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> depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to do so

> depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to do so You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user space). That work will benefit everyone using Arm systems, not just folks running asahi on Apple hardware. Its good for there to be more hardware architecture competition! I'm glad I can run my server workloads on the Arm servers in AWS that are 20% cheaper than the equivalent x86 machines. I'm glad that I can run the software I like (linux) on legitimately nice hardware (m2 air). You can make different decisions on what architectures are best suited for your needs, but the competition in the market improves the options and prices for everyone. I've been using Asahi since the fall of 2022. When I first started using it a lot of software was broken because of bugs in that software that had never been exposed before (specifically around page sizes larger than 4k). All of that software has now been fixed. Support for linux/arm will only continue to improve as more people use it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Point me to the Apple contributed drivers in the kernel please.
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  The parent already addressed the point that you're trying to make when he said: > I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    This is not early Linux anymore.
- psanford 3y ago
  Why does Apple need to contribute to this work to make it somehow legitimate or good? I own some nice hardware (an m2-air), I want to run Linux on it. Asahi allows me to do that! Why can we not celebrate that the asahi team is bringing oss to new hardware?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    They don't need to. I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Well- where are their kernel contributions then? Lenovo and Dell (my two laptop manufacturers) contribute. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm.git/commit/?h=bleeding-edge&id=a2ff95e018f1d2bc816f3078d5110a655e355f18 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux...
    - psanford 3y ago
      > I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Where did I make that claim in this thread?
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        > in an ecosystem hostile to OSS > You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. Nope. Disagree here
        psanford 3y ago
        Cool, thats a different claim than what you said above but at least one I can actually engage with. I've run linux on many Dell and Lenovo systems over the last 25 years. Most of those systems were fully unsupported by the manufactures for anything but windows. And yet, random people on the internet contributed to make that hardware (mostly) work. I've not seen any particular improvement in the driver situation since Dell started selling linux certified systems. Its not really surprising though, Dell is just an integrator. All they do for their systems with linux pre-installed is to pick hardware that already has drivers. They took a little bit of work out of needing to research if a given configuration is likely to work or not with linux (which is good). They don't really deserve much credit beyond that. Its also a little funny because most drivers from hardware manufacturers suck. I don't know why, but most hardware companies are terrible at writing software. Its easy to list off hardware companies that have a long history of shipping mediocre, buggy linux drivers: nvidia, amd, broadcom, realtek, (maybe i should just list every nic and wireless chipset manufacturer). Some of these companies have gotten better and have learned how to be good kernel contributors, but they were mostly bad for years and years. Thankfully in some of those cases random people on the internet reverse engineered the hardware and contributed from scratch drivers to the kernel. Most of the time I've been happier with the experience of running those from scratch drivers than what hardware manufactures ship.
imiric 3y ago
> I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. It's very different. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. A trillion-dollar corporation has no incentive to sell their hardware to a niche of a niche of technical users who are not part of their software ecosystem. Another major difference is that Asahi is a small team of dedicated volunteers who want to run Linux on their Macs. They're a niche intersection of Linux hackers and Apple fans. Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. Even worse: Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. > Its good for there to be more hardware architecture competition! > Support for linux/arm will only continue to improve as more people use it. Agreed. I'm glad that Asahi exists. But we've had ARM Linux distros for decades now. What Asahi is doing is specifically to support Apple hardware. Some improvements will trickle out to improve general ARM support, but this points out the gargantuan task they're actually up against. Not only do they need to reverse engineer the hardware, they have to resolve all software issues with Linux and ARM. My hat's off to them. The willpower, patience and skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to swim against the current? It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for any serious work.
- psanford 3y ago
  > Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. That is not an accurate description of linux support by hardware manufactures from that time period. > Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. I also don't think this is generally correct. Have you looked at all the random drivers in the linux kernel for niche hardware. A ton of that is from one or two hobbyists taking the time to add support. > Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. I guess, but so what? Apple can't break the hardware they are already shipping if you are just running linux on it. Its true, I might not buy a theoretical future laptop from Apple if I can't run linux on it, but I don't see how that would affect my purchasing decision for hardware that is currently available. > The willpower, patience and skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to swim against the current? Hmm, maybe you've not worked on projects like this, or are motivated by different things. To me, reverse engineering a thing to figure out how it works and then writing software to get it to do things the original designers hadn't planned for is one of the more satisfying and fun activities of being a software engineer. I suspect the asahi team is having fun doing a lot of this work. (That's not to say its all fun. It sounds like getting things upstreamed has been trying. I also think having to read giant comment threads where people are needlessly negative about their work might be a bit demoralizing.) > It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for any serious work. You should obviously run whatever works for you.
mfuzzey 3y ago
>A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user space) While I don't have Apple hardware so haven't been closely following Asahi I dont't think that is true. Linux has supported Arm for years (more like decades) now. They've been doing excellent work on support for Apple specific hardware sure, generic Arm not so much since it was mostly done.
- psanford 3y ago
  Let me be more specific. There were a lot of bugs specifically related to non-4k page size architectures. Arm doesn't dictate the page size so most of the Arm systems out there have defaulted to 4k pages. The Asahi wiki has a partial list of userspace programs that were (or still are) buggy and broken because they made simplifying assumptions about how different architectures work[0]. Maintainers of other non-x86 architecture have said that this is improving things for them[1]. [0]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-Software https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-Software [1]: https://www.talospace.com/2022/03/asahi-linux-gives-hope-for-weird-page.html https://www.talospace.com/2022/03/asahi-linux-gives-hope-for...
- stirlo 3y ago
  If you follow Hector Martin the lead Asahi dev he's encountered a number of bugs and race conditions in ARM linux systems which were never previously exposed because there weren't blazing fast ARM chips out there that could trigger them.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Point me to the Apple contributed drivers in the kernel please.

throwaway894345 3y ago
The parent already addressed the point that you're trying to make when he said: > I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  This is not early Linux anymore.
psanford 3y ago
Why does Apple need to contribute to this work to make it somehow legitimate or good? I own some nice hardware (an m2-air), I want to run Linux on it. Asahi allows me to do that! Why can we not celebrate that the asahi team is bringing oss to new hardware?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  They don't need to. I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Well- where are their kernel contributions then? Lenovo and Dell (my two laptop manufacturers) contribute. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm.git/commit/?h=bleeding-edge&id=a2ff95e018f1d2bc816f3078d5110a655e355f18 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux...
  - psanford 3y ago
    > I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Where did I make that claim in this thread?
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      > in an ecosystem hostile to OSS > You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. Nope. Disagree here
      - psanford 3y ago
        Cool, thats a different claim than what you said above but at least one I can actually engage with. I've run linux on many Dell and Lenovo systems over the last 25 years. Most of those systems were fully unsupported by the manufactures for anything but windows. And yet, random people on the internet contributed to make that hardware (mostly) work. I've not seen any particular improvement in the driver situation since Dell started selling linux certified systems. Its not really surprising though, Dell is just an integrator. All they do for their systems with linux pre-installed is to pick hardware that already has drivers. They took a little bit of work out of needing to research if a given configuration is likely to work or not with linux (which is good). They don't really deserve much credit beyond that. Its also a little funny because most drivers from hardware manufacturers suck. I don't know why, but most hardware companies are terrible at writing software. Its easy to list off hardware companies that have a long history of shipping mediocre, buggy linux drivers: nvidia, amd, broadcom, realtek, (maybe i should just list every nic and wireless chipset manufacturer). Some of these companies have gotten better and have learned how to be good kernel contributors, but they were mostly bad for years and years. Thankfully in some of those cases random people on the internet reverse engineered the hardware and contributed from scratch drivers to the kernel. Most of the time I've been happier with the experience of running those from scratch drivers than what hardware manufactures ship.

imiric 3y ago

> I don't see how this is any different than early linux when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. It's very different. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. A trillion-dollar corporation has no incentive to sell their hardware to a niche of a niche of technical users who are not part of their software ecosystem. Another major difference is that Asahi is a small team of dedicated volunteers who want to run Linux on their Macs. They're a niche intersection of Linux hackers and Apple fans. Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. Even worse: Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. > Its good for there to be more hardware architecture competition! > Support for linux/arm will only continue to improve as more people use it. Agreed. I'm glad that Asahi exists. But we've had ARM Linux distros for decades now. What Asahi is doing is specifically to support Apple hardware. Some improvements will trickle out to improve general ARM support, but this points out the gargantuan task they're actually up against. Not only do they need to reverse engineer the hardware, they have to resolve all software issues with Linux and ARM. My hat's off to them. The willpower, patience and skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to swim against the current? It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for any serious work.

psanford 3y ago
> Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. That is not an accurate description of linux support by hardware manufactures from that time period. > Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. I also don't think this is generally correct. Have you looked at all the random drivers in the linux kernel for niche hardware. A ton of that is from one or two hobbyists taking the time to add support. > Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. I guess, but so what? Apple can't break the hardware they are already shipping if you are just running linux on it. Its true, I might not buy a theoretical future laptop from Apple if I can't run linux on it, but I don't see how that would affect my purchasing decision for hardware that is currently available. > The willpower, patience and skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to swim against the current? Hmm, maybe you've not worked on projects like this, or are motivated by different things. To me, reverse engineering a thing to figure out how it works and then writing software to get it to do things the original designers hadn't planned for is one of the more satisfying and fun activities of being a software engineer. I suspect the asahi team is having fun doing a lot of this work. (That's not to say its all fun. It sounds like getting things upstreamed has been trying. I also think having to read giant comment threads where people are needlessly negative about their work might be a bit demoralizing.) > It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for any serious work. You should obviously run whatever works for you.

mfuzzey 3y ago

>A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user space) While I don't have Apple hardware so haven't been closely following Asahi I dont't think that is true. Linux has supported Arm for years (more like decades) now. They've been doing excellent work on support for Apple specific hardware sure, generic Arm not so much since it was mostly done.

psanford 3y ago
Let me be more specific. There were a lot of bugs specifically related to non-4k page size architectures. Arm doesn't dictate the page size so most of the Arm systems out there have defaulted to 4k pages. The Asahi wiki has a partial list of userspace programs that were (or still are) buggy and broken because they made simplifying assumptions about how different architectures work[0]. Maintainers of other non-x86 architecture have said that this is improving things for them[1]. [0]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-Software https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-Software [1]: https://www.talospace.com/2022/03/asahi-linux-gives-hope-for-weird-page.html https://www.talospace.com/2022/03/asahi-linux-gives-hope-for...
stirlo 3y ago
If you follow Hector Martin the lead Asahi dev he's encountered a number of bugs and race conditions in ARM linux systems which were never previously exposed because there weren't blazing fast ARM chips out there that could trigger them.