46 ms·
Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2
- znpy 1mo ago> Please stop Thinking Different Considering how much better m-series CPUs are, i’d say actually keep thinking different.
- ksec 1mo agoAFAWK, M6 CPU is a die shrink of M5, so unless something M7 present that will significantly improve CPU performance. The ARM C1 CPU core that is available to everyone has pretty much matched up to Apple. And that is all things included from performance, power, die size etc.
- worldsavior 1mo agoCan you just use normal acronyms instead of something like AFAWK? Why not AFAIK? Do I need to know every acronym there is on the internet?
- misswaterfairy 1mo agoOr just not use acronyms for standard sentence structure and non-specialised terms? For example: "AFAIK the TLA is NFG for well written prose FWIW, NGL." It is awkward to parse them and is infuriating when the author can clearly write well otherwise, because they don't use three- or four-letter-acronyms to replace standard sentence structures for the rest of their prose.
- znpy 1mo agoAnd?
- ksec 1mo agoYou said > "Considering how much better m-series CPUs are, " And I give some thoughts into may be they are not "much better". And in that case may be sticking to spec and not Thinking Different on certain things matters more.
- znpy 1mo agosounds like a baseless claim frankly. they are still better. better than previous gen, essentially better than competition. only the latest intel cpu are beginning to get "comparable" with previous m-series cpu.
- ksec 1mo ago>sounds like a baseless claim frankly. >only the latest intel cpu are beginning to get "comparable" with previous m-series cpu. I am comparing ARM CPU against ARM CPU Core. Which is why it needs to there to the ARM Spec specific to ARM ISA. And those are standard ARM CPU design tested across industry benchmarks. Not sure what is baseless about it.
- znpy 1mo agoThe m6 “only” being a die shrink is no good reason to shun it. It’s still an improvement.
- AKSF_Ackermann 1mo agoAs Apple themselves proved with M1-M3, you can make really good cpus without violating the ARM architecture spec in dumb ways. Why they decided to do that in M4+ is anyone's guess.
- MBCook 1mo agoAmazing progress as usual. It’s been fun watching just how much a few people can accomplish over the last few years despite working on sometimes unstable sand.
- megous 1mo agoYeah, you'll find out that va-api is not a good match for v4l2-requests. It does not pass decoded bitstream to the drivers as is, but pre-computes some things for some codecs, while v4l2-requests mostly expects original information parsed from the bitstream. https://xff.cz/git/libva-v4l2_request/ https://xff.cz/git/libva-v4l2_request/
- djfergus 1mo agoFantastic to see the progress and a fascinating detailed write-up. You have to appreciate the effort Apple puts into security - goes some way to understanding why they won't endorse/support installing an alternative operating system.
- LoganDark 1mo agoApple has gone through tremendous effort to enable alternative operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/
- bigyabai 1mo agoMost of those accommodations are for macOS, and make very few (if any) concessions for alternative operating systems. We're talking Qualcomm-tier effort. Intel and AMD set the standard for "tremendous effort" bringing up support for alternative OSes. Nvidia follows behind, and Apple's support is (somehow) behind Nvidia's foot-dragging.
- HDBaseT 1mo agoThis is true, although Apple could of just as easily prevented alternative OSes as a whole if they wanted to.
- Rohansi 1mo agoThey already have the ability to prevent alternative operating systems. They use the same or similar SoCs in their other product lines and those do not let you do this. Yes, Apple put effort into making it possible to install alternative operating systems on Macs, but that is an exception to the design because the chips are designed to be locked down. I expect Apple to remove the option at some point because nobody is using it on any of the recent hardware.
- LoganDark 1mo agoI see a lot of dual-purpose here. Maybe you don't, or maybe you figure it's just a coincidence that Linux can also benefit from this. Apple definitely had it in mind, and designed for it, even if they don't release documentation.
- JLO64 1mo ago> Thanks to the combined efforts of mildsunrise and chaos_princess, we discovered that ACE3 has pretty much the same register set as CD3217, only wrapped in a SPMI interface instead of addressed over I2C. Both the SPMI interface and ACE3 itself are now working in Asahi Linux, bringing USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt support to all M3 series devices. When I got my M3 Pro MBP, I got it with the intention of eventually installing Linux on it. In hindsight I seriously underestimated the amount of effort needed for even partial Linux compatibility, which makes me all the more grateful for the work Asahi contributors have put in! I'll still be keeping macOS installed for iOS dev work(which I plan on doing soonish), but other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life.
- happosai 1mo ago[flagged]
- dgllghr 1mo agoUnfortunately, the state of non-Apple hardware makes your parent’s comment a defensible position. Btw, using Linux in general means having “some unpaid volunteer do it for you”
- arcfour 1mo agoNo it doesn't. This reads like someone who hasn't touched a non-apple Laptop in 15-20 years.
- criddell 1mo agoI don't think it's possible to create a Linux machine with no volunteer-built software on it.
- vbezhenar 1mo agoI'm using Intel Thinkpad. And I'm pretty sure that Intel does a good amount of work upstreaming Intel support in Linux. So I'm not sure that using Linux in general means having some unpaid volunteer do it for you. In fact I believe that most Linux development nowadays is pretty far from unpaid volunteer work. Regarding state of non-Apple hardware. Well, my laptop just works. Literally zero hardware or compatibility issues. Maybe Macbook is faster in artificial benchmarks, but in my day to day usage, Thinkpad is more than fast enough.
- LoganDark 1mo agoI'm extremely excited to hear that the hypervisor now works on M4! Can't wait to try out Asahi in a year or two.
- owaislone 1mo agoThis project has been so impressive and exciting. I hope power management is a serious concern once they nail all the reverse engineering and functionality. Battery life would be a huge differentiator for the day to day macbook usage and traditionally Linux has been terrible at that due to lack of proprietary & highly tuned drivers
- paulryanrogers 1mo agoHow likely is such tuning to happen within the practical lifetime of these devices? It's already been years and Linux isn't even feature complete on newer models. Apple's indifference to OSS does not give me much hope.
- LoganDark 1mo agoI would assume that once you have fully functional support for entire historical SoCs, the effort stops being "get most things working on most chips" and starts becoming "adapt already-working things to the newest chips". Yes, it's been years, but there's still so much hardware that Asahi doesn't have good support for yet, and that's dividing the efforts to support the newest chips. I'm sure that once all the existing chips are well-supported, new chips will be fairly quick to bring up.
- paulryanrogers 1mo agoI've daily driven Linux for years, even on laptops. Yet they're always plugged in because I've yet to see Linux out perform battery life of native OS's. Well, except for very niche and pared down Linux's. Rather it seems that as time goes on Linux just outgrows old devices entirely, again excluding very niche distros. Not that it makes them increasingly efficient. Have you seen Linux getting more efficient over time? What's your use case?
- LoganDark 1mo agoI'm definitely not the one to ask, I use laptops as movable workstations, always plugged in.
- tiahura 1mo agomacOS is so terrible. Godspeed!
- LoganDark 1mo agoTo downvoters: historically, a decent number of Windows and Linux users would run the operating systems on Apple hardware. I myself ran a triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Linux for years (although I still mainly used the machine for macOS). Apple Silicon demolished that market, and Asahi Linux is like a light at the end of the tunnel for those users who were entirely left behind by the ARM transition.
- kmeisthax 1mo agoI was seriously worried the various incompatibilities the M3 bootloader had with Asahi's debugging setup would mean way slower bring-up than M1 and M2 had. Seems like that wasn't the case - or, at least, won't be the case anymore.
- dgunay 1mo agoI have immense respect for the incredible work that the Asahi team does, but at the rate that Intel and AMD have been catching up on power efficiency I wonder whether anyone will really _have_ to run Linux on M series laptops. There was a clear case for it back when Apple silicon absolutely dominated anything else you could buy but with Panther Lake I'm not so sure that Apple's lead will continue to be big enough to justify needing to wait several years for full Linux hardware compatibility to be reverse engineered.
- benoau 1mo agoIt depends on how long Apple want to support the devices, if the support matches the longevity of the devices maybe nobody really needs Asahi. I believe all Intel Macs have received their final macOS version now so it is almost time for Apple to make that decision for the M1 generation. I think an M1 Pro, Max or Ultra (or even an M1 with 16GB of RAM) still has many good years left.
- selfhoster1312 1mo agoOS LTS support barely matters when planned obsolescence is baked in at the hardware level. Wearing parts (eg. SSD) are soldered on newer macs and there's intensive efforts to make sure even if you have the tools you can't repair it. Parts aren't available but if you get your hands on there's cryptographic parts pairing so it more or less can't be replaced: https://rossmanngroup.com/services/ssd-data-recovery/macbook/m-series-soldered-nand-recovery https://rossmanngroup.com/services/ssd-data-recovery/macbook... Overall, i wouldn't count on "many good years left".
- kalleboo 1mo agoMy MacBook Pro M1 is 5 years old now and the SSD wear level is at 4%. SSD wear is not a problem for normal users. Meanwhile Apple's standard OS support period is 7 years, that's a much more imminent limit. Not saying that I support non-user-replaceable SSDs, but if your goal is reducing e-waste, there are more impactful changes to make.
- TiredOfLife 1mo agoAnd all that with a hard fork of kernel
- laidoffamazon 1mo agoIs Asahi an LLM-hostile project? I'd imagine this is something that would be benefitted tremendously with a Fable class model
- alberth 1mo ago> Meanwhile, donations and pledges kept slowly decreasing, and have done so since the project launched. Not enough to spell immediate doom for my dream of working on Asahi full time in the short term, but enough to make me wonder if any of this was really appreciated. The all-time peak monthly donation volume was the very first month or two. It seemed the more things we accomplished, the less support we had. I think the issue is funding is so low the developers don’t even have access to newer Apple Siicon, let alone funding for token costs, etc. https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-lead/ https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l...
- superdisk 1mo ago> It is the opinion of the Board that Large Language Models (LLMs), herein referred to as Slop Generators, are unsuitable for use as software engineering tools, particularly in the Free and Open Source Software movement. https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/
- not_a9 1mo agoI wonder how they handle merging upstream clanked stuff.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- worldsavior 1mo agoUsing LLMs in a project like this is also somewhat illegal, because LLMs may have inside information about apple devices and it's not allowed to use it.
- 1mo ago
- ksec 1mo ago>The ARM specification mandates that cores in WFI loops should preserve all state. This is not the default mode on Apple Silicon. I sometimes do wonder at what point do ARM find and test these stuff and ask Apple to follow. Obviously this is not the first time we see such thing happened.
- Eufrat 1mo agoMy understanding is that Apple has an extremely special license with ARM partially because they helped fund ARM when it was spun out of Acorn and they are not required to conform to the specifications like other licensees.
- AceJohnny2 1mo agoDidn't Apple help define the Aarch64 instruction set?
- happymellon 1mo agoMalicious standards. See also when Microsoft introduced DocX, Apple products corrupted documents because Apple followed the standard that Microsoft had specified but turns out they didn't follow it themselves. Sabotage others on things you don't have to do.
- j16sdiz 1mo agoThis is allowed as long as you hold the architectural license (which Apple does), and the register is not exposed to userspace (this register is accessible only from kernel)
- throwa356262 1mo agoEveryone is free to work on whatever they want, but... I wish the amount of time and brain power spent on this project was instead used to work on something more friendly to the Linux community. For example to improve Strix Halo GPU and NPU support.
- SXX 1mo agoPeople who work on Asahi want exactly that - working on black box hardware with no specification. Most likely they just not interested in working on well maintained drivers that require 1000 times more effort to upstream code.
- vrinsd 1mo agoI agree with this sentiment. If someone wants to do a bunch of reverse engineering, maybe they could try to get full mainline support for older Qualcomm mobile phone/tablet SoCs and minimize/get rid of BLOBs? All the fun of reverse engineering and we know the processors already run Linux...
- m4rtink 1mo agoReally seems like the worlds most complex and intriguing sudoku - it would all go away if Apple bothered to properly document their hardware.
- lastrik 1mo agothey're probably documenting it very well. they just refuse to give it, which is worse imo
- stiray 1mo agoI hope they will support M4 soon, I cant stand macos and its desire to be different than everything else by custom keyboard shortcuts etc. After 2 years of usage, I still have issues with basic actions like copy paste. edit: omg, writing this post, i checked if there is some way to use linux shortcuts and there is (Kanesh/KMonad or Karabiner-Elements). Maybe my suffering will finally stop.
- strbean 1mo agoCounterpoint: OSX has the only sane copy paste shortcuts. The linux standard of "sometimes ctrl-c/v, sometimes shift-ctrl-c/v, and if you mess up you might kill your task" is preposterous.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- hiire 1mo agoThe command key really has to be my favorite thing about OSX, it lets you do system things without intercepting whatever is going on in the terminal. It also leaves the ctrl key with barely any use, so you can just customize its behavior (for example, I have ctrl+opt+some letter keys assigned to different desktops/spaces, that works great for me)
- danw1979 1mo agoMy favourite thing about the command key is the position - it’s way further to the right than ctrl on most keyboards, which means you don’t have to contort your thumb back and apply lateral pressure to your thumb joint when copy-pasting. I’m either doing it wrong on Windows or the entire world is putting up with unnecessary finger pain because whoever chose Ctrl-C was a masochist.
- voidUpdate 1mo agoI'm not sure what hand position you're using, but on the keyboard I'm at right now, I put my left little finger on control, and use my left index finger for the c/v. Do you mean that you're using your thumb for control and index for c/v?
- ZiiS 1mo agoI truly understand the frustration of people asking when will it be done, and that DP Alt Mode got past that point. However it was in an official progress report, but then the last three don't mention it at all. (I have been running it without issue that whole time). A single line on the current scale of outstanding bugs would really help.
- simoltos 1mo agoDo you think Asahi is developing too slow? If yes could it be due to the anti AI policy?
- dermacentor 1mo agoNobody is stopping you from forking Asahi and making your own version with cocaine, hookers and AI.
- simoltos 1mo agoI was thinking of doing it. I've a good model to use for reverse engeniring, good logical skills, what's missing is apple's hardware
- samud 1mo agoi mean it's great to see that linux getting popular among users and it's great that having access to use linux on mac
- lvl155 1mo agoIt’s a shame that Macs have leading processors and hardwares but Apple can’t make Linux first-class. I know they have full builds internally so it’s not a matter of resources. It’s simply a business decision for Apple. And quite a dumb one at that. Here’s hoping that Ternus reverses that shortsighted decision.
- djxfade 1mo agoRealistically, what would the business case for Apple be where it would make sense to make Linux a first-class citizen on their hardware? Their product is a combination of hardware and software that works together to form the final product.
- lvl155 1mo agoYou mean other than the fact that MacOS continues its slow decline? And the fact that giving your customers different options to use their hardwares would attract more even more customers?
- dreamcompiler 1mo agoI've pretty much given up on Asahi because of the years-long delays, and because there's no performant way to share disk space for data with MacOS. By running Linux in a VM on MacOS on Apple silicon, you sacrifice some raw speed but in return you still get to run MacOS apps occasionally and have access to the same data from either MacOS or Linux without having to duplicate everything. And battery life is reasonable, which is not true yet with Asahi.
- xoa 1mo agoNot saying your VM approach isn't right for you, but: >and because there's no performant way to share disk space for data with MacOS Have you tried a ZFS partition? If it's a desktop system use iSCSI to network storage (I'm not running Linux directly on my Studio or M4 mini but I still put my Home folder on the network)?
- dreamcompiler 1mo agoI haven't. ZFS might be the answer for my laptops.
- xoa 1mo agoIt's worth a spin. Before moving to iSCSI I had my home folder as well as lots of projects and data on ZFS for macOS for almost a decade, and it was extremely reliable and performant within reason [0]. ZoL of course is also quite solid at this point too. Life gets a lot more complex if you want to boot off of it, but a shared data partition for two separate OS boots could be a good match. ---- 0: By which I mean, for equivalent features. It's possible to go really far out of the normal with ZFS in terms of silly compression and multiple copies of data even within a single OS and checksumming and so on in ways that add computational overhead, but I don't hold that against it vs APFS.
- zbentley 1mo agoOr good old FAT+symlinks from the MacOS partition might be sufficient, if you don’t need large files. NTFS, ironically, is pretty stable via FUSE on Mac if you need more than FAT allows.
- seobotaicom 1mo ago[dead]
- firatsarlar 1mo agoSomeone out there can go and build a cancer vaccine for their dog, and I can't even find a door into projects like this — that's on me. Forget a PR, even making a comment feels devastating - human communication -. I have everything it takes to help this project, and I can do nothing. Lovely.
- ethin 1mo agoWe seriously need an open hardware law or something. Like it doesn't have to be regulation necessarily (as by law) but we really need to start very strongly pressuring/forcing companies to open up their hardware and provide all documentation to get any operating system to run on it, and to hell with what the manufacturer wants (to prevent things like attestation requirements). This entire "just let random volunteers figure it out" isn't sustainable and locks out competition.
- arn3n 1mo agoI think you’ll also find that the best way to strongly pressure companies to do something is by law. The work that Right to Repair advocates have been doing across the industry is fantastic.
- stainablesteel 1mo agothis seems like it should fall within a right to repair context
- zbentley 1mo agoI like this idea, but a prerequisite would likely be removing or substantially revamping patent and related IP law. That is probably also a good thing; I’d love if the bar to which process specificity in a patent was held was one that was sufficient for behavior reverse-engineering, but it seems very difficult to enact that change.
- kotaKat 1mo ago> If you think about it, m1n1 is almost like our own firmware for Apple Silicon. If you really think about it, it's kinda amusing how far we came from https://wiibrew.org/wiki/MINI https://wiibrew.org/wiki/MINI being used to bootstrap homebrew on the Nintendo Wii on PPC to being used to fire up our Macs daily running Asahi on ARM.
- RunSet 1mo agoAlso a bit frustrating that wiimotes work on Windows, Linux and Intel Macs but not on Apple Silicon, apparently due to its half-baked bluetooth stack. https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/12662 https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/12662
- tomalbrc 1mo agoIt is extremely refreshing to see a high quality, Human written Post other than the usual AI-slop you see on hacker news. That being said, the Asahi team is doing incredible work. I am very thankful for what they are doing.
- cromka 1mo agoWhat about external USB-C displays? Support has been added to dev branch at the beginning of the year and still not released? Anyone knows why?