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> 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 h

> 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.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      It's not gaslighting: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/PowerManagement.html https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/PowerManagement.html Nouveau is an awesome project, but for later cards it's basically a dead project. You can get some features to work, but without proper power management there's no justifiable reason to daily-drive it. The proprietary driver is by no means perfect (particularly for Wayland) but it's the only real option if you own a modern card. > And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) They must be awfully curious about why Xserve failed, then.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> 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 I feel the same way. I made a small driver for my laptop's keyboard lights and it was one of the most fun projects I've ever made. I can't even imagine how satisfying it must have been for the Asahi developers to get OpenGL running on that hardware.

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.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    It's not gaslighting: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/PowerManagement.html https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/PowerManagement.html Nouveau is an awesome project, but for later cards it's basically a dead project. You can get some features to work, but without proper power management there's no justifiable reason to daily-drive it. The proprietary driver is by no means perfect (particularly for Wayland) but it's the only real option if you own a modern card. > And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) They must be awfully curious about why Xserve failed, then.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> 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 I feel the same way. I made a small driver for my laptop's keyboard lights and it was one of the most fun projects I've ever made. I can't even imagine how satisfying it must have been for the Asahi developers to get OpenGL running on that hardware.