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Noone is doing that with ARM MacBooks.

by izacus 10mo ago

Forgeties79 10mo ago
Yet. Plenty of people have with Intel ones - I’m one of them. My first experience with Linux was on a 2016 MBpro. And inevitably people will do the same with the silicon Macs, likely using Asahi it seems. Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea?
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  It's not inevitable. That's not what that word means. Intel Macs supported Linux because they used Intel's Linux drivers and supported bog-standard UEFI. There are no preexisting drivers or DeviceTree files published by Apple for Linux. There is no UEFI implimentation, just a proprietary bootloader that can be updated post-hoc to deny booting into third-party OSes. > Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea? I would love for Linux to support as many ARM devices as possible. Unfortunately, it requires continuous effort from the OEM to be viable. I've bought Qualcomm, Rockchip and Broadcom boards before, none of them have been supported for half as long as my x86 machines are. Nevermind how fast ARM architectures become obsolete. It feels like Apple is really the only hostile party here, and they coincidentally decide whether or not you get to use third-party OSes.
  - Forgeties79 10mo ago
    It is inevitable. I guarantee you there will be people who run Linux on their silicon Macs. I don’t know how you could possibly hold a stance that no one ever will. Apple is very hostile to it. It won’t stop everyone though. It’ll continue to be niche but it’s happening.
    - bigyabai 10mo ago
      It's not inevitable. It's fragile. Go boot up your old iPad; that should be well-studied, right? We ought to know how to boot into Linux on an ARM machine that old, it's only fair. Except, you can't. The bootloader is the same iBoot process that your Apple Silicon machine uses, with mitigations to prevent unsigned OSes or persistent coldboot. All the Cydia exploits in the world won't put Linux back on the menu for iPhone or iPad users. And the same thing could happen to your Mac with an OTA update. It is entirely possible for Apple to lock down the devices further. There's no guarantee they won't.
      - Forgeties79 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        izacus 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        nicolas_17 10mo ago
        They made significant changes to the bootloader with the explicit goal of allowing boot of third-party operating systems.
        bigyabai 10mo ago
        Unless you can find a way to implement U-Boot on Apple Silicon, they can make more significant changes with no easy opt-out.
        Forgeties79 10mo ago
        [flagged]
      - musictubes 10mo ago
        Sigh. Apple cannot lockdown the Mac. You can’t have a development machine that is incapable of running arbitrary code. Back when they still did WWDC live they said that software development was the biggest professional bloc of Mac users. I’m certain that these days development is the biggest driver of the expensive Macs. No one has ever made a decent argument as to why Apple would lock down the Mac that would also explain why they haven’t done it yet. Passivity isn’t hostility. There isn’t any evidence that Apple is considering locking down the Mac. They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon but they didn’t despite the endless conspiracy theories.
        bigyabai 10mo ago
        Apple can lockdown the Mac. You might not think it is likely, but without UEFI there is no path of recourse if Apple decides to update iBoot. How do you launch Asahi if Apple quits reading the EFI from the secure partition? > They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon They already did, that's what my last comment just outlined. Macs do not ship with UEFI anymore, you are wholly at the mercy of a proprietary bootloader that can be changed at any time.

Noone is doing that with ARM MacBooks.

by izacus 10mo ago

Noone is doing that with ARM MacBooks.

Yet. Plenty of people have with Intel ones - I’m one of them. My first experience with Linux was on a 2016 MBpro. And inevitably people will do the same with the silicon Macs, likely using Asahi it seems. Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea?

bigyabai 10mo ago
It's not inevitable. That's not what that word means. Intel Macs supported Linux because they used Intel's Linux drivers and supported bog-standard UEFI. There are no preexisting drivers or DeviceTree files published by Apple for Linux. There is no UEFI implimentation, just a proprietary bootloader that can be updated post-hoc to deny booting into third-party OSes. > Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea? I would love for Linux to support as many ARM devices as possible. Unfortunately, it requires continuous effort from the OEM to be viable. I've bought Qualcomm, Rockchip and Broadcom boards before, none of them have been supported for half as long as my x86 machines are. Nevermind how fast ARM architectures become obsolete. It feels like Apple is really the only hostile party here, and they coincidentally decide whether or not you get to use third-party OSes.
- Forgeties79 10mo ago
  It is inevitable. I guarantee you there will be people who run Linux on their silicon Macs. I don’t know how you could possibly hold a stance that no one ever will. Apple is very hostile to it. It won’t stop everyone though. It’ll continue to be niche but it’s happening.
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    It's not inevitable. It's fragile. Go boot up your old iPad; that should be well-studied, right? We ought to know how to boot into Linux on an ARM machine that old, it's only fair. Except, you can't. The bootloader is the same iBoot process that your Apple Silicon machine uses, with mitigations to prevent unsigned OSes or persistent coldboot. All the Cydia exploits in the world won't put Linux back on the menu for iPhone or iPad users. And the same thing could happen to your Mac with an OTA update. It is entirely possible for Apple to lock down the devices further. There's no guarantee they won't.
    - Forgeties79 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - izacus 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        nicolas_17 10mo ago
        They made significant changes to the bootloader with the explicit goal of allowing boot of third-party operating systems.
        bigyabai 10mo ago
        Unless you can find a way to implement U-Boot on Apple Silicon, they can make more significant changes with no easy opt-out.
        Forgeties79 10mo ago
        [flagged]
    - musictubes 10mo ago
      Sigh. Apple cannot lockdown the Mac. You can’t have a development machine that is incapable of running arbitrary code. Back when they still did WWDC live they said that software development was the biggest professional bloc of Mac users. I’m certain that these days development is the biggest driver of the expensive Macs. No one has ever made a decent argument as to why Apple would lock down the Mac that would also explain why they haven’t done it yet. Passivity isn’t hostility. There isn’t any evidence that Apple is considering locking down the Mac. They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon but they didn’t despite the endless conspiracy theories.
      - bigyabai 10mo ago
        Apple can lockdown the Mac. You might not think it is likely, but without UEFI there is no path of recourse if Apple decides to update iBoot. How do you launch Asahi if Apple quits reading the EFI from the secure partition? > They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon They already did, that's what my last comment just outlined. Macs do not ship with UEFI anymore, you are wholly at the mercy of a proprietary bootloader that can be changed at any time.