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> Can Apple be incentivized somehow to help the Asahi Linux folks? Apple doesn't have a history of helping anyone but themselves and if you read the article it

> Can Apple be incentivized somehow to help the Asahi Linux folks? Apple doesn't have a history of helping anyone but themselves and if you read the article it looks like they're not thinking at all about helping alternative OSes by using proprietary interfaces and overly complicated hardware/firmware designs and breaking things with macOS updates. It is a truly herculian task to get Linux merely booting up and usable on Apple M* SoCs - kudos to the Asahi Linux team for all the heroic efforts - personally it feels like it's a great reverse engineering project and they should continue fighting it but Linux on M1/2 is not going to be a daily driver like Linux on standard x64 machines is. Thankfully Intel and AMD are doing pretty good in performance department with their latest chips and it's only going to get better.

rowanG077 4y ago
Linux was booting within weeks. Hardly a herculian task. I'm really not sure where this idea comes from. Yes of course initial investment is pretty high because of the new architecture. But it's pretty clear they have proven they can do it. M2 was working with a few hours of coding. GPU prototype driver has over 90% compliance. Like when does this idea die?
- blinkingled 4y ago
  God it gets tiring - Did I say booting Linux on M1 was a herculean task? I even used the words daily driver - making that a daily driver is definitely a herculean task - it is still not there - the GPU driver piece is pretty herculean by itself.
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    This is what you said: "It is a truly herculian task to get Linux merely booting up and usable on Apple M* SoCs". And you can use the M1 macs today and it's usable. Whether it's daily driveable is an entirely different, subjective, question. I could probably daily drive it just fine with some manageable pain points. That doesn't mean it's daily driveable for you or anyone else. But whether it's usable is really not in question at this point.
    - blinkingled 4y ago
      Hey, what about that usable part? Are we going to argue your usable is the same as everyone else's or even the same as Linux on x86 usability?
quesera 4y ago
> they're doing everything they can to hinder others by using overly complicated hardware and firmware designs and breaking things with macOS updates This is such a shallow take. Your animosity toward Apple has blinkered you. There is zero possibility that anyone at Apple is spending any time working to make hardware designs "overly complicated" for the purpose of hindering efforts like Asahi Linux.
- blinkingled 4y ago
  Lol on animosity - now a days merely stating facts implies animosity. Also, another way to think about it is that there's zero possibility that anyone at Apple is spending any time working to make hardware designs that are friendly to alternative OSes. Those are both effectively the same things. Also since you might have take this personally - I wanted to clarify that my comment mostly is a reflection of wasted potential for the M* hardware - making it friendly to alt OSes would vastly improve the hardware's utility without hurting Apple. (If you are to believe most HNers they are a H/W company that is not interested in selling your personal data - so it should be in their financial interest if alt OSes sell more of their hardware.)
  - quesera 4y ago
    > Those are both effectively the same things. They are not even close to the same thing. And if you were more familiar with the Asahi Linux project, you might remember that Apple has done a thing or two that made their work possible/future-proof.
    - blinkingled 4y ago
      They are the same thing. Unless Apple commits to documenting the hardware, designing with backwards compat(lol not gonna happen - but an example), or starts committing code to Asahi Linux - rest of it is all wishy washy - a variation of no guarantees anything will work or continue to work, you are on your own. It doesn't really matter otherwise if they are or are not spending time actively breaking things - as the article shows the net effect is the same.
sidkshatriya 4y ago
> Thankfully Intel and AMD are doing pretty good in performance department with their latest chips and it's only going to get better. I often wonder if AMD was able to use TSMC's cutting edge fabrication node how would their laptop chips compare with the M1. Apple uses TSMC's best node as I understand it.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  AMD does use the same node as the Apple now. But that will most likely change with the M2 pro or M3 at the latest.
  - blinkingled 4y ago
    Far as I know Ryzen 6000 chips use 6nm node - 7000 series will use the 5nm node and they are not out yet?
    - rowanG077 4y ago
      Ah yes. You are right! It does use 6nm.
- sliken 4y ago
  Apple has had a lead on using TSMC's latest process. However the lead in iGPU performance and perf/watt is a fair bit larger than you'd expect from the process differences. I'm still puzzled why during a long GPU shortage where supply was short and prices insane that nobody in the x86-64 world managed a > 128 bit wide memory interface to benefit of an iGPU. Apple desktops and laptops have options for 256, 512, and even 1024 bit (on the studio) wide memory systems.
- sharikous 4y ago
  Arm has some structural advantage in the decoding stage (instructions have the same length) and a huge lead in low power systems they got by heritage, not to mention less historical baggage (x86_64 cpus still have a 16 bit mode and a 80 bit fpu) I think the lead the M1 has is bigger than what can be attributed to the different node.

rowanG077 4y ago

Linux was booting within weeks. Hardly a herculian task. I'm really not sure where this idea comes from. Yes of course initial investment is pretty high because of the new architecture. But it's pretty clear they have proven they can do it. M2 was working with a few hours of coding. GPU prototype driver has over 90% compliance. Like when does this idea die?

blinkingled 4y ago
God it gets tiring - Did I say booting Linux on M1 was a herculean task? I even used the words daily driver - making that a daily driver is definitely a herculean task - it is still not there - the GPU driver piece is pretty herculean by itself.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  This is what you said: "It is a truly herculian task to get Linux merely booting up and usable on Apple M* SoCs". And you can use the M1 macs today and it's usable. Whether it's daily driveable is an entirely different, subjective, question. I could probably daily drive it just fine with some manageable pain points. That doesn't mean it's daily driveable for you or anyone else. But whether it's usable is really not in question at this point.
  - blinkingled 4y ago
    Hey, what about that usable part? Are we going to argue your usable is the same as everyone else's or even the same as Linux on x86 usability?

quesera 4y ago

> they're doing everything they can to hinder others by using overly complicated hardware and firmware designs and breaking things with macOS updates This is such a shallow take. Your animosity toward Apple has blinkered you. There is zero possibility that anyone at Apple is spending any time working to make hardware designs "overly complicated" for the purpose of hindering efforts like Asahi Linux.

blinkingled 4y ago
Lol on animosity - now a days merely stating facts implies animosity. Also, another way to think about it is that there's zero possibility that anyone at Apple is spending any time working to make hardware designs that are friendly to alternative OSes. Those are both effectively the same things. Also since you might have take this personally - I wanted to clarify that my comment mostly is a reflection of wasted potential for the M* hardware - making it friendly to alt OSes would vastly improve the hardware's utility without hurting Apple. (If you are to believe most HNers they are a H/W company that is not interested in selling your personal data - so it should be in their financial interest if alt OSes sell more of their hardware.)
- quesera 4y ago
  > Those are both effectively the same things. They are not even close to the same thing. And if you were more familiar with the Asahi Linux project, you might remember that Apple has done a thing or two that made their work possible/future-proof.
  - blinkingled 4y ago
    They are the same thing. Unless Apple commits to documenting the hardware, designing with backwards compat(lol not gonna happen - but an example), or starts committing code to Asahi Linux - rest of it is all wishy washy - a variation of no guarantees anything will work or continue to work, you are on your own. It doesn't really matter otherwise if they are or are not spending time actively breaking things - as the article shows the net effect is the same.

sidkshatriya 4y ago

> Thankfully Intel and AMD are doing pretty good in performance department with their latest chips and it's only going to get better. I often wonder if AMD was able to use TSMC's cutting edge fabrication node how would their laptop chips compare with the M1. Apple uses TSMC's best node as I understand it.

rowanG077 4y ago
AMD does use the same node as the Apple now. But that will most likely change with the M2 pro or M3 at the latest.
- blinkingled 4y ago
  Far as I know Ryzen 6000 chips use 6nm node - 7000 series will use the 5nm node and they are not out yet?
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    Ah yes. You are right! It does use 6nm.
sliken 4y ago
Apple has had a lead on using TSMC's latest process. However the lead in iGPU performance and perf/watt is a fair bit larger than you'd expect from the process differences. I'm still puzzled why during a long GPU shortage where supply was short and prices insane that nobody in the x86-64 world managed a > 128 bit wide memory interface to benefit of an iGPU. Apple desktops and laptops have options for 256, 512, and even 1024 bit (on the studio) wide memory systems.
sharikous 4y ago
Arm has some structural advantage in the decoding stage (instructions have the same length) and a huge lead in low power systems they got by heritage, not to mention less historical baggage (x86_64 cpus still have a 16 bit mode and a 80 bit fpu) I think the lead the M1 has is bigger than what can be attributed to the different node.