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Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux
- aliqot 4y agoCongrats! There's not a whole lot left, is there? Audio via the speakers I think was the last one I was concerned about. Maybe brightness?
- dottedmag 4y agoUSB4, Thunderbolt, audio over Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, TouchID. I'm not sure mike and camera work. Also various accelerators: video decoder, video encoder, neural engine. Unless I'm mistaken all of it is in progress, but not yet ready.
- wtallis 4y ago> audio over Thunderbolt I'm not sure why this rates a separate mention, or even what exactly you're referring to with this one. Did you mean audio over DisplayPort or HDMI? I don't think there's any standard for audio over Thunderbolt like there is for audio over USB, and if there was then it would automatically start working when Thunderbolt itself is supported.
- dottedmag 4y agoYes, I mixed it up, sorry.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- worldsavior 4y agoThe important parts are working.
- bipson 4y agoThere might be different definitions of "important stuff" between you and others...
- worldsavior 4y agoThe base components are working, thats what I meant.
- toomim 4y agoThat definition still varies between you and others. I personally consider sleep to be a "base component."
- worldsavior 4y agoBase is a component that's needed to the other components, such as the GPU, or a driver for the screen, and similar. A sleep function isn't a base component, since it's rather a feature.
- toomim 4y agoThat definition is obviously subjective, and depends on the user. Some users (like myself) don't need a GPU for anything, and thus a GPU is not "base." It's a frivolous addition for playing games. You can run a whole desktop environment on CPU rendering with no problem. But going to sleep is necessary for unplugging a laptop and taking it on a trip, which is a basic feature for many users, like myself, and a basic component of having a "laptop." Sleep is also a necessary for the "battery component" to hold a charge while it's unplugged and unused.
- blackMysticCat 4y agoBrightness is working already, as well as suspend. But there is a _lot_ of stuff to work out
- OJFord 4y agoOnly on M1 devices, excluding the Mini & Studio: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- fulafel 4y agoDeep sleep, currently they have a s2idle state that eats a bit too much battery.
- toomim 4y agoThis is a big one — when you close the lid on your laptop, the laptop stays on. When you open the lid again, the battery will be drained, because it stayed on the entire time.
- weberer 4y agoUnfortunately, that's also a problem with like 90% of new computers out there.
- jdwithit 4y agoThis has been a problem as long as laptops have existed. I had a Dell in like 2006 that I would close and throw in my backpack at the end of the day. When I got home there was a 50:50 chance it would be about 5000 degrees with the fans blasting because it never actually went to sleep. The fact that this still routinely happens 15 years later despite the insane progress of technology is kind of hilarious.
- Kuinox 4y agoThis is a widespread recent problem due to Intel pushing for S2 sleep.
- m_eiman 4y agoThe remaining 10% are the mac, I suppose? It's one of the better things about macs, and has been working mostly flawlessly for at least 15 years, strange that the other platforms still struggle with it.
- weberer 4y agoThere are a few non-Mac vendors that still support S3 sleep mode. I think Thinkpads still work. The problem is that it requires vendors to support it in the BIOS. Windows no longer supports S3 sleep mode, so vendors aren't willing to add that feature just for Linux users. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33846437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33846437
- urthor 4y agoA very, very, very, long list of features. There's actually a humongous list of peripherals, power states, and the speakers which don't work at all, to support.
- OJFord 4y agohttps://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoAs someone who adores Apple hardware, I’m really looking forward to having the option of running Linux on my MacBook. I’m also really looking forward to the changes in Asahi getting upstreamed. The Rust in Linux work has me really excited for the future of Linux. I might even start contributing once Rust is more common!
- midoridensha 4y agoApple hardware is terrible. I wish someone could somehow make a laptop with the internals of an MacBook (mainly the CPU), but with the externals of a Thinkpad, including the far-superior Thinkpad keyboard and far better aesthetics. And while they're at it, make it easy to pop the back cover off and replace components (esp. the HD) as needed.
- kleiba 4y agoAesthetics lie in the eye of the beholder. But it is my understanding that the mouse pad on MacBooks are far superior to most other mouse pads. I don't know about the keyboard, though.
- rjzzleep 4y agoMacBook's touchpads are quite famous at being better than most of the competition. Thinkpad keyboards are indeed much better, but only if you don't care about small water spills rendering your keyboard unusable.
- happymellon 4y agoHow does a water spill render your Thinkpad unusable? Mine has drain holes to handle this situation, my work Mac can't handle crumbs. I don't want to think about how it would cope with liquid.
- dathinab 4y agoThere are some models where the keyboard itself isn't fully water safe, so there is a chance your keyboard dies but the rest of your system is fine. This is especially true if we don't spill water but some other harder to handle liquids. There are also some products published as ThinkPads which aren't really ThinkPads (like some(many?,all?) of the Yoga ThinkPads don't have any of the properties normally associated with ThinkPads, they are much less robust pretty much in every category and much harder to repair even if it's just the keyboard.
- reacharavindh 4y agoSilly question.. is there a way to run Asahi Linux on a M1Pro MacBook in a live mode without installing it? I’d love to try it for fun on a computer that is not mine…
- dottedmag 4y agoM1 boot sequence requires some code to be installed on the system. Once the execution jumps to the bootloader the rest can be run from anywhere, such as USB stick. It still requires adding a new partition with bootloader and some other files required by Apple for successfully verifying the signatures on everything, so it's not a "live mode".
- blackMysticCat 4y agoNot as far as I know, but the installation process is the easiest time I've ever had installing any linux
- zinekeller 4y agoSadly no, and it's unlikely for any OS to be livebooted on Apple ARM systems (effortlessly, like on x86 BIOS/UEFI). macOS does this cheat of "copying bootfiles it needs in internal storage", and it'll be likely that Asahi (and any other OS) would need to set up a permanent partition just so they can pretend to boot up external drives.
- gavinsyancey 4y agoCan I install to an external/USB disk? Apple Silicon machines cannot boot from external storage. While it may look like they do when you choose an external macOS volume, behind the scenes parts of its boot components are being copied to the internal drive to make this work. It’s unclear whether this mechanism will ever be usable by third party OSes, for technical reasons. Instead, we recommend using the UEFI environment only installer option to install only a UEFI bootstrap to your internal drive. This only requires around 3GB of disk space, and it will then automatically boot from any connected USB drive with a UEFI bootloader. Note: installing the Asahi Linux desktop images to a USB drive automatically isn’t supported right now, though if you’re adventurous enough it’s not terribly hard to do manually :-) > https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/ https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/
- koeng 4y agoDoes this enable Mac mini dual screen on Linux? Really been looking for that before switching!
- dottedmag 4y agoGPU and display controller are two different pieces of hardware on M1 (and on most of computers out there except PCs), so GPU driver won't change anything.
- Grazester 4y agoMost "computers" out there are PC's!
- dottedmag 4y agoThere are more mobile phones alone than PCs, and phones are computers with screens.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ask_b123 4y agoAren't M1s PCs too? I wonder why Macs are often not counted as Personal Computers.
- bobmaxup 4y ago> The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
- ngcc_hk 4y ago
- tw1984 4y agotruly incredible, for less than two years, a group of talented engineers managed to release the world's first GPU driver in Rust by reverse engineering apple hardware known for its opacity. oh, they also happened to have the free time to port Linux to Apple hardware. now I just have one question - when this wonderful work will be merged into the mainline kernel. (PLEASE - no one cares who is Lina, we've been there many times, let's don't do it again here in this thread. thanks!)
- bartvk 4y ago> when this wonderful work will be merged into the mainline kernel Last year, they already merged part of their work: https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/09/asahi_linux_merged/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/09/asahi_linux_merged/ But I haven't seen anything since. It's the stated goal, though.
- pygy_ 4y agoProvided Linus Torvalds has been test driving it, I'd expect Asahi to be merged in sooner than later...
- OJFord 4y agoPresumably GP means the GPU driver specifically. There's a table here that shows not only what's supported vs. not, but also which minimum kernel version or linux-asahi/asahi-edge release it's in: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- anakaine 4y ago
- aulin 4y ago> no one cares who is Lina I couldn't care less who she is, but I'm pleased they're giving more status updates in written form.
- oblio 4y agoWho is Lina? :-) Edit: honest question...
- uluyol 4y ago> Through Mesa and Gallium3D, we benefit from thirty years of OpenGL driver development, with common code translating OpenGL into the much simpler Gallium3D. Thanks to the incredible engineering of NIR, Mesa, and Gallium3D, our ragtag team of reverse-engineers can focus on what’s left: the Apple hardware. The Linux graphics folks have really achieved something.
- oblio 4y agoI remember reading about David Miller, I think, porting Linux to SPARC. That was an amazing feat, this is also very impressive. I think at some point Linux was as good as Solaris, if not better, on SPARC systems. I really wish this were true at some point for Apple hardware.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago> I think at some point Linux was as good as Solaris, if not better, on SPARC systems. That's a bit of a stretch. In fact, the last time I was in an air traffic control tower, it was Solaris, not Linux, in active use by the controllers themselves.
- zaarn 4y agoI don't think someone being stuck with Solaris for unknown reasons is sufficient to declare that Solaris is better or equal to Linux. For the ATC, it could simply be a matter of "The application we run only support Solaris"
- sigmoid10 4y agoIt's aviation. Even if there was a superior solution and it was readily available, it would take decades to get through certifications and before it became widely accepted or even the new default. See GPS vs radio navigation or just analog radio communications.
- 4y ago
- olakease 4y agoIs anyone using this as a daily driver? If this is your case, what is your experience? I'm a linux user looking for a new laptop. My preference would be a thinkpad but the Apple machine looks way superior. Migrating to Apple OS is a no go for me. My mainly use will be internet browsing, js development with vim + running docker containers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- capableweb 4y agoAbout 20 days ago I asked the same question ("How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?") as a Ask HN, resulting in ~100 comments about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607994 Conclusion seems: depends on how ready you are to live with the various drawbacks. Personally, I wasn't, but I'm hopeful the day will come soon as I like Apple hardware in general, but can't stand Apple software.
- loeg 4y agoFunctional GPU drivers were a big missing piece! Even if they just do 2d bit-blitting for the desktop (and they seem much more functional than that), it saves the CPU a ton of work.
- trustingtrust 4y agoIn another year or two you’ll be able to buy an M1 Air refurb on eBay for maybe 400$ and once this thing is stable, that would probably the best bang for your buck Linux laptop you can buy.
- culopatin 4y agoYou can already find some people selling 2020MBAs on fb marketplace for 400-500
- pwpw 4y agoI vastly prefer my Thinkpad X1 Nano to my work MacBook Pro. I pair it with a desktop, so keep that in mind… The nano is very, very lightweight, which makes it an amazing portable device for packing up and carrying around. The display is matte, which reduces glare when working outside. The keyboard feels significantly better to type on. This is the biggest pro for me. The camera has a privacy shutter, which gives me a greater peace of mind. And of course, it works well with Fedora Linux. I also optioned mine to have a 5G modem, which is convenient, although I rarely use it due to costly data plans. I have only managed to get the modem to work on the Windows side, but I’m optimistic it will have better Linux support one day. The MacBook Pro is an impressive piece of hardware. The M1 chip is powerful, the battery life is amazing, and the build quality is high. However, I find it to be a much better experience exclusively using it at home docked in my setup due to its weight and glossy screen. At home, I can use my own mechanical keyboard when it’s docked to get around its mediocre keyboard. At that point, I’d rather just use my desktop. But if you’re only getting one device and are fine with MacOS, it is a good option. I prefer the more flexible desktop + lightweight laptop setup personally. A minor thing I’ll note in favor of Apple is that the MacBook Pro is capable of driving my nicer Sennheiser headphones with ease. It’s something most people wouldn’t care about, but Apple excels in the audio department and deserves praise.
- _joel 4y agoHow's M2 looking? Noticed this in release notes from a few months back > Only the M2 MacBook Pro 13” is tested. We’ve added completely untested M2 MacBook Air support (because we can), but none of us have one yet! If you do, only try it if you’re feeling very adventurous (and don’t blame us if things go wrong). I think it's time to give it a go on my M2 air :)
- Tepix 4y agoIsn't it a shame (and waste of human life really) that everything has to be reverse engineered?
- vaughan 4y agoReverse engineering can be a fun adventure.
- ChrisRR 4y agoI'm guessing the number of people who just want to use the hardware massively outweighs the number of people who want to reverse engineer it Even if the software were completely open source from day 0, a reverse engineer could still not look at the source and RE the hardware.
- CGamesPlay 4y agoNot really. Wouldn't it be a shame if nothing could be released without thorough documentation, to avoid the need for someone, sometime, to maybe have to reverse engineer it?
- arjvik 4y agoI don't think OP is saying that all hardware must have thorough documentation before it can legally be released. Instead, they're claiming Apple already has some documentation internally, and it costs them nothing to release it.
- darthrupert 4y agoA pretty big guess that it wouldn't cost them anything. The process of it all plus the secrets their competition could easily learn must both be quite valuable.
- chippiewill 4y agoThey should do it, but I doubt it would cost them nothing. That internal documentation is almost certainly not fit for external consumption and would need to be reviewed and rewritten in places.
- yewenjie 4y agoWhenever there is an Asahi thread on HN, I like to ask people who are daily driving it - how is your experience?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoi've been daily driving Asahi on M2 for months and it's awesome, but not all drivers are done, sound in particular and sleep modes seem not complete. neither matter to me personally for daily driving.
- yewenjie 4y agoHow is the battery-life? Is it comparable to MacOS? What kind of issues about sound and in general are the most annoying from the end-user perspective?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoit's long, but not as long as if the drivers were further along for the screen brightness and processor/os sleep states, I think. I can work many many hours not plugged in. I'd not measured how long.
- drooopy 4y agoIt has been fascinating to watch the progress being made on this in the past few months. Makes me wish I had continued studying Computer Science at uni...
- joshlk 4y agoWhat’s the game demonstrated in the screenshots?
- iamevn 4y agoLooks like Quake 3 and Super Tux Kart
- sva_ 4y agoApple Hardware is starting to look attractive to me, as a diehard Linux user. But not sure if I'd want to do this to myself at this stage of development.
- javchz 4y agoI will say do it if your confortable with something like arch or Gentoo but with less documentation on what to do when something goes wrong. Right now it's a little bit raw, don't take me wrong the progress so far it's amazing, but the task itself it's gigantic too
- sva_ 4y agoYeah I use arch (btw), I'd just be worried that I would run into stability issues more frequently while having to be productive on stuff. Being a tester can be frustrating at times.
- phkahler 4y agoI wonder if it can run Solvespace (CAD). It's fairly simple but IIRC requires ES 3 or similar. I'm kind of embarrassed not knowing our GL requirement myself ;-)
- jolexxa 4y agoWow, that’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to having the option to run linux. I’ve been eyeing elementaryOS for years, but it will be hard to leave some macOS-only apps behind.
- tiffanyh 4y agoDonate. As a reminder, especially during this holiday season - to donate to your favorite OSS project. https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/
- neonsunset 4y ago
- nickip 4y agoWhat do have they done thats toxic? Total outsider to Asahi btw.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nortonham 4y agowhat echo chamber, and what toxicity are you referring too
- rodgerd 4y agoFrom the code of conduct: [...] Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants [do not make] Personal insults, especially those using racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory terms [do not] Deliberately referring to others by names or pronouns counter to their identity. The "echo chamber" of "not being shitheads to people". Seems like a pretty neat echo chamber to me. I guess the parent poster finds it impossible to interact with others unless they can use slurs, threats, or what have you.
- neonsunset 4y agoSurely the actual conduct of community always is the same as stated code of conduct, especially outside of one :^) Also a nice jump to conclusion (and an ad hominem attack), you already know which ideological line you are pushing, regardless if it runs contrary to what takes place in actuality.
- tgtweak 4y agoIf there's a way to get support up to opengl 4.6 then almost all android and iOS apps can run natively (arm) on that setup! Very cool.
- nightski 4y agoIt's really sad you have to resort to reverse engineered drivers which will always be behind because Apple won't support Linux officially. You'd think the most profitable company in the world could do better. Really sad. Not to dismiss these efforts, incredible engineering. But I won't buy Apple hardware unless Apple officially supports Linux. I honestly don't know why they wouldn't. More developers using their hardware is a good thing imho.
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoIt’s sad you think this work is “half-baked.” The reality is Apple will probably never release drivers for Linux or Windows (the latter of which ever again). This work is the premier effort in its space and the reverse engineering skills required to accomplish it are exceptionally uncommon. I doubt you could hire for this type of position remotely easily if you wanted to find the skillset for a corporate environment.
- nightski 4y agoI wasn't trying to down play the engineering. It's going to be half baked because the developers don't have access to hardware documentation. When the next Apple chip comes out, it's back to square one. It's entirely Apple's fault. Plus while they may be able to achieve good results, we'll never know if they took full advantage of the hardware or realized it to the full potential. Because it's proprietary.
- povik 4y ago> When the next Apple chip comes out, it's back to square one. It's entirely Apple's fault. That's simply not true. Source: wrote a couple of drivers for M1 (now upstreamed in mainline Linux) that work without a single change on M1 Pro and M2
- nightski 4y agoCool I'm glad you enjoy the Apple status quo and don't want official Linux support. But it's not for me.
- jasoneckert 4y agoAsahi has been my daily driver since April (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/asahi-linux/ https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/asahi-linux/). I watched the hardware support evolve with each major update and remember when the first builds of specific software (e.g., Chromium and VSCode) that supported the 16K page size were first available. The last few months were incredibly interesting to watch - especially the live coding sessions. And throughout the whole time, Asahi was rock solid as a daily driver. I find it a stellar example of the power of open source and the people in the community that drive it.
- humanistbot 4y ago> And throughout the whole time, Asahi was rock solid as a daily driver. I'm also in awe and respect for the Asahi team, but please don't overstate things just to celebrate their work. Even according to your own posts, there are huge dealbreakers like sound or external HDMI. I bought an M1 based on HN posts like this, because I need linux and not OS X. I soon returned it when I realized how it could not come close to being my daily driver.
- Invictus0 4y agoLol, the limitations of Asahi are described very clearly on their site. It's your own fault if you spent $2000 on a computer based on random HN comments about an open source driver that's still in it's alpha release.
- sophacles 4y ago> there are huge dealbreakers like sound or external HDMI I wouldn't need those, nor know they were broken if I had an M1. Sounds like the functionality I would need for a daily driver is there and solid though. Of course I'm capable of looking at lists of working features and roadmaps and deciding if something fits my use case independently of vague "pro" and "con" reviews on random discussion sites.
- eulers_secret 4y agoHN is crazy bullish about some things and it can be easy to get hyped (I’m hyped for M1, but only use FOSS). I came to this thread looking for exactly what you posted. Sure, I could check the site but I expect limitations to be discussed as well.
- abujazar 4y agoGiven this feat, it’s quite incredible that Nvidia is incapable of shipping stable Linux drivers for the RTX 30xx series.
- bla3 4y ago> fast enough to run all of the above at 60 frames per second at 4K. Does anyone know if it supports variable refresh rate? Apple's marketing term for it is "ProMotion", which is hard to search for.
- shmerl 4y agoCongrats! On a side note, I wish more DEs and Wayland compositors would move to Vulkan.
- SpaghettiX 4y agoCould this pave the way to being able to use Mac GPUs in Docker (Linux VM), running on macOS?
- dancemethis 4y agoIt should be ready to be Fandaniel Linux now.
- kristianp 4y agoSo finally native docker on macs? Is that an attraction for anyone?