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Godspeed to the Asahi team, but as much as I envy the performance and efficiency of Apple silicon, I could never depend on a small group of hackers to reverse e

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  Aren't tons of Linux drivers for x86 laptops based entirely on reverse engineering? Maybe even most of them? I haven't used Linux seriously in almost two decades, but that's my memory.
  • zeusk 2y ago
    Most of the x86 platform (ACPI) is well defined and openly accessible (not free but open). There’s still some offenders (Surface, HP, Broadcom) that introduce quirks that break sleep and some HID accessories but most of it works out of the box. ARM has been the Wild West for a while but they’re going in the right direction with device trees et al. Apple however doesn’t have to care about the “wider” ecosystem since they left x86 for their own silicon and tighter integration from bottom up allows for some really nice end user experience. I still think it’s much better to use the VM infrastructure and just run Linux as a guest. Mac as a platform is very end user friendly as-is unlike Windows.
    • pzmarzly 2y ago
      Device Trees are becoming an old thing now. With ARM SystemReady, most devices need to have UEFI, SMBIOS and ACPI. Only the SystemReady IR (IoT) variant is defined as using Device Trees. https://github.com/ArmDeveloperEcosystem/systemready-guides?tab=readme-ov-file#systemready-certified-devices-guide https://github.com/ArmDeveloperEcosystem/systemready-guides?...
      • zeusk 2y ago
        Microsoft is the only one pushing for ACPI on ARM, but as you said they have hefty weight in that area. I don't think it is right for the platform, but if it works who am I to say.
  • imiric 2y ago
    I'm not sure if "tons" is accurate, but some of them are, yes. And most of them are not great IME. Not discrediting the talented programmers who work on them, it's just the nature of supporting hardware in the dark, without any support from the manufacturer. Though this was more common during the early days of Linux, and nowadays many manufacturers offer some kind of support.
  • bravetraveler 2y ago
    We are well beyond the days of NDISWrapper, most of the kernel contributions come from hardware manufacturers or integrators
  • renewiltord 2y ago
    OpenChrome far exceeded Unichrome Windows drivers in performance. But things have changed. Modern engineers prefer “official” software. I understand why. Systems are more complex now.
  • binkHN 2y ago
    You've been out of the game for too long; almost every major hardware vendor has at least one or two people that are regularly submitting patches to the Linux kernel. My ThinkPad work computer running Linux is a major thing of joy; in many ways it performs more reliably on Linux than it does on Windows.
    • kaba0 2y ago
      Even though, there are no lack of issues that are simply not cared about. E.g. thermal throttling for ThinkPads is a very annoying problem the best solution to is simply a python script that just periodically overwrites a memory location.
      • RVuRnvbM2e 2y ago
        It isn't nearly so dire. The modern solution for this is https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/upower/power-profiles-daemon https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/upower/power-profiles-daemon
        • tucnak 2y ago
          it's using dbus how modern can it be? :-)
• wslh 2y ago
  I am genuinely looking forward to a Dell XPS 13 or Lenovo X1 Carbon which is fanless and have the battery duration and performance of the Apple Macbook Air.
  • andrewmutz 2y ago
    Is the Linux support not there yet? How close is it?
    • chickenzzzzu 2y ago
      It's the hardware that's the problem, not Linux support. Simply, the hardware manufacturers don't make fanless, thin, light, performant, power efficient laptops.
      • hnuser123456 2y ago
        What about fanless chromebooks?
        • chickenzzzzu 2y ago
          Yup that's a good start! It proves that a company other than apple can do something fanless. Probably they're plastic-y, but they are thin, light, and fanless. Power efficiency and performance are likely not good, but, at least google doesn't deliberately obfuscate their hardware like Apple does. Instead, they just let everything that's not ChromeOS fester, since they're trying to make money. But anyone who wants to start a business selling Alpine on Chromebooks can ;)
  • somat 2y ago
    What is the difference in battery life between linux on and macos on the Apple M1? That is, I would be surprised if linux on the M1 had close to macos levels of battery life. My theory being the better battery life on the M1 is more due to the tight integration between the OS and the hardware power profiles than the power profiles themself.
• vlovich123 2y ago
  > As brilliant as this team is, and as much progress as they've made, fighting against a trillion-dollar corporation that can decide to shut it down at any moment is a sisyphean endeavor Apple historically cares very little about Linux on Mac whereas it seems like you’re talking about the non-Mac product lines. Indeed, they go out of their way, if I recall correctly, to make it possible and easier in the first place.
  • sys_64738 2y ago
    Apple does new hardware bring up using the Linux kernel.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      If they don't release that code to the public, what good does it do? (Also, if they are only doing a temporary in-house version for initial hardware work, they can do all kinds of ugly hacks that wouldn't really be good for upstream use any anyway.)
  • imiric 2y ago
    I wouldn't describe leaving the bootloader unlocked as "going out of their way" to make all of this possible. Clearly, if just booting another kernel would be sufficient, running Linux on their machines should be easy. Yet none of this is. "Going out of their way" would at the very least be providing documentation and support so that reverse engineering their hardware wouldn't be necessary. Also, what's not to say that they will decide to lock the bootloader just as they do on all their other devices? What does Apple practically gain by leaving it unlocked? If they're doing it as a gesture of good faith to their users, they're doing an awful job at it. Doing it so they can sell a negligible amount of machines to a niche group of hackers also doesn't make business sense. Depending on the good will of a corporation that historically hasn't shown much of it to the hacker community is not a great idea.
    • Retr0id 2y ago
      The changes made were not as simple as not-setting a lock fuse bit. Making the bootloader unlockable in a way that didn't compromise their existing security model did require going out of their way. The status-quo for previous "apple silicon" bootchains (iphone, ipad, etc.) was not built this way. Even T2 macs had no way to boot custom firmware on the T2 chip, without exploits. Sure, they could've done way more, but evidently they'd rather not lock down the platform completely.
• mixmastamyk 2y ago
  I’m with you in spirit, but most of the work has already been done. Purchased hardware won’t change. Firmware updates could be held if needed as well. Another team could take a crack at it. Worse case you restore macos and possibly sell at a medium loss. That said I’m still waiting.
• jasoneckert 2y ago
  While I don't feel I have enough information to comment about the likelihood that Apple would try to stop the Asahi project, those who are knowledgable are of the opinion that they would not. However, as a Mac Studio M1 owner that has used Asahi as a daily driver for software development since the first release (originally Arch, later Fedora), I can confidently say that I could care less. By running the software I want to run far faster than macOS could on the same hardware, Asahi has saved me countless hours and made me far more productive. And I'm incredibly grateful for this tangible benefit, regardless of what happens in the future.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    They won't stop Asahi with a frontal assault, they'll stop it by churning out new chips every year until the work to support them all is unsustainable.
    • WD-42 2y ago
      Not sure why you are being down-voted. We're already seeing this with the team saying they won't work on M3 yet because they aren't even close to done with M2...
      • kaba0 2y ago
        How is that apple's fault, nor any form of "deliberate attack"? Like, come on, neither of the parties are malicious, especially not for the sake of it.
        • WD-42 2y ago
          I didn’t say it was anyone’s fault. It’s the reality of a closed system.
        • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
          Why don't new Intel or AMD chips require painstaking reverse engineering with each release?
• skybrian 2y ago
  Don't let worries about future hardware get in the way of using gear that works in the present. If future Macs aren't supported for some reason, that doesn't break your current hardware, and you can buy different hardware next time. There are people running Linux on abandoned hardware from companies that went out of business, and that's okay.
  • amelius 2y ago
    No, because from your perspective you are supporting the wrong company. Competition is good for consumers, especially if you're a minority group.
    • skybrian 2y ago
      I don't think boycotting Apple because they don't support open source enough is likely to have much effect? Maybe there are other companies you'd prefer to support, but it's still only going to work if lots of other people buy stuff from them, too.
      • amelius 2y ago
        It's not boycotting, just voting with your wallet ...
        • skybrian 2y ago
          I don't see any difference. This "vote" is a rounding error unless lots of people do it, which is not going to happen without organization. The effect on you matters and the effect on the vendor is ignorable.
• pmarreck 2y ago
  > other x86 and ARM manufacturers are making substantial improvements that are shortening Apple's lead x86 has fundamental issues that I believe prevent it from ever achieving the MIPS per watt efficiency of anything from ARM. I mean... the newest M4 laptop will have a 24 hour battery life. That exceeds anything remotely possible in the same laptop form factor but with x86 by nearly an order of magnitude. So now you're talking just ARM. Linux has been compilable on ARM for a while now, so where are the competing ARM laptops that are anywhere close to the power of Apple's version of ARM? I do get what you're saying though (I'm definitely a Linux fan and have a Linux Framework laptop), but I wish it wasn't an x86 laptop because its battery life is crap (and that is sometimes important).
  • talldayo 2y ago
    > so where are the competing ARM laptops that are anywhere close to the power of Apple's version of ARM? Better question: where are the incentives for them to make it? Apple is pretty much the only company with an outstanding architectural license to design ARM cores, and the best off-the-shelf ARM core designs don't even compete with 5-year-old x86 ones. If you're a company that has Apple-level capital and Apple-tier core design chops, you might as well embrace RISC-V and save yourself the ARM licensing fee. That's what Nvidia does for many of their GPU SOCs. If SoftBank offered ARM licenses under more attractive terms, there would be genuine competition for good ARM CPUs. Given that Apple has a controlling stake in SoftBank, I wouldn't hold out faith.
    • GeekyBear 2y ago
      > Apple is pretty much the only company with an outstanding architectural license to design ARM cores Many other companies have done this to great effect in the past, but in recent years it has become more common to just license one of ARM's own stock cores, instead of designing your own from scratch. This follows a period where companies like Qualcomm and Samsung were still trying to roll their own core designs from scratch, but ending up with designs that were slower and less power efficient than the cheaper stock cores you could license from ARM.
  • IshKebab 2y ago
• hybrid_study 2y ago
  Sadly, this is the exact reason why I hold back trying Asahi and run the chance of liking any of it :-( Recently saw someone wondering why no one has tried building a laptop with as much quality as an Apple? A special version of Linux to run on such a laptop would offer more long-term commitment and maybe pull in more adoption.
• jjtheblunt 2y ago
  > Not to mention that you'd be supporting a corporation that has this hostile stance towards their customers to begin with. Is the "this" in that sentence your previous paragraph of concern that Apple will purposefully break AsahiLinux?
• arnaudsm 2y ago
  Indeed, the Apple Silicon hype stemmed from the terrible Intel gen at the time (unlike AMD), and because Apple monopolized the TSMC N5 node for months. Most of that lead is gone, x86 is cheaper, open, and as battery friendly now.
  • Philpax 2y ago
    From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016931, it looks like M4 is very much still in the lead. It's also not just the CPU: the laptops themselves are simply phenomenal. I have never had a x86 laptop that's this much of a genuine pleasure to use (ignoring macOS, which is my least-favourite operating system). Some of the newer Windows laptops are ahead, but they're still worse in at least one metric.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • arnaudsm 2y ago
      That's an unconfirmed leak. I only compare chips that are available
    • elcritch 2y ago
      Not to mention Mac laptops are some of the only laptops with non 1080p or non 16:9 aspect ratio. Microsoft also has forced makers to drop the old S3 sleep modes which set x86 laptops back decades regarding sleep and power management.
      • arnaudsm 2y ago
        That was true 5 years ago. Today, many flagship Ultrabooks have 3k+ screens and 16:10 ratios. I'm typing this from my Lenovo yoga 7 that does.
        • elcritch 2y ago
          That's good to hear. Last time I had to get a new PC laptop was probably ~3 years ago so that sounds reasonable.
• jorvi 2y ago
  > You're not losing much by buying a new CPU from them in 2024 or 2025, but you gain much more in return That's just false. Performance-per-watt, AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm still get smoked by comparable M-series chips. On desktops the equation is different because CPUs and GPUs can go ham with the wattage.
• racked 2y ago
  Exactly this. All that work, for reverse-engineering a handful of laptops made by a company whose only desire is to lock its users into its ecosystem and ergonomics. Even more demotivating is that the M1 and the M2 are already superseded. Similarly, I completely do not understand the popularity of Apple's laptops in this community. Endemic mindless fanboyism.