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> 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 manufa

by 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.
- imiric 3y ago
  > 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. Sure, for _niche_ hardware. When was the last time a GPU driver was added by reverse engineering it? The single Nouveau maintainer was burnt out, last I heard, and the project was never a serious alternative to NVIDIA's closed driver. Kudos to whoever found the energy to contribute to it, but these projects usually don't have a bright future. Now expand that to include maintaining all Apple devices, and it's an insane amount of effort realistically unsustainable for any group of volunteers. But good luck to the Asahi team.
  - psanford 3y ago
    Nvidia/Nouveau is a good example. I've had a number of laptops with nvidia graphics. For most of that time Nouveau was _more stable_ than the official nvidia drivers. Linux clearly was a second class citizen for nvidia for most of the last 20 years. Maybe go back and rewatch linus' rant about nvidia if you need a reminder about how terrible they have been historically. Nvidia now only sort of cares about linux because of gpgpu applications. They still clearly don't care about gaming on linux; or desktop stability. Yes, I will take Nouveau over the official drivers whenever I can.
    - imiric 3y ago
      See, now I just think you're gaslighting me. Nouveau has never been more stable, or nearly as performant as official NVIDIA drivers. I've had the exact opposite experience from you on every laptop I've had since Nouveau was released, so we must live in different universes. > Linux clearly was a second class citizen for nvidia And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) Anyway, I think we've exhausted our arguments here, and are just talking past each other now. Have a good day.
      - psanford 3y ago
        If you've had good experiences with the nvidia drivers, thats great. My experiences with them have been bad and I will use Nouveau for general desktop environments unless I'm also doing gpgpu.
philistine 3y ago
> 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. That is the case with every single PC maker who doesn't ship all their PCs with Linux. I just don't understand why Apple has to be treated differently. They just went through a traumatic transition where they could have locked their computers very tightly, preventing you from booting anything but macOS. They did no such thing. They did the reverse. No they didn't formally support it, but they own their own OS. How could they be expected to?
endorphine 3y ago
I think you're underestimating how easy it is for a corporation to change it's narrative from "we support Linux" to "we don't care about Linux". Whatever hardware you're using, it's not like the company has signed a contract to support Linux for life.
rsynnott 3y ago
This feels... fairly ahistorical. > Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. Outside of some server niches (though even then, mostly not til the noughties), not really. You generally weren't looking at much first-party support at all in the 90s. > Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. This... is really not the case. The M1/2 Macs are _close_ to being one platform with something on the order of a hundred million units out there. Hardware in the 90s was pretty diverse; if you wanted support for your video card, say, there might be twenty chipsets out there, with maybe fifty manufacturers. Later on, there was a fair bit of consolidation, with virtually every computer, say, ending up with pretty much the same sound card chipset, but not in the 90s. > Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Yeah, again, that _very_ much happened in the 90s.
- imiric 3y ago
  > You generally weren't looking at much first-party support at all in the 90s. I wasn't making a historical claim, but a philosophical one. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s had that incentive, if they wanted to pursue it. To Apple, a trillion dollar corporation, selling a negligible amount of laptops to a niche crowd of tech enthusiasts who will never become part of their software ecosystem is just not worth the effort to even pursue. > This... is really not the case. The M1/2 Macs are _close_ to being one platform with something on the order of a hundred million units out there. Right. And how many of those buyers are also Linux hackers willing to dedicate their time to work on projects like Asahi? How many of those would even be willing to run Linux instead of macOS? We're talking about an extremely small community of users compared even to the small Linux community in the 90s. > Yeah, again, that _very_ much happened in the 90s. Never said it didn't. Except that Apple is known for locking down their products, so the good faith they're showing now with leaving Macs relatively open can disappear at any moment.

by imiric 3y ago

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.

imiric 3y ago
> 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. Sure, for _niche_ hardware. When was the last time a GPU driver was added by reverse engineering it? The single Nouveau maintainer was burnt out, last I heard, and the project was never a serious alternative to NVIDIA's closed driver. Kudos to whoever found the energy to contribute to it, but these projects usually don't have a bright future. Now expand that to include maintaining all Apple devices, and it's an insane amount of effort realistically unsustainable for any group of volunteers. But good luck to the Asahi team.
- psanford 3y ago
  Nvidia/Nouveau is a good example. I've had a number of laptops with nvidia graphics. For most of that time Nouveau was _more stable_ than the official nvidia drivers. Linux clearly was a second class citizen for nvidia for most of the last 20 years. Maybe go back and rewatch linus' rant about nvidia if you need a reminder about how terrible they have been historically. Nvidia now only sort of cares about linux because of gpgpu applications. They still clearly don't care about gaming on linux; or desktop stability. Yes, I will take Nouveau over the official drivers whenever I can.
  - imiric 3y ago
    See, now I just think you're gaslighting me. Nouveau has never been more stable, or nearly as performant as official NVIDIA drivers. I've had the exact opposite experience from you on every laptop I've had since Nouveau was released, so we must live in different universes. > Linux clearly was a second class citizen for nvidia And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) Anyway, I think we've exhausted our arguments here, and are just talking past each other now. Have a good day.
    - psanford 3y ago
      If you've had good experiences with the nvidia drivers, thats great. My experiences with them have been bad and I will use Nouveau for general desktop environments unless I'm also doing gpgpu.

philistine 3y ago

> 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. That is the case with every single PC maker who doesn't ship all their PCs with Linux. I just don't understand why Apple has to be treated differently. They just went through a traumatic transition where they could have locked their computers very tightly, preventing you from booting anything but macOS. They did no such thing. They did the reverse. No they didn't formally support it, but they own their own OS. How could they be expected to?

endorphine 3y ago

I think you're underestimating how easy it is for a corporation to change it's narrative from "we support Linux" to "we don't care about Linux". Whatever hardware you're using, it's not like the company has signed a contract to support Linux for life.

rsynnott 3y ago

This feels... fairly ahistorical. > Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer base. Outside of some server niches (though even then, mostly not til the noughties), not really. You generally weren't looking at much first-party support at all in the 90s. > Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend time adding supporting for it. This... is really not the case. The M1/2 Macs are _close_ to being one platform with something on the order of a hundred million units out there. Hardware in the 90s was pretty diverse; if you wanted support for your video card, say, there might be twenty chipsets out there, with maybe fifty manufacturers. Later on, there was a fair bit of consolidation, with virtually every computer, say, ending up with pretty much the same sound card chipset, but not in the 90s. > Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware updates might break things. Yeah, again, that _very_ much happened in the 90s.

imiric 3y ago
> You generally weren't looking at much first-party support at all in the 90s. I wasn't making a historical claim, but a philosophical one. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s had that incentive, if they wanted to pursue it. To Apple, a trillion dollar corporation, selling a negligible amount of laptops to a niche crowd of tech enthusiasts who will never become part of their software ecosystem is just not worth the effort to even pursue. > This... is really not the case. The M1/2 Macs are _close_ to being one platform with something on the order of a hundred million units out there. Right. And how many of those buyers are also Linux hackers willing to dedicate their time to work on projects like Asahi? How many of those would even be willing to run Linux instead of macOS? We're talking about an extremely small community of users compared even to the small Linux community in the 90s. > Yeah, again, that _very_ much happened in the 90s. Never said it didn't. Except that Apple is known for locking down their products, so the good faith they're showing now with leaving Macs relatively open can disappear at any moment.