need airpods to work otherwise it's not a viable switch. This this is true for many users. Please focus on that guys.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      Sounds like an area for a good, motivated technologist who appreciates lambdas and DNs to contribute, if the project is open source and accepting contributions.
      - lambda_dn 5y ago
        Good point, I may scratch that itch
        tomrod 5y ago
        Thank you for entertaining my silly comment :) And good luck!
    - mort96 5y ago
      For some people, Bluetooth will be the one important thing and everything else that doesn't work isn't so important. Other people will be able to live without bluetooth but can't live without the HDMI port. Other people again may not use external screens but absolutely require hardware acceleration. Others still may not care so much about any of that stuff, but need the camera to work for their meetings. And maybe some are absolutely dependent on external storage accessed through Thunderbolt. There's _a lot_ of work still. It's not clear that Bluetooth should be the highest priority of what's left. And this whole undertaking is a monumental task which it's amazing that volunteers are even attempting. Saying "I want bluetooth, please focus on that guys" here seems a bit tone-deaf.
- Teever 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdEeI-B21A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdEeI-B21A
pthariensflame 5y ago
Yay!
DougMellon 5y ago
The work they have accomplished and the speed at which they have done it is inspiring.
- mattl 5y ago
  Yep. Turns out paying talented and motivated people works.
  - flatiron 5y ago
    I find it crazy because you know they developed all this hardware with Linux. Just release the darn code. I haven’t been at apple for over a year but there was a strong population using apples own arch Linux distro. It’s not like people there don’t use Linux.
    - 2fast4you 5y ago
      Why would they develop their hardware in Linux?
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        Apple does bringup with Linux because the silicon team doesn’t necessarily want to deal with getting the Darwin team involved during validation.
        gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Right - however it’s not as easy as “release the code.” Those Linux versions used for bring-up are typically an unupstreamable mess. They are hardware engineers, not software devs. It’s kind of like Correlium’s M1 port over a year ago. It got Linux on the M1 within weeks of launch but the code was unusably atrocious. Edit: Adding to that, Linux does not have a stable driver interface, and regularly changes between releases. That means that messy sloppy code that is unupstreamable will quickly be unable to move forward to future Linux versions without increasingly herculean efforts. You'll be trapped on an old kernel indefinitely if you follow that path - just like the Android situation. Edit 2: And I'm not exaggerating that Correlium's code was sloppy. Almost none of it ended up in the Asahi Linux project. Also Corellium basically dumped that code for fun and then quickly gave up trying to keep it up to date.
zozbot234 5y ago
Wait, I thought they were going to be ARM64 only? They're porting it to Alpha too?
- pram 5y ago
  If you want the best experience on your DECBook stick with VAX imo
  - hbbio 5y ago
    Can't wait to try on my i860 Notebook though
- Alekhine 5y ago
  Uh, no. 'Alpha' as in before 'Beta'.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    (That’s the joke.)
    - Alekhine 5y ago
      Damn it. And I spend so much time making fun of people who can't hear sarcasm.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    I want to live in the alternate 90's universe where a slim laptop with an alpha processor and Apple badge exists. RISC architecture is going to change everything!
    - phs318u 5y ago
      It's funny but you're not the only one. Digital had some great engineering. Apple had a great understanding of the consumer and UX. Could have been awesome. I also thought that a similar alliance would have been awesome. Imagine if Apple had bought Sun instead of Oracle.
MaxLeiter 5y ago
Disappointed to see Marcan et al asking users to blindly copy and paste a curl command from the internet. “Ready to give it a shot? Make sure to update your macOS to version 12.3 or later, then just pull up a Terminal in macOS and paste in this command:” Other than that, fantastic work and I look forward to eventually having an M1 to run Asahi on Edit: I just wish the wording would encourage you to verify the file. I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with using shell scripts from the internet. But massive companies let domains expire, why won’t marcan?
- kyleee 5y ago
  curl and perl
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Let's say he instead did a traditional installer link. Would it be any different for most users? Nobody actually checks the checksum.
  - MBCook 5y ago
    Somehow that feels way safer. I guess it’s not, but it feels like it is.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      Yeah - except if you owned the domain, you can also change the posted hash you are comparing against. Security theater mostly.
      - open1414 5y ago
        It's mostly for applications which hosts their binaries on third party servers
      - 5y ago
anoonmoose 5y ago
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Complained about elsewhere. Complaints are generally because you want more security theater. Edit: For the curious, you are literally trusting that address for an entire OS install. And you could do a hash comparison, but if the website was hacked to begin with, the hash you compared against could just be changed anyway.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I will say, I find it a little annoying that going to https://alx.sh https://alx.sh directly in my browser redirects to asahilinux.org. What if I want to read the script before I run it? I realize there are other ways to do that (e.g. curl), but why make it difficult?
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    As you note the browser can be sent something different than curl so reading what it does in a browser doesn't make much sense, especially since the script itself calls curl.
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      This is indeed a good point. Malicious actors can show you one script in a browser, then serve a more malicious script with curl. I do not understand why Asahi decided they needed a tiny domain just to serve a download script. It means users have to trust more domains with weird characters (was that A L X . S H or A I X . S H ? Oops).
      - zamadatix 5y ago
        It would seem to be convenient if https://asahilinux.org/ https://asahilinux.org/ also worked the same way (serve the script if it's curl, show the page if it's a browser) for those that don't want to remember or use the short URL. If you pop that suggestion in the IRC/Matrix room they very well might make it so.
n42 5y ago
this is incredible, congratulations to everyone involved in making this happen. there's already instructions for a NixOS install, too[1] [1]: https://github.com/tpwrules/nixos-m1/blob/main/docs/uefi-standalone.md https://github.com/tpwrules/nixos-m1/blob/main/docs/uefi-sta...
- _x5tx 5y ago
  that’s great! I’ve been a long time Fedora user but last year I decided to try NixOS and I couldn’t be more surprised, everything works well and it was easy to install and learn. I’m glad I can try it in my m1 macbook pro!
- spindle 5y ago
  Wow! That is huge.
qiskit 5y ago
> At least 53GB of free disk space (Desktop install) Wowsa. I know disk space is abundant but that is still shocking. I've never used MacOS, but why does it need at least 38 GB free for MacOS update? > You need 15GB for Asahi Linux Desktop Wowsa number 2. I'm used light installs using lightweight windows managers or desktops so that number was a bit shocking. Anyone else prefer a small base onto which you can add software rather than getting everything and having to uninstall a bunch of software?
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  The macOS Software Updater is extremely inefficient with space - you want plenty free or it might get stuck. As for the 15GB, 2.5GB must be used for the mandatory Recovery partition as well as leaving room for the recovery partition to have extra room if necessary, because it can’t be easily expanded later. That leaves 12.5GB for your desktop Linux and any free space for your apps or files. You can use Expert Mode to go smaller with either macOS or Asahi but I’d say they are reasonable guidelines.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Asahi Linux Desktop is a default install. A minimal Arch install is also available, as well as a UEFI-only implementation. There is a fixed ~3GB overhead per 'Other OS' install for OS-specific vendor firmware, but a UEFI install is managed as a single 'Other OS' and can freely boot UEFI payloads from both internal and external drives.
- rvz 5y ago
  >> At least 53GB of free disk space (Desktop install) Very surprised by this, but to be fair this is an alpha. So I expect them to drive that down drastically when it is stable anyway. It may not be the friendliest of installers, but hey that Linux. Or perhaps someone can do a user-friendly AsahiInstaller.app as well?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Most of that is leaving enough space for macOS updates not to break. The minimal image requires 8GB of actual space by default, 3GB for boot stuff related to macOS and a default minimum 5GB root partition. I can actually go lower there, but I don't think most people would want to have a Linux system smaller than that. You'd quickly run out of space as you start installing stuff.
tyingq 5y ago
Probably won't happen, but it's interesting that all the things you would need for an "x-serve next-gen" to be successful have fallen into place now. Would make a pretty power packed and efficient 1U machine.
- n42 5y ago
  I’m already dreaming of a near silent M1 Mac Mini server rack for my closet..
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Seems like they’re already very close. Most of what’s missing (GPU, sleep, Bluetooth) is irrelevant to a server use-case.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Server on the M1 Mac Mini is really already there unless you need thunderbolt accessories or GPU acceleration for your server use case. Even the 10G port is working fine now. I was actually just looking into some of the 1u 2x Mac Mini mount options prior to reading this wondering if it'd make sense to do. The Mac Studio bring-up might be worth waiting for on this use case though, apart from more cores it crucially has more RAM options. While the SSD is comparatively fast to swap from what most are used to dealing with the 16 GB of RAM limit on the Mini can still be between a real downer to a non-starter for many server workloads.
- WhyNotHugo 5y ago
  I’ve been wanting to set up a couple of small home servers (something like some raspberry pis). They’ve been out of stock since forever and very hard to come across. It’s been months since this project is paused. I’m considering just getting a Mac Mini and using that as a home server with everything in it.
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    I just got a Mac Mini for this exact use case. Let's be honest, Raspberry Pi is garbage. It's just insanely weak, I regret spending around €100 for mine (Raspberry Pi 4, with case). It's got 32-bit ARM chip, and USB 3 ports that you can't use (I plugged in 2 external HDDs into it, was running a SMB share for Time Machine and Media, they just kept dropping. Apparently something power delivery related, works with USB 2.0 speeds though.)
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Wrote this reply from Asahi which I installed earlier this afternoon before the announcement. Works well and the installer was pretty good for alpha. :)
jasoneckert 5y ago
I just installed this - the installation experience was easy and guided you through the tasks that were happening and why. I gave it 100GB of space on my 16GB Mac Mini, and Asahi runs incredibly fast and smooth. Very impressed!
- capableweb 5y ago
  Incredibly impressive that Asahi Linux seems to have achieved the impossible: give us more physical disk space via just software!
  - thangngoc89 5y ago
    I believe they parent reply is referring to 16GB of RAM
    - I_complete_me 5y ago
      I believe he may have omitted a /s
jaime10 5y ago
I made a quick guide to install and configure Sway on the Macbook Air. Should be useful to solve some touchpad and scaling issues with the defaul sway settings. https://github.com/jaime10a/SwayM1 https://github.com/jaime10a/SwayM1
- zamadatix 5y ago
  It's probably better to swap the command and option keys via the swap_opt_cmd=1 parameter on the hid-apple kernel module that way they are globally swapped, not just in sway. fnmode=2 is another useful one which sets f1-f10 to be function keys by default so e.g. pressing f10 sends f10, not mute because you forgot to press fn+f10. You can find some other options in https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/c5d9ae265b105d9a67575fb67bd4650a6fc08e25/drivers/hid/hid-apple.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/c5d9ae265b105d9a67575... as well
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Where would you use them that's outside sway, if you're running sway? Switching back from a second console-only tty?
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Yes to both, also any program that reads keys directly.
deleted 5y ago
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zamadatix 5y ago
It's a bit early (obviously, hence Alpha) but if the pace and purpose of the project make you excited consider bumping a few dollars towards the donation links in the article to help these folks afford to get it done. Marcan is a wizard and Povik has been making great progress but these machines aren't cheap nor their time unlimited!
- hbbio 5y ago
  Backing as well, soon enough it will be impossible to find a better machine than a Macbook Air running Linux at this price point! The processor is outstanding, so is battery life and the screen and touchpad are incredibly better than any Dell or Lenovo out there. Give us the opportunity to get rid of the increasing number of "cruft" that is Photos, Messages, iCloud, and countless demons in macOS... are we are good to go!
  - diffeomorphism 5y ago
    > so is battery life and the screen and touchpad are incredibly better than any Dell or Lenovo out there. What? The touchpad I agree, but screen? For the Macbook Air (not pro)? That is still good, but definitely not better than the UHD+ screens you for instance get from Dell. And that is not even considering oled options.
    - hbbio 5y ago
      "at this price point" Dell frequently does discounts, but the base price for their UHD panel in the XPS13 is twice the price of a MacBook Air. I had both, and still prefer the Mac hardware by a considerable margin.
    - paines 5y ago
      The UDH screens on Dell Laptops are a bigger battery drain than the cpus....
    - antifa 5y ago
      I've got a Dell with 4k screen and it's great, but I would eagerly trade it for the M1's superior battery and noiseless cooling. My Dell doesn't last long or stay quiet if you try to do anything, even on windows.
k1832 5y ago
Great
cloudwizard 5y ago
Excited about this. I like the Mac HW but hate MacOs. I can't delete iTunes, books, etc. Switched development to a Chromebook for a decent Linux experience.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- e40 5y ago
  Santa allows you to disable them, however.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  > I can't delete iTunes, books, etc. You still can if you really, really want to, it has just become excessively annoying. (I don’t blame you at all for switching OS’s)
xiaodai 5y ago
Still waiting for my Budweiser Linux
watmough 5y ago
Awesome!! Posting from it now after about 2 hours or so to backup some stuff and run through the installer with a couple glasses wine. Super slick. No issues.
legodion 5y ago
Ironically a MacBook would be the best hardware Linux could presently run on. If everything works reliably well, this could be a game changer for Linux.
- brundolf 5y ago
  A super interesting angle with all this is that since these machines are so homogenous and widely-used, once the ice is broken they could quickly become the best-supported modern Linux machines out there, just due to the sheer number of people who would have the exact same hardware (vs the rest of the landscape, which is much more spotty and varied), and the way that would reduce the support burden. Getting the audio drivers working on Apple Silicon machines could be much more impactful than getting them working on the MSI Delta 15 or whatever
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Even more so: all Macs have pretty much the same hardware. From the Air to the Studio, the same CPU cores, the same GPU cores, same auxiliary hardware like neural net processors. All enhancements should pretty much affect all Macs running Linux.
- riffraff 5y ago
  I ran Linux on the first Intel MacBook and that too was great hardware for it at the time, I don't think it matters that much for linux' success.
  - legodion 5y ago
    Allow me to explain how you are wrong. One big issue with Linux is driver maintenance. If a distro can focus on just one set of hardware (e.g. M1 Macs), it allows the developers to optimize the distro massively. It also makes everything more predictable, and saves a lot of time. Not to mention that the M1 macbooks have outstanding displays, speakers, mics, etc. Imagine a world where the distro has perfect drivers out of the box, and we don't need to use some subpar nouveau driver (when I say subpar, I'm speaking relative to the official drivers). Not to mention that most people run Linux on crappy $1000 laptops. An M1 air is around that price range, and destroys anything in that particular market space. This could be massive for Linux desktops. I feel like the one thing that has been holding it back has been this very issue. It even opens up the door to reverse engineering the Apple hardware and perhaps creating a complete open source integrated system in the future. It matters, and it could be the thing that rocket blasts Linux into more normies homes.
TwoNineFive 5y ago
Putting "Not yet, but coming soon:" under the "What works" heading instead of the "What doesn’t" is dishonest.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  No, it is a reasonable category. There is a huge distiction between things, which don't work yet, but you know that you can make them work and have even a schedule for doing them. And there are things, where you either don't have an idea yet how to make them work or cannot attach a schedule yet. As with any software release: you have the list of things planned for the next release, even if they are not available yet and you have a list of things which definitely won't be in the next release.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Specifically, things on that list are things that work already, but are disabled or not merged into our release kernels yet because they aren't quite ready for end users. So they "work" already, just not in the kernel packages I'm building :-)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
blindmute 5y ago
I'm out of the loop on this one. Is M1 a new architecture, and if so does that mean any distro would have to recompile every package in the repo to target it? How long would that take for a typical distribution?
- zamadatix 5y ago
  M1 is ARMv8.4-A based, standard aarch64 binaries run e.g. I'm able to download and run Caddy using the standard arm64 binary.
- nanliu 5y ago
  It’s ARM but with a unique boot process and other proprietary hardware component (gpu, ssd). Check the previous hnews posts and original kickoff document: https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-february-2021/ https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-febru... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135
  - userbinator 5y ago
    In other words, just like every other ARM SoC out there... but from the sibling comments, it sounds like user-mode binaries can stay the same.
- 58028641 5y ago
  No, M1 is ARM64, so any existing ARM64 compatible packages will work. However, some packages may not be compatible with 16K pages, so you may need the 4K page version of the kernel. Linux (unlike macOS) does not support mixed page sizes (edit: at least with M1) so it will result in reduced performance for the whole system if you need 4K pages.
  - eklitzke 5y ago
    Linux does support mixed page sizes (that's how huge pages work) and the page size isn't even detectable by userspace user than through sysconf(3) or getpagesize(2) so I'm not sure why a program wouldn't be compatible with 16K pages; after all, regular programs work just fine with THP on Linux.
beebeepka 5y ago
Current Apple hardware is pretty sweet. My heart has been with AMD for decades but if they make this work, in a few years I might buy my first Mac.
gundamdoubleO 5y ago
Excited to try this out. Still missing a few crucial features for me to fully adopt it as a daily driver but the speed of this project has been incredibly impressive. Can't wait to see how it looks 1 or 2 years down the line.
boris 5y ago
Does anyone know if virtualization (e.g., kvm/qemu) would work? Didn't see any mention of that in the FAQ.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  From earlier tweets by Hector I remember that virtualization is working and he was able to run Mac OS inside a VM on Linux.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Virtualization is working on Linux, but the macOS story is not that. We run macOS inside a custom VM hypervisor I wrote, on bar metal, passing through almost all the hardware. macOS is unlikely to run inside a VM on Linux any time soon, because the desktop environment requires a paravirtualized Metal graphics device, which means writing an entire Metal implementation for Linux. You can run the XNU kernel in text mode though, even on non-M1 systems.
    - terhechte 5y ago
      Would this hypervisor allow switching between two running instances of Linux and macOS? (given additional implementation work, etc) (e.g. by pausing one and handing the passed through hardware to the other os)?
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        No, you can't really save/restore the hardware context to pull this off. You'd need actual virtual devices for ~everything at some level. I won't go as far as saying it's impossible a priori, but it'd be a huge undertaking.
        terhechte 5y ago
        Thanks for the reply!
dang 5y ago
Related: Linux on an M1 Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717758 - March 2022 (136 comments) AsahiLinux's Introduction to Apple Silicon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 - March 2022 (5 comments) Asahi Linux Add Support for the Broadcom FullMAC WiFi Chips Used on Apple T2/M1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29694497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29694497 - Dec 2021 (9 comments) Apple Helps Asahi Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 - Dec 2021 (174 comments) Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29564384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29564384 - Dec 2021 (211 comments) Asahi Linux for M1 Macs: progress report for September 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744 - Oct 2021 (186 comments) Asahi Linux for Apple M1 progress report, August 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 - Aug 2021 (183 comments) Asahi Linux Progress Report: January/February 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26421963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26421963 - March 2021 (65 comments) Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649719 - Jan 2021 (405 comments)
_ph_ 5y ago
Exciting news! While I am mainly a Mac user, Linux is the other operation system I use (usually via VM on the Mac) and the one alternative operating system I would use, if I would not have a Mac. Being able to boot into Linux directly adds a lot of value. While I don't have an ARM Mac yet, this gives even more incentive to order a Mac Studio :) (I assume support for that is coming soon). I am wondering why Apple doesn't support this more directly. That would be just a tiny drop out of the marketing budget. But at least there seems to be some good will in the relevant OS department with recent changes from which Asahi Linux benefited. On a side note, as long as the graphics are CPU rendered, is this rendering multi-threaded and would benefit from the beefier M chips?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I agree with you that it would be good if Apple supported Linux containers directly, like ChromeOS and Windows. I bought a $350 Lenovo Chromebook last year and in addition to touchscreen and included keyboard case and pencil, it also has seamless integration for using Linux containers. I don’t own a Windows machine, but I have heard good reports about their Linux container system. All that said, I would be delighted if Apple supported an M1 version of VirtualBox.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    > I would be delighted if Apple supported an M1 version of VirtualBox. They almost do, Apple ships Hypervisor.framework with macOS. You still need an app to interface with it, but Apple’s framework does most of the work. You might be interested in https://github.com/machyve/xhyve https://github.com/machyve/xhyve Asahi Linux, of course, isn’t that. Asahi Linux runs on bare metal.

587 points by robbiet480 5y ago

lambda_dn 5y ago

Does bluetooth work? If you can't use airpods with a mac it's a no go imo

sliken 5y ago
Heh, way lower than accelerated GPU for me. If you really hard up get a USB dongle that works well with Linux.
- musha68k 5y ago
  Same here. I wonder if Proton is tightly bound to x86_64? My first generation M1 is pretty capable as a low to mid-tier games machine but even with stellar Rosetta 2 performance it's ultimately held back by still too few Mac ports in general.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    An arm port of proton would let you run what? Solitaire?
    - musha68k 5y ago
      Something more like "Death's Door" or "Valheim" would be something that interests me personally :) So yeah, I have no idea how Proton works.
      - tedunangst 5y ago
        So proton is basically wine, and wine is not an emulator, so there's the first clue. :) It doesn't change cpu architecture.
        musha68k 5y ago
        From the release note above, I guess FEX would have been the "Rosetta 2" for Asahi but seems to be also out of the question ATM so you are right no Proton indeed for the time being. I didn't know Proton was WINE-IS-NOT-an-EMULATOR based thanks for info :) >There is a category of software that will likely never support 16K page sizes: certain emulators and compatibility layers, including FEX. Well, too bad...
        floatboth 5y ago
        Eventually 4k page size kernels will work too (but 16k has better performance)
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    The "FEX" mentioned needing 4k page size is about running x86* games on ARM64 much like Rosetta2, including Proton. Really need the GPU though, the standard desktop is already extremely taxing even though the CPU is extremely fast.
    - musha68k 5y ago
      Thanks, just read up on that as well - too bad :/ On the desktop side: I always assumed x11/xorg derived GUIs were purely software rendered? Has Wayland finally landed? Sorry I'm lagging behind >10 years of Linux on desktop.
      - nrdvana 5y ago
        It's a big ball of wax with more details than I'll ever memorize, but I know for a fact that for the last 20 years or more X11 GLX has had "indirect contexts" where the application feeds the OpenGL requests over the display socket and the server renders them (possibly) hardware-accelerated. "direct rendering" is where the X11 client negotiates with the X server to make a direct connection from the application to /dev/whatever to talk directly to the kernel driver of the graphics card to do rendering that bypasses the X server. The whole thing with Wayland is just a new generation of coders saying "hey all this pile of new apis on top of old apis on top of older apis spanning back 40 years designed for hardware that no longer exists is insane. We need to start over." They aren't wrong, but they also haven't reached feature parity with the old stuff yet, because doing hardware accelerated 3D graphics over a pipe to a remote host was a pretty amazing feat of technology. Edit: to be a little more specific, Silicon Graphics company's whole business was accelerated graphics, and they were in business since 1982, and invented most of X11, or at least its extensions.
      - zamadatix 5y ago
        In regards to acceleration pretty much all major Linux desktop environments have hardware accelerated compositing these days regardless if X11 or Wayland is being used. In regards to Wayland landing or not it has become the default for Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, RHEL, and many others but a lot of apps still rely on the XWayland compatibility layer to run. The Asahi Desktop install option currently defaults to an X11 Plasma session, I assume for simplicity at this stage, but Wayland works fine as well. Even if you try a desktop environment that requires accelerated rendering and has no native software fallback it'll work via a software rasterizer like LLVMpipe until real GPU acceleration arrives.
robbiet480 5y ago
According to the post, Bluetooth does not yet work, but this is only a alpha release.
- lambda_dn 5y ago
  I would switch to linux if they could get BT to work. Macbook Air M1 owner here I need airpods to work otherwise it's not a viable switch. This this is true for many users. Please focus on that guys.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Sounds like an area for a good, motivated technologist who appreciates lambdas and DNs to contribute, if the project is open source and accepting contributions.
    - lambda_dn 5y ago
      Good point, I may scratch that itch
      - tomrod 5y ago
        Thank you for entertaining my silly comment :) And good luck!
  - mort96 5y ago
    For some people, Bluetooth will be the one important thing and everything else that doesn't work isn't so important. Other people will be able to live without bluetooth but can't live without the HDMI port. Other people again may not use external screens but absolutely require hardware acceleration. Others still may not care so much about any of that stuff, but need the camera to work for their meetings. And maybe some are absolutely dependent on external storage accessed through Thunderbolt. There's _a lot_ of work still. It's not clear that Bluetooth should be the highest priority of what's left. And this whole undertaking is a monumental task which it's amazing that volunteers are even attempting. Saying "I want bluetooth, please focus on that guys" here seems a bit tone-deaf.
Teever 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdEeI-B21A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdEeI-B21A

pthariensflame 5y ago

Yay!

DougMellon 5y ago

The work they have accomplished and the speed at which they have done it is inspiring.

mattl 5y ago
Yep. Turns out paying talented and motivated people works.
- flatiron 5y ago
  I find it crazy because you know they developed all this hardware with Linux. Just release the darn code. I haven’t been at apple for over a year but there was a strong population using apples own arch Linux distro. It’s not like people there don’t use Linux.
  - 2fast4you 5y ago
    Why would they develop their hardware in Linux?
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Apple does bringup with Linux because the silicon team doesn’t necessarily want to deal with getting the Darwin team involved during validation.
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Right - however it’s not as easy as “release the code.” Those Linux versions used for bring-up are typically an unupstreamable mess. They are hardware engineers, not software devs. It’s kind of like Correlium’s M1 port over a year ago. It got Linux on the M1 within weeks of launch but the code was unusably atrocious. Edit: Adding to that, Linux does not have a stable driver interface, and regularly changes between releases. That means that messy sloppy code that is unupstreamable will quickly be unable to move forward to future Linux versions without increasingly herculean efforts. You'll be trapped on an old kernel indefinitely if you follow that path - just like the Android situation. Edit 2: And I'm not exaggerating that Correlium's code was sloppy. Almost none of it ended up in the Asahi Linux project. Also Corellium basically dumped that code for fun and then quickly gave up trying to keep it up to date.

zozbot234 5y ago

Wait, I thought they were going to be ARM64 only? They're porting it to Alpha too?

pram 5y ago
If you want the best experience on your DECBook stick with VAX imo
- hbbio 5y ago
  Can't wait to try on my i860 Notebook though
Alekhine 5y ago
Uh, no. 'Alpha' as in before 'Beta'.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  (That’s the joke.)
  - Alekhine 5y ago
    Damn it. And I spend so much time making fun of people who can't hear sarcasm.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  I want to live in the alternate 90's universe where a slim laptop with an alpha processor and Apple badge exists. RISC architecture is going to change everything!
  - phs318u 5y ago
    It's funny but you're not the only one. Digital had some great engineering. Apple had a great understanding of the consumer and UX. Could have been awesome. I also thought that a similar alliance would have been awesome. Imagine if Apple had bought Sun instead of Oracle.

MaxLeiter 5y ago

Disappointed to see Marcan et al asking users to blindly copy and paste a curl command from the internet. “Ready to give it a shot? Make sure to update your macOS to version 12.3 or later, then just pull up a Terminal in macOS and paste in this command:” Other than that, fantastic work and I look forward to eventually having an M1 to run Asahi on Edit: I just wish the wording would encourage you to verify the file. I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with using shell scripts from the internet. But massive companies let domains expire, why won’t marcan?

kyleee 5y ago
curl and perl
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emodendroket 5y ago
Let's say he instead did a traditional installer link. Would it be any different for most users? Nobody actually checks the checksum.
- MBCook 5y ago
  Somehow that feels way safer. I guess it’s not, but it feels like it is.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Yeah - except if you owned the domain, you can also change the posted hash you are comparing against. Security theater mostly.
    - open1414 5y ago
      It's mostly for applications which hosts their binaries on third party servers
    - 5y ago

anoonmoose 5y ago

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Complained about elsewhere. Complaints are generally because you want more security theater. Edit: For the curious, you are literally trusting that address for an entire OS install. And you could do a hash comparison, but if the website was hacked to begin with, the hash you compared against could just be changed anyway.
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Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I will say, I find it a little annoying that going to https://alx.sh https://alx.sh directly in my browser redirects to asahilinux.org. What if I want to read the script before I run it? I realize there are other ways to do that (e.g. curl), but why make it difficult?
- zamadatix 5y ago
  As you note the browser can be sent something different than curl so reading what it does in a browser doesn't make much sense, especially since the script itself calls curl.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    This is indeed a good point. Malicious actors can show you one script in a browser, then serve a more malicious script with curl. I do not understand why Asahi decided they needed a tiny domain just to serve a download script. It means users have to trust more domains with weird characters (was that A L X . S H or A I X . S H ? Oops).
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      It would seem to be convenient if https://asahilinux.org/ https://asahilinux.org/ also worked the same way (serve the script if it's curl, show the page if it's a browser) for those that don't want to remember or use the short URL. If you pop that suggestion in the IRC/Matrix room they very well might make it so.

n42 5y ago

this is incredible, congratulations to everyone involved in making this happen. there's already instructions for a NixOS install, too[1] [1]: https://github.com/tpwrules/nixos-m1/blob/main/docs/uefi-standalone.md https://github.com/tpwrules/nixos-m1/blob/main/docs/uefi-sta...

_x5tx 5y ago
that’s great! I’ve been a long time Fedora user but last year I decided to try NixOS and I couldn’t be more surprised, everything works well and it was easy to install and learn. I’m glad I can try it in my m1 macbook pro!
spindle 5y ago
Wow! That is huge.

qiskit 5y ago

> At least 53GB of free disk space (Desktop install) Wowsa. I know disk space is abundant but that is still shocking. I've never used MacOS, but why does it need at least 38 GB free for MacOS update? > You need 15GB for Asahi Linux Desktop Wowsa number 2. I'm used light installs using lightweight windows managers or desktops so that number was a bit shocking. Anyone else prefer a small base onto which you can add software rather than getting everything and having to uninstall a bunch of software?

gjsman-1000 5y ago
The macOS Software Updater is extremely inefficient with space - you want plenty free or it might get stuck. As for the 15GB, 2.5GB must be used for the mandatory Recovery partition as well as leaving room for the recovery partition to have extra room if necessary, because it can’t be easily expanded later. That leaves 12.5GB for your desktop Linux and any free space for your apps or files. You can use Expert Mode to go smaller with either macOS or Asahi but I’d say they are reasonable guidelines.
zozbot234 5y ago
Asahi Linux Desktop is a default install. A minimal Arch install is also available, as well as a UEFI-only implementation. There is a fixed ~3GB overhead per 'Other OS' install for OS-specific vendor firmware, but a UEFI install is managed as a single 'Other OS' and can freely boot UEFI payloads from both internal and external drives.
rvz 5y ago
>> At least 53GB of free disk space (Desktop install) Very surprised by this, but to be fair this is an alpha. So I expect them to drive that down drastically when it is stable anyway. It may not be the friendliest of installers, but hey that Linux. Or perhaps someone can do a user-friendly AsahiInstaller.app as well?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Most of that is leaving enough space for macOS updates not to break. The minimal image requires 8GB of actual space by default, 3GB for boot stuff related to macOS and a default minimum 5GB root partition. I can actually go lower there, but I don't think most people would want to have a Linux system smaller than that. You'd quickly run out of space as you start installing stuff.

tyingq 5y ago

Probably won't happen, but it's interesting that all the things you would need for an "x-serve next-gen" to be successful have fallen into place now. Would make a pretty power packed and efficient 1U machine.

n42 5y ago
I’m already dreaming of a near silent M1 Mac Mini server rack for my closet..
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Seems like they’re already very close. Most of what’s missing (GPU, sleep, Bluetooth) is irrelevant to a server use-case.
zamadatix 5y ago
Server on the M1 Mac Mini is really already there unless you need thunderbolt accessories or GPU acceleration for your server use case. Even the 10G port is working fine now. I was actually just looking into some of the 1u 2x Mac Mini mount options prior to reading this wondering if it'd make sense to do. The Mac Studio bring-up might be worth waiting for on this use case though, apart from more cores it crucially has more RAM options. While the SSD is comparatively fast to swap from what most are used to dealing with the 16 GB of RAM limit on the Mini can still be between a real downer to a non-starter for many server workloads.
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
I’ve been wanting to set up a couple of small home servers (something like some raspberry pis). They’ve been out of stock since forever and very hard to come across. It’s been months since this project is paused. I’m considering just getting a Mac Mini and using that as a home server with everything in it.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  I just got a Mac Mini for this exact use case. Let's be honest, Raspberry Pi is garbage. It's just insanely weak, I regret spending around €100 for mine (Raspberry Pi 4, with case). It's got 32-bit ARM chip, and USB 3 ports that you can't use (I plugged in 2 external HDDs into it, was running a SMB share for Time Machine and Media, they just kept dropping. Apparently something power delivery related, works with USB 2.0 speeds though.)

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Wrote this reply from Asahi which I installed earlier this afternoon before the announcement. Works well and the installer was pretty good for alpha. :)

jasoneckert 5y ago

I just installed this - the installation experience was easy and guided you through the tasks that were happening and why. I gave it 100GB of space on my 16GB Mac Mini, and Asahi runs incredibly fast and smooth. Very impressed!

capableweb 5y ago
Incredibly impressive that Asahi Linux seems to have achieved the impossible: give us more physical disk space via just software!
- thangngoc89 5y ago
  I believe they parent reply is referring to 16GB of RAM
  - I_complete_me 5y ago
    I believe he may have omitted a /s

jaime10 5y ago

I made a quick guide to install and configure Sway on the Macbook Air. Should be useful to solve some touchpad and scaling issues with the defaul sway settings. https://github.com/jaime10a/SwayM1 https://github.com/jaime10a/SwayM1

zamadatix 5y ago
It's probably better to swap the command and option keys via the swap_opt_cmd=1 parameter on the hid-apple kernel module that way they are globally swapped, not just in sway. fnmode=2 is another useful one which sets f1-f10 to be function keys by default so e.g. pressing f10 sends f10, not mute because you forgot to press fn+f10. You can find some other options in https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/c5d9ae265b105d9a67575fb67bd4650a6fc08e25/drivers/hid/hid-apple.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/c5d9ae265b105d9a67575... as well
- OJFord 5y ago
  Where would you use them that's outside sway, if you're running sway? Switching back from a second console-only tty?
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Yes to both, also any program that reads keys directly.

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zamadatix 5y ago

It's a bit early (obviously, hence Alpha) but if the pace and purpose of the project make you excited consider bumping a few dollars towards the donation links in the article to help these folks afford to get it done. Marcan is a wizard and Povik has been making great progress but these machines aren't cheap nor their time unlimited!

hbbio 5y ago
Backing as well, soon enough it will be impossible to find a better machine than a Macbook Air running Linux at this price point! The processor is outstanding, so is battery life and the screen and touchpad are incredibly better than any Dell or Lenovo out there. Give us the opportunity to get rid of the increasing number of "cruft" that is Photos, Messages, iCloud, and countless demons in macOS... are we are good to go!
- diffeomorphism 5y ago
  > so is battery life and the screen and touchpad are incredibly better than any Dell or Lenovo out there. What? The touchpad I agree, but screen? For the Macbook Air (not pro)? That is still good, but definitely not better than the UHD+ screens you for instance get from Dell. And that is not even considering oled options.
  - hbbio 5y ago
    "at this price point" Dell frequently does discounts, but the base price for their UHD panel in the XPS13 is twice the price of a MacBook Air. I had both, and still prefer the Mac hardware by a considerable margin.
  - paines 5y ago
    The UDH screens on Dell Laptops are a bigger battery drain than the cpus....
  - antifa 5y ago
    I've got a Dell with 4k screen and it's great, but I would eagerly trade it for the M1's superior battery and noiseless cooling. My Dell doesn't last long or stay quiet if you try to do anything, even on windows.

k1832 5y ago

Great

cloudwizard 5y ago

Excited about this. I like the Mac HW but hate MacOs. I can't delete iTunes, books, etc. Switched development to a Chromebook for a decent Linux experience.

deleted 5y ago
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e40 5y ago
Santa allows you to disable them, however.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> I can't delete iTunes, books, etc. You still can if you really, really want to, it has just become excessively annoying. (I don’t blame you at all for switching OS’s)

xiaodai 5y ago

Still waiting for my Budweiser Linux

watmough 5y ago

Awesome!! Posting from it now after about 2 hours or so to backup some stuff and run through the installer with a couple glasses wine. Super slick. No issues.

legodion 5y ago

Ironically a MacBook would be the best hardware Linux could presently run on. If everything works reliably well, this could be a game changer for Linux.

brundolf 5y ago
A super interesting angle with all this is that since these machines are so homogenous and widely-used, once the ice is broken they could quickly become the best-supported modern Linux machines out there, just due to the sheer number of people who would have the exact same hardware (vs the rest of the landscape, which is much more spotty and varied), and the way that would reduce the support burden. Getting the audio drivers working on Apple Silicon machines could be much more impactful than getting them working on the MSI Delta 15 or whatever
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Even more so: all Macs have pretty much the same hardware. From the Air to the Studio, the same CPU cores, the same GPU cores, same auxiliary hardware like neural net processors. All enhancements should pretty much affect all Macs running Linux.
riffraff 5y ago
I ran Linux on the first Intel MacBook and that too was great hardware for it at the time, I don't think it matters that much for linux' success.
- legodion 5y ago
  Allow me to explain how you are wrong. One big issue with Linux is driver maintenance. If a distro can focus on just one set of hardware (e.g. M1 Macs), it allows the developers to optimize the distro massively. It also makes everything more predictable, and saves a lot of time. Not to mention that the M1 macbooks have outstanding displays, speakers, mics, etc. Imagine a world where the distro has perfect drivers out of the box, and we don't need to use some subpar nouveau driver (when I say subpar, I'm speaking relative to the official drivers). Not to mention that most people run Linux on crappy $1000 laptops. An M1 air is around that price range, and destroys anything in that particular market space. This could be massive for Linux desktops. I feel like the one thing that has been holding it back has been this very issue. It even opens up the door to reverse engineering the Apple hardware and perhaps creating a complete open source integrated system in the future. It matters, and it could be the thing that rocket blasts Linux into more normies homes.

TwoNineFive 5y ago

Putting "Not yet, but coming soon:" under the "What works" heading instead of the "What doesn’t" is dishonest.

_ph_ 5y ago
No, it is a reasonable category. There is a huge distiction between things, which don't work yet, but you know that you can make them work and have even a schedule for doing them. And there are things, where you either don't have an idea yet how to make them work or cannot attach a schedule yet. As with any software release: you have the list of things planned for the next release, even if they are not available yet and you have a list of things which definitely won't be in the next release.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Specifically, things on that list are things that work already, but are disabled or not merged into our release kernels yet because they aren't quite ready for end users. So they "work" already, just not in the kernel packages I'm building :-)
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blindmute 5y ago

I'm out of the loop on this one. Is M1 a new architecture, and if so does that mean any distro would have to recompile every package in the repo to target it? How long would that take for a typical distribution?

zamadatix 5y ago
M1 is ARMv8.4-A based, standard aarch64 binaries run e.g. I'm able to download and run Caddy using the standard arm64 binary.
nanliu 5y ago
It’s ARM but with a unique boot process and other proprietary hardware component (gpu, ssd). Check the previous hnews posts and original kickoff document: https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-february-2021/ https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january-febru... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135
- userbinator 5y ago
  In other words, just like every other ARM SoC out there... but from the sibling comments, it sounds like user-mode binaries can stay the same.
58028641 5y ago
No, M1 is ARM64, so any existing ARM64 compatible packages will work. However, some packages may not be compatible with 16K pages, so you may need the 4K page version of the kernel. Linux (unlike macOS) does not support mixed page sizes (edit: at least with M1) so it will result in reduced performance for the whole system if you need 4K pages.
- eklitzke 5y ago
  Linux does support mixed page sizes (that's how huge pages work) and the page size isn't even detectable by userspace user than through sysconf(3) or getpagesize(2) so I'm not sure why a program wouldn't be compatible with 16K pages; after all, regular programs work just fine with THP on Linux.

beebeepka 5y ago

Current Apple hardware is pretty sweet. My heart has been with AMD for decades but if they make this work, in a few years I might buy my first Mac.

gundamdoubleO 5y ago

Excited to try this out. Still missing a few crucial features for me to fully adopt it as a daily driver but the speed of this project has been incredibly impressive. Can't wait to see how it looks 1 or 2 years down the line.

boris 5y ago

Does anyone know if virtualization (e.g., kvm/qemu) would work? Didn't see any mention of that in the FAQ.

_ph_ 5y ago
From earlier tweets by Hector I remember that virtualization is working and he was able to run Mac OS inside a VM on Linux.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Virtualization is working on Linux, but the macOS story is not that. We run macOS inside a custom VM hypervisor I wrote, on bar metal, passing through almost all the hardware. macOS is unlikely to run inside a VM on Linux any time soon, because the desktop environment requires a paravirtualized Metal graphics device, which means writing an entire Metal implementation for Linux. You can run the XNU kernel in text mode though, even on non-M1 systems.
  - terhechte 5y ago
    Would this hypervisor allow switching between two running instances of Linux and macOS? (given additional implementation work, etc) (e.g. by pausing one and handing the passed through hardware to the other os)?
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      No, you can't really save/restore the hardware context to pull this off. You'd need actual virtual devices for ~everything at some level. I won't go as far as saying it's impossible a priori, but it'd be a huge undertaking.
      - terhechte 5y ago
        Thanks for the reply!

dang 5y ago

Related: Linux on an M1 Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717758 - March 2022 (136 comments) AsahiLinux's Introduction to Apple Silicon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 - March 2022 (5 comments) Asahi Linux Add Support for the Broadcom FullMAC WiFi Chips Used on Apple T2/M1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29694497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29694497 - Dec 2021 (9 comments) Apple Helps Asahi Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 - Dec 2021 (174 comments) Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29564384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29564384 - Dec 2021 (211 comments) Asahi Linux for M1 Macs: progress report for September 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744 - Oct 2021 (186 comments) Asahi Linux for Apple M1 progress report, August 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135 - Aug 2021 (183 comments) Asahi Linux Progress Report: January/February 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26421963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26421963 - March 2021 (65 comments) Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649719 - Jan 2021 (405 comments)

_ph_ 5y ago

Exciting news! While I am mainly a Mac user, Linux is the other operation system I use (usually via VM on the Mac) and the one alternative operating system I would use, if I would not have a Mac. Being able to boot into Linux directly adds a lot of value. While I don't have an ARM Mac yet, this gives even more incentive to order a Mac Studio :) (I assume support for that is coming soon). I am wondering why Apple doesn't support this more directly. That would be just a tiny drop out of the marketing budget. But at least there seems to be some good will in the relevant OS department with recent changes from which Asahi Linux benefited. On a side note, as long as the graphics are CPU rendered, is this rendering multi-threaded and would benefit from the beefier M chips?

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I agree with you that it would be good if Apple supported Linux containers directly, like ChromeOS and Windows. I bought a $350 Lenovo Chromebook last year and in addition to touchscreen and included keyboard case and pencil, it also has seamless integration for using Linux containers. I don’t own a Windows machine, but I have heard good reports about their Linux container system. All that said, I would be delighted if Apple supported an M1 version of VirtualBox.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  > I would be delighted if Apple supported an M1 version of VirtualBox. They almost do, Apple ships Hypervisor.framework with macOS. You still need an app to interface with it, but Apple’s framework does most of the work. You might be interested in https://github.com/machyve/xhyve https://github.com/machyve/xhyve Asahi Linux, of course, isn’t that. Asahi Linux runs on bare metal.