4 ms·

I understand the project goals and everything but isn’t the primary weakness of it the same as every other laptop? If Apple decides to change something (which t

I understand the project goals and everything but isn’t the primary weakness of it the same as every other laptop? If Apple decides to change something (which they will) or lock down the laptop more (which they will) then all of this work goes to nothing. Isn’t there a better case to be made to strive towards open hardware and driving a community around common hardware and goals? Something like system76, the pine hardware, etc.

philistine 4y ago
In a theological sense you're not wrong, but what are we supposed to do for the people who want to run Linux on a Mac? Have them pound sand? What about the people who want to run Linux on their Microsoft Surface? What seems to be the issue is that you have a group of people (Mac buyers) who are keenly inconvenienced by Linux's shortcomings and want to solve them. Let them, everybody will ultimately benefit.
paulmd 4y ago
> If Apple decides to change something (which they will) sure but there's only so much they can change - everything past the bootloader is open, non-apple software, by design. hardware changes? sure, could happen. Asahi Linux has already identified some likely ways that future uarchs might change. There could be supplier changes, etc. But there are still only N different hardware configurations to support, where N is like <10 right now. > lock down the laptop more (which they will) then all of this work goes to nothing. no probably not and they've actually gone out of their way to open it up even more - they actually have already changed things, and they changed them in a way that opened them up for the Asahi Linux people. And internally people have stated to Martin that the functionality exists is explicitly created to allow third-party OSs to work, that it is tested to work, because Apple has a hard policy for it to work. They're not going to make your OS for you, but they have a hard corporate policy of leaving the necessary pieces there for you to do your own work yourself. https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994 https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marca... https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400 https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marca... This is where you and philistine below are wrong and are injecting your own personal biases and preconceptions into the issue - Apple is not "ideologically opposed to open software". You are literally being the precise "hackernews peanut gallery" that Marcan is calling out in the second tweet, on the exact issue he has called out in these tweets. Like seriously, the PG thing about "haters" being the mirror image of fanboys is so absolutely correct - some people are parasocially attached to brands in negative ways and they're just as blind and trite as the people who are parasocially attached in positive ways. Apple and NVIDIA and a few others have always generated these negative parasocial attachments. http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html The macos platform is not the same thing as the iOS platform, and even then there have always been solid technical reasons behind the restrictions that Apple does - they take some security and policy arguments to the uncomfortable conclusions that nobody else will (or even can). But it's not coming from nowhere, or pure avarice, either: iOS is one valid way to build a platform with permissioning that actually matters, that can't be sidestepped by social attacks from powerful actors like Facebook demanding you bypass permissions for them. Same for nvidia… even when they open up adaptive sync, or opening their kernel land (while providing a userland that is far more usable than ROCm under Linux), or start adding Wayland support, they get nothing but shit. Celebrate the good changes when they happen, instead of nothing ever being good enough. Criticize the bad moves too, but understand there are often very significant technical or business reasons behind them. Just like there are good business reasons why ROCm is a mess for AMD. Companies can support different things and have different business priorities and that’s fine. But linus doing the middle finger is the end of it for a lot of people - it's the end of any consideration or conscious thought on the issue for a lot of people. Linus said "fuck nvidia" that makes me laugh out loud guys!!! It's always been more complicated than that, and Linus is just a (self-acknowledged) toxic asshole who (self-acknowledged) needs to tone it down, and that phase lasted for about a week before he was back to being a toxic asshole. Stop idolizing him, and realize he's not always right even on the issues in his own domain (see: his comments around AVX-512).

philistine 4y ago

In a theological sense you're not wrong, but what are we supposed to do for the people who want to run Linux on a Mac? Have them pound sand? What about the people who want to run Linux on their Microsoft Surface? What seems to be the issue is that you have a group of people (Mac buyers) who are keenly inconvenienced by Linux's shortcomings and want to solve them. Let them, everybody will ultimately benefit.

paulmd 4y ago

> If Apple decides to change something (which they will) sure but there's only so much they can change - everything past the bootloader is open, non-apple software, by design. hardware changes? sure, could happen. Asahi Linux has already identified some likely ways that future uarchs might change. There could be supplier changes, etc. But there are still only N different hardware configurations to support, where N is like <10 right now. > lock down the laptop more (which they will) then all of this work goes to nothing. no probably not and they've actually gone out of their way to open it up even more - they actually have already changed things, and they changed them in a way that opened them up for the Asahi Linux people. And internally people have stated to Martin that the functionality exists is explicitly created to allow third-party OSs to work, that it is tested to work, because Apple has a hard policy for it to work. They're not going to make your OS for you, but they have a hard corporate policy of leaving the necessary pieces there for you to do your own work yourself. https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994 https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marca... https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395184473190400 https://web.archive.org/web/20220802091506/twitter.com/marca... This is where you and philistine below are wrong and are injecting your own personal biases and preconceptions into the issue - Apple is not "ideologically opposed to open software". You are literally being the precise "hackernews peanut gallery" that Marcan is calling out in the second tweet, on the exact issue he has called out in these tweets. Like seriously, the PG thing about "haters" being the mirror image of fanboys is so absolutely correct - some people are parasocially attached to brands in negative ways and they're just as blind and trite as the people who are parasocially attached in positive ways. Apple and NVIDIA and a few others have always generated these negative parasocial attachments. http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html The macos platform is not the same thing as the iOS platform, and even then there have always been solid technical reasons behind the restrictions that Apple does - they take some security and policy arguments to the uncomfortable conclusions that nobody else will (or even can). But it's not coming from nowhere, or pure avarice, either: iOS is one valid way to build a platform with permissioning that actually matters, that can't be sidestepped by social attacks from powerful actors like Facebook demanding you bypass permissions for them. Same for nvidia… even when they open up adaptive sync, or opening their kernel land (while providing a userland that is far more usable than ROCm under Linux), or start adding Wayland support, they get nothing but shit. Celebrate the good changes when they happen, instead of nothing ever being good enough. Criticize the bad moves too, but understand there are often very significant technical or business reasons behind them. Just like there are good business reasons why ROCm is a mess for AMD. Companies can support different things and have different business priorities and that’s fine. But linus doing the middle finger is the end of it for a lot of people - it's the end of any consideration or conscious thought on the issue for a lot of people. Linus said "fuck nvidia" that makes me laugh out loud guys!!! It's always been more complicated than that, and Linus is just a (self-acknowledged) toxic asshole who (self-acknowledged) needs to tone it down, and that phase lasted for about a week before he was back to being a toxic asshole. Stop idolizing him, and realize he's not always right even on the issues in his own domain (see: his comments around AVX-512).