4 ms·

The project is effectively dead

• shadowpho 10mo ago
  What why?
  • eigenspace 10mo ago
    It's really hard to do and nobody is paying for it?
  • nicoburns 10mo ago
    Because key developers have left the project, and developers who are capable of such work are few and far between.
    • charcircuit 10mo ago
      >are few and far between They are more common than you would think. There just is not many willing to work on a shoe string salary.
      • donkeylazy456 10mo ago
        > There just is not many willing to work on a shoe string salary. You explained it well by yourself.
  • willis936 10mo ago
    Very little progress made this year after high profile departures (Hector Martin, project lead, Asahi Lina and Alyssa Rosenzweig - GPU gurus). Alyssa's departure isn't reflected on Asahi's website yet, but it is in her blog. I believe she also left Valve, which I think was sponsoring some aspects of the Asahi project. So when people say "Asahi hasn't seen any setbacks" be sure to ask them who has stepped in to make up for these losses in both talent and sponsorship. https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-n.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-n.html
    • SamuelAdams 10mo ago
      Has Hector left though? https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-subdevs-v6-4-0518cb5f28ae@gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-subdevs-v6-4-0...
      • dllu 10mo ago
        Marcan (Hector Martin) resigned from Asahi Linux early this year [0]. Asahi Lina, who also did tons of work on the Asahi Linux GPU development, also quit as she doesn't feel safe doing Linux GPU work anymore [1]. [0] https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-lead/ https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l... [1] https://asahilina.net/luna-abuse/ https://asahilina.net/luna-abuse/
        • opan 10mo ago
          GP's LKML link is very recent unlike your two links, implying something could've changed.
          • aliceryhl 10mo ago
            I have no insight into the Asahi project, but the LKML link goes to an email from James Calligeros containing code written by Hector Martin and Sven Peter. The code may have been written a long time ago.
        • redeeman 10mo ago
          marcan and asahi lina is the same person
      • rowanG077 10mo ago
        Someone posting Hectors code or a quote does not mean he didn't leave. I'm really not sure how that could leave that impression.
• esjeon 10mo ago
  Given the speed of the progress that Apple has made on their hardware (from M1 to M5), I think the project was already doomed since the very beginning. Reverse engineering per-se is a huge talent drain that wastes tremendous amount of man-hour on a closed problem. Also, the strong SW-HW integration of Mac is sophisticate and fragile, that is difficult to analyze and replicate. Nailing all those details is not only time consuming, but also limited in the scope, and never yield anything beyond status quo. I’m quite glad that those talented guys finally escaped from the pit hole of reverse engineering. It maybe fun and interesting, but its future was already capped by Apple. I wish they find another fashion, hopefully something more original and progressive. Stop chasing and push forward.