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shmoe 4 hours ago [-]
It is odd that Apple doesn't chip in here... they've originated so much decent stuff in the OSS space. Seems like a huge missed opportunity.
happymellon 4 hours ago [-]
Apple are hostile to everything CopyLeft.
Why would they "chip in" here?
worldsavior 3 hours ago [-]
Well, they will get more people buying MacBooks, though they won't really use their services.
utopiah 2 hours ago [-]
What makes Apple valuable is precisely its full vertical integration. Nobody else does it at that scale except maybe Sony for consoles and Microsoft but both don't have the same usage coverage and thus integration.
It wouldn't be economically rational for Apple to bring down its own moat.
deanishe 48 minutes ago [-]
Apple isn't Sony. They make an arm and a leg on their hardware.
When they switched to x86, it didn't take long for them to release Boot Camp, so they could take Windows users' money, too.
esskay 11 minutes ago [-]
They also make an arm and a leg on services, which is why its not in their interest to make it so you cant use them.
xnickb 4 minutes ago [-]
It's not like users will just stop using the services. Rather Linux users will start considering MacBook as a potential laptop to buy.
How could that possibly disrupt their Software/Services infra?
pjmlp 1 hours ago [-]
Folks are much better supporting Linux and BSD OEMs than buying Apple than then trying to run Linux on their devices.
vorticalbox 2 hours ago [-]
I do wonder if the margin on Mac isn’t that high vs the price and the services (iCloud etc) make up for that.
Amazon do the same with the fire.
globular-toast 2 hours ago [-]
They don't care about people buying MacBooks. They want you in their ecosystem buying i-everything.
elromulous 3 hours ago [-]
Surely this is missing "/s"
xiphias2 2 hours ago [-]
While the Ashahi engineers are working super hard reverse engineering the Apple Silicon, there has been a huge surge in Omarchy circles to get it all working with AI writing all the drivers and get all kinds of hardware in M4/M5 and later M6 working as well. It sped up a lot.
chem83 1 hours ago [-]
I feel like the growing polarization in that space is pretty much going to kill any chance of collaboration (for example: https://xcancel.com/dhh/status/2091229491867594983?s=12&t=JH...). It really boils down to DHH and his conservative worldview clashing over things like the downsides of corporate funding and capitalism, building system software by just throwing more AI cycles at it, rejecting data centers over environmental concerns, and pushing back on AI-generated code due to slop and security issues. I just don't see both sides putting their differences aside to work together. DHH will probably just duplicate unaligned efforts so he can completely bypass and avoid having to deal with the human element.
mschuster91 13 minutes ago [-]
> It really boils down to DHH and his conservative worldview
That is putting a lot of strain on the word "conservative". To quote Wikipedia [1]:
> In 2025, Hansson published a blog post expressing support for far-right British activist Tommy Robinson and the 2025 British anti-immigration protests, as well as mourning that London is "no longer full of native Brits". In response, some members of the Ruby on Rails community called for his removal from project governance.
> Hansson published another blog post[36] in July of 2026 comparing the Romani population of Copenhagen to Denmark's struggles with its wolf population growth, stating that "When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them."
This isn't "conservative", this is blatant far-right talking here.
The reason this amazing project exists is the same reason my current Mac will be my last Mac.
I wish the team every success.
trompetenaccoun 1 hours ago [-]
I got my first ever Mac relatively recently and I'm shocked by how annoying MacOS is. Maybe the mistake was expecting a proper operating system that puts the user in charge and not something more similar to iOS. Also Mac forums are full of dumb users and aren't much help. Average problem solving experience: There is no solution because Apple doesn't allow it, the workaround doesn't really do what you want and the other users question why you have to do the thing you want to do anyway. "Why not just let Apple wake up your hibernating Macbook at 3:00 AM and drain the battery bro, they know what they're doing"
Sadly the hardware is amazing and so much more efficient compared to Intel/AMD x86. We need M-series chips for Linux.
emmelaich 5 hours ago [-]
Do you mean 'will be my last MacOS?'
jdeaton 16 hours ago [-]
This is really incredible work but so frustrating that its necessary
pjmlp 1 hours ago [-]
Only because some buy Apple instead of supporting Linux OEMs.
sneak 9 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn’t bringing up an OS on new hardware be necessary? Apple has no obligation or incentive whatsoever to write Linux device drivers…
Do you think Apple should be funding this work out of revenue? What possible justification could they provide for such a waste of money? This will not sell any more laptops.
Even if Asahi didn’t do it, the work would still be necessary by someone inside Apple. Drivers don’t spontaneously appear from the ether.
WD-42 5 hours ago [-]
Nobody is complaining about code not being provided. It’s more the schematics that are sitting in a drawer in Cupertino that would make the painstaking reverse engineering unnecessary. Someone at Apple would have a much easier time.
teaearlgraycold 4 hours ago [-]
All of that IP stolen by OpenAI and they didn’t think to buy some goodwill lifting a copy of an engineer’s manual to their GPUs…
Muromec 8 hours ago [-]
They could also hire somebody to sabotage this work in some ways if it helps with the bottom line. That's totally reasonable thing to do that I will defend in that case, because I would love to see the trillion dollar corporation become 10 trillion dollar corporation, because reasons.
Danox 7 hours ago [-]
Apple doesn’t need to hire anyone. It’s a complete waste of their time if three former Apple silicon-engineers can start their own company Nuvia which licensed, designed and engineered Arm chips, said company was later bought out by Qualcomm for 1.2 billion dollars, if they can do it, there are many other smart people in the world that can do the same after all, it has been about 35 years since the birth of Linux. Where are they?
Every time something new comes out hardware wise in the tech world , there’s this dying quail chorus of Linux geeks, who cry about it, not having Linux support.
The only long-term solution is for a group of smart talented people to get together and take out a license from Arm and proceed to design a chip with Linux support from ground zero however, such an endeavor probably would make everyone in the Linux world mad/unhappy because in order to do something well/professional said group would have to fork Linux in order for it and hardware to have the best chance at success selling to the general public you know the group that just wants to use a computer and not jump underneath the hood to tinker with every little thing to get it working.
badc0ffee 5 hours ago [-]
It would be nice if Apple provided documentation, not even code.
bean469 1 hours ago [-]
Of course they do not have the obligation to do so. This is more about Apple doing a nice gesture to the "owners" of their devices
nijave 7 hours ago [-]
They could open source their software so others could utilise the code instead of needing reverse engineering
Danox 7 hours ago [-]
Darwin is open source has been for 25-26 years is it too much hard work?
They've done the userspace bringup for linux since apple silicon servers allegedly exist. The drivers exist already so just throwing the device tree over the wall can't be that hard. Nobody is asking for systemready/UEFI or mainline linux.
I suspect that they might be changing their mind about upstreaming?
dmix 5 hours ago [-]
Nobody likes hearing the realpolitik of the Linux/Mac situation but you're not wrong.
wraptile 3 hours ago [-]
> Apple has no obligation or incentive whatsoever to write Linux device drivers…
In ideal world the society would make it an obligation for general computers to remain free (as in freedom) and accessible.
wpm 7 hours ago [-]
Apple had no obligation to write Windows drivers for Boot Camp either but did for over a decade. They could do the same for Linux even if they never open sourced them.
dmix 6 hours ago [-]
There was a strong financial incentive to transition Windows users over to MacOS, by giving them a halfway point.
I remember overhearing an older person being explained Boot Camp while waiting for my iPhone to be repaired and it was very obviously a way for them to sell a Macbook so they could dual-use windows on it to run some windows apps. The ultimate pull would eventually be MacOS because it was easier (if you already had a macbook and iphone). Apple knew they'd get curious eventually and see how awful the Windows UX was.
The main argument for Linux on Macbooks would be developers but that doesn't mean there's a similar strong marketing/sales incentive to do so. Especially since there's no shortage of devs who default to mac (like legacy windows corporate users). Apple clearly doesn't see much money to be made by creating an olive branch offering to Linux users.
sansah 18 hours ago [-]
Lack of sleep and HDMI support is real roadblock for adoption. Hope they gets past soon.
brycewray 15 hours ago [-]
It's not just the Apple Silicon Macs, either; I have a 2017-model Intel Mac which runs any number of distros just fine except that sleep just doesn't work right. No amount of keystrokes or mouse-clicks will wake it up if it sleeps.
djfergus 8 hours ago [-]
Have you tried very recently? I have a 2018 Macbook Pro with touchbar and the progress on getting T2 macs working lately has been amazing - 3 months ago I was having issues but I reinstalled last week with a 7 kernel and it has been flawless: suspend, restore, touchbar, fan control all great.
aslihana 2 hours ago [-]
Wow thank you for saying this. Always thought it’s my problem(because its the same with my 4 OSes), some misconfiguration etc.
Mine doesn’t reboot, I am always turning off and on after SSD change; and I thought it’s about that.
laidoffamazon 10 hours ago [-]
Is there anything stopping this from being thrown some investment plus LLM tokens? I wonder what a KVM connected to the machine plus a few thousand in Astra/Fable tokens could do here. It seems funny to think of software feature defects in OSS software now if people are building full recombinations of closed source software daily now!
Gigachad 10 hours ago [-]
It's hard to debug sleep in a VM or some self contained system. You need to physically interact with the laptop, reboot it after it gets stuck, etc.
embedding-shape 9 hours ago [-]
Add a tool to the harness you use that can ping you on Telegram/whatever when it gets stuck and need you to do stuff physically, tell it to use it in the workflow with you. Used this approach a bunch with Codex to work on and debug hardware stuff. Once every 5-15 minutes I receive my command, and as a good r̶o̶b̶o̶t̶ human I moved the resistor/patch cable in the way the agent instructed me, eventually it got things working in the way I wanted it to.
aspirin 2 hours ago [-]
In Soviet Russia, LLM prompts you.
laidoffamazon 6 hours ago [-]
Presumably, that would be what the KVM/some kind of power switch would be used for
sneak 9 hours ago [-]
No, lack of GPU acceleration. Give me a laptop with sleep and HDMI output that has no 3d acceleration and I will give you back an unusable laptop.
sfdlkj3jk342a 7 hours ago [-]
If you don't want to play 3d games or run local LLMs, why is GPU acceleration important when you have a more than capable CPU for any desktop UI?
dylanger 1 hours ago [-]
Without 3D accl basic web browsing can sort of suck, QubesOS has software only rendering and you can really feel it.
teaearlgraycold 4 hours ago [-]
Depends on your desktop UI. If you install something like Gnome (as I did with Asahi Linux today on an M3 Air) the animated transitions don’t work. You just get a short frozen period and then it cuts straight to the final state. I could try installing a more barebones DE which has no need for animations.
spockz 3 hours ago [-]
Can you disable animations completely? At least I could in Gnome. It will become more snappy as a result as well.
tarruda 12 hours ago [-]
Amazing project.
My only blocker for installing Asahi on my Mac Studio (M1 ultra) is that llama.cpp performance is very bad when compared to using the Metal backend on the same hardware.
apatheticonion 10 hours ago [-]
Right!? Linux can be configured to idle at less than 500mb of ram - by contrast, with some aggressive shenanigans, MacOS can idle at 2-3gb.
When running inference, I would love to use all of my hardware please Apple.
aurareturn 2 hours ago [-]
It idles at 2-3GB but when your apps need the RAM, does it free up system memory so that it's closer to 500MB?
zer0zzz 10 hours ago [-]
I have similar issues with my ultra. Have put it on a laptop, but my desk Setup with my multiple desktop computers is usb-c video based ( kind of a poor man’s kvm) , and asahi doesn’t do usb-c video yet
mrheosuper 7 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the effort, guys. This makes me think, shouldn't the driver layer be generic now. All the driver does is writing correct data at correct address when needed, there is no need for OS support except triggering driver when to do that.
A true HAL, any OS can run on that HAL.
worldsavior 3 hours ago [-]
That data and that address changes, and the logic changes.
mrheosuper 3 hours ago [-]
Why should the address and logic change, when both are defined by hardware ?
whatever1 18 hours ago [-]
Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
Aurornis 17 hours ago [-]
> when they can just share a pdf.
I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You have to work through provided code samples and then eventually get the vendor’s engineers to look into problems that couldn’t be resolved through the documentation, where they would go look into the other teams and their sources to discover the answer.
The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny. The honest answer is that it’s not worth the huge effort investment needed to document an entire platform for public consumption.
I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open.
raphinou 15 hours ago [-]
You describe an exhaustive documention, but some documentation would already be better than none. Perfect is enemy of good, as your comment illustrates.
aurareturn 2 hours ago [-]
Apple wouldn't want to be liable or responsible if someone implements an OS based on their incomplete and imperfect and outdated spec and gets hacked.
afpx 15 hours ago [-]
If you’ve ever tried to lock down a mac and dealt with the 100s of system services, you’d know why. I like the hardware and base os, but I have no idea what those services are doing.
Many are undocumented. A lot can’t be disabled, even with SIP disabled. And, they’re chatty and persistent in trying to communicate out. You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
I only use my mac for development. I’m a simple man and don’t need all the bloat and hidden behavior. Plus, I always feel like I’m one automatic update away from it becoming unusable.
ThePinion 13 hours ago [-]
Not to mention coming from something like Niri, or even default Gnome to MacOS Tahoe is just gimping productivity tenfold. It is so incredibly unintuitive in every way for window management and keyboard shortcuts and everything in between.
My Mac Mini M4 is for building the Mac/iOS apps, other than that it's useless as a daily driver. I will patiently wait for Asahi while I use my other computers that can run serious operating systems.
saagarjha 12 hours ago [-]
> A lot can’t be disabled, even with SIP disabled.
Sure you can
> You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
No
afpx 7 hours ago [-]
No, really you can't disable all of the services with SIP disabled, at least not the latest Tahoe. Maybe there's a better tool than launchctl, but I don't know what that is. Plus, you disable one, and it crashes and you have to debug it for an hour.
Yes, I'm exaggerating about the networking. Yes, you can lock it down by turning off all of the devices, but honestly, I'm still not 100% on that. It was a surprise to me after I disabled ethernet and wifi and turned off everything in system settings, and someone passed by with an ios device.
However, if you're an expert - please save me a year of trial and error and point me to the minimal list of services and daemons.
dreamcompiler 9 hours ago [-]
So many daemons. And while a lot can be disabled, some of them cause important stuff to break if you disable them, or even cause the OS to crash in a Heisenbugian fashion. And there's no documentation. So debugging this crap is anything but simple.
apatheticonion 10 hours ago [-]
> The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny.
I suspect there would be an element of induced demand here. IMO the MacBook range are the only laptops on the market worth buying - but not having support for gaming (or at least, hilariously bad support for a limited range of games) is compelling enough reason to install Linux for a large portion of users (filling the void left behind by the widely adopted Bootcamp).
> but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF.
Yeah, GPU ISA, controllers, power management, NPU, and who knows what else. I still believe that companies should be compelled by regulators to offer documentation and support necessary to write drivers as I believe it is part of the "right to repair" (M1 will lose support in 2 years, it's still a great platform).
> They chose to leave it open.
I _really_ wonder on this point. It's so uncharacteristic of Apple. Were they concerned about potential anti-competitive lawsuits and maliciously did the bare minimum to avoid them? "It's technically open hardware, but good luck figuring out how it works"
charcircuit 1 hours ago [-]
If you don't count wine on macOS then Linux without wine has bad support for gaming too.
megous 10 hours ago [-]
This is nonsense. Chinese vendors like Rockchip and Allwinner provide fairly halfassed docs at times, but they try. It's housnads of pages, total, sure. But even this along with public code samples allows to create almost perfectly FOSS supported implementations for their HW. And it's a complex HW similar to what Apple has. I've worked with all kinds of just annoyingly incomplete and badly written datasheets, and if you put some work into it having at least something helps tremendously, even if the manufacturer ignores you completely and you have no field engineer access, and just throws incomplete crap over the public fence.
No docs is clear statement Apple hates FOSS. "how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop" argument is very weak considering that only consumer platforms that engage in a complete lockdown are maybe some gaming consoles, and those are basically appliances and not a general computing machines.
> The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny.
It's only going to grow every year as apple stops releasing OS updates for perfectly functioning hardware.
commandersaki 9 hours ago [-]
At the point its vintage people will just buy something new as it will perform better.
oblio 16 hours ago [-]
> The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny.
Right now, yes. But Linux support is like freedom of speech in a dictatorship.
Everyone makes fun of it and says it's useless but fundamentally the powers that be are deathly afraid of it ever turning the tide.
smith7018 16 hours ago [-]
Sure but that's not really their point. They're not saying that Linux is a joke nor that it's useless; they're saying that the amount of people installing Linux on their Macs is so small that it wouldn't make financial sense for Apple to support them. Knowing how much an engineer gets paid, even staffing a small team to supporting Linux would cost Apple a couple million each year. That's not even taking support into account.
conradfr 11 hours ago [-]
They had a revenue of $416 billion in 2025.
That would be like you buying something at the dollar store.
dwaite 10 hours ago [-]
If Apple doubled their Mac revenue, the financial benefit of Linux would remain the same. That means it would then be effectively half as important for their business, but the operational challenges and risks remain the same.
At some point the ongoing maintenance and support as well as coordination and organizational distraction mean it wouldn't get approved if internal engineers offered to start it off for free.
oblio 14 hours ago [-]
That's not why they're avoiding it, though.
They're avoiding it because installing Linux (or Windows, even), would actually decrease their income. I doubt people running Windows on Intel Macs were avid Apple Music subscribers.
gjvc 14 hours ago [-]
would actually decrease their income per device, but they would still make money on the device.
or are you saying apple devices are loss-leader prior the app store revenue ?
that's the model taken to the extreme
oblio 12 hours ago [-]
No, they're not loss leaders, but in 2015 services were about 9% of Apple revenue. Now they're about 28%.
It's fairly clear which direction the wind is blowing.
Also, hardware - software integration pushes more hardware sales. People with iPhones are a lot more likely to buy Macs than people with Android phones. Same story for Airpods & co. I've also basically never seen an Apple keyboard used with non-Apple computers.
dwaite 10 hours ago [-]
Also Apple stops supporting the hardware and the software at the same time. The case that Linux support lets hardware be used longer is a harder sell when the company stops manufacturing/stocking parts for servicing at the point where someone would consider Linux.
izacus 16 hours ago [-]
> I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open.
Oh please - Apple provided a full suite of Bootcamp drivers for their hardware just a couple of years ago, not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.
GeekyBear 16 hours ago [-]
In the beginning, Bootcamp had a real job.
It allowed a machine running Intel's EFI firmware (as Intel Macs have always done) to boot an OS that only understood the older BIOS standard.
Once Microsoft and the various PC vendors started supporting UEFI directly, Bootcamp was just a bundle of existing Windows drivers from the component vendors.
If you put a specific Broadcom Wi-Fi chip in the Mac, Bootcamp included Broadcom's Windows driver that was best suited for that chip.
izacus 14 hours ago [-]
And Linux support on M Macs would also have a "real job", what is your point exactly?
I find it so bizarre that some of you here are defending a megacorporation that could have easily afforded to provide drivers for Linux Kernel like their competitors do.
You're clapping for free volunteers to spend hundreds of hours reverse engineering Thunderbolt controllers when companies like Intel outright contribute them.
lokar 13 hours ago [-]
The reverse of that argument is why are you applauding Intel for doing something they had to do well in order to get any sales?
GeekyBear 13 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure Intel is providing Xenon CPUs for free when they are used in Linux servers, so they have no financial interest in providing first party Linux drivers.
Sure, they relied on community Linux drivers in the past, but that didn't have anything to do with money.
izacus 13 hours ago [-]
There is no "applause" in my post - please learn to read before you take up your bigcorp defender shield and think for a second why you're fighting against your own benefit.
lokar 12 hours ago [-]
Wft?
biorach 16 hours ago [-]
> not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.
The person you're replying to didn't say that. Please don't misrepresent and please keep it respectful
bel8 16 hours ago [-]
Regardless, saying it would be too much effort for Apple is laughable at best. Even more so when Apple used to release such docs in the past when it was much less financially capable.
They just don't care.
smith7018 16 hours ago [-]
Bootcamp on Intel Macs was a different story because Apple's hardware was mostly an assortment of other vendors' hardware (with some custom components and set up). That means they could bundle drivers for Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, Realtek, Marvell, Synaptics, etc plus a couple of their own (the camera, the touchpad, the mouse, etc) and call it a day. Since the hardware was x86-64 it mostly just worked. That's an immensely different world from their custom hardware. They would need to write Linux drivers for all of their networking chips, each of their processors, their GPUs, work around Linux/Windows' 16KB memory page issues, their neural engines, the SEP, their DCP, the interrupt controller, IOMMU, their custom storage drivers, etc. You're vastly underselling or misunderstanding the size of the situation.
They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.
Danox 7 hours ago [-]
Darwin is out there and you too can license Arm and design something from the ground up if you have the ability and the will…
It’s all there and it’s been 25-26 years no one has bothered maybe that’s Apple is still the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s.
At one time there were many choices in hardware and OS software combined with that hardware that era is basically gone because no one wants to take the bull by the horns and do anything they want someone else to give it to them free.
biorach 16 hours ago [-]
> Regardless, saying it would be too much effort for Apple
That's not what they said. Please don't misrepresent
> is laughabe
And this disparaging language about commenters is not OK. Please stop.
Dylan16807 13 hours ago [-]
The implication of saying it's a "huge effort" is that the effort is too much. You're nitpicking at this point and the flat refusal is just as much a problem as tossing out "laughable" in a sentence focused on calling Apple bad.
izacus 13 hours ago [-]
> And this disparaging language about commenters is not OK. Please stop.
Nothing about that statement is disparaging - just because you don't want to hear it, doesn't make it insulting.
Calling out nonsense is important, especially on this website.
dwaite 10 hours ago [-]
Apple until a few years ago had killed off all first party monitors because they thought that business line was a distraction.
The challenge isn't finding an engineer. It is picking what project doesn't get done in its place.
jjtheblunt 18 hours ago [-]
Apple's hypervisor.framework lets other OS instances run very very fast with the UTM app (open source on github, but i use the prebuilt version from the App Store). In my case i've used arm native linuxes (arch with various compositors, kde, gnome, fedora) all on M2, M2 Max, M5 and the experience is indistinguishable from native. MacOS is running too. I think hardcore graphics folks might want direct accelerator access, or there'd be curiously little reason for Asahi (other than that it's awesome work).
I use UTM in emulation mode, NOT Qemu simulation mode, which is wasteful.
just my $0.02.
smashed 18 hours ago [-]
What is the purpose here? You are still stuck with a full blown MacOS running the system no? That is what Asahi tries to replace, not the other way around.
jjtheblunt 17 hours ago [-]
I'd recommend reading up on it, and perhaps trying it, because it's very useful.
For folks lamenting that the (awesome) Asahi efforts are challenged by reverse engineering of changes from M2 to M3, and so on, those changes vanish into the abstraction, but their benefits do not. That's why i switched from Asahi a couple years ago to UTM in apple silicon hypervisor mode.
The point is some people who want to run Linux mostly do not want MacOS. You suggest to "just run MacOS" (the thing they want to avoid) and virtualize Linux. That defeats the entire purpose, then you could just as well skip the VM and run Mac apps. Yes, there are a few specialized applications people might need Linux for but that's mostly not why they install an entirely different OS. For the occasional obscure programm that doesn't exist in the Apple ecosystem VMs are a good option, absolutely. Everything you do in the VM still runs on Mac though and you depend on Apple for security, privacy and trust in general.
GeekyBear 17 hours ago [-]
It serves the exact same purpose that WSL does in Windows.
You can run any flavor of Linux you like in a virtual machine, while booted into the native OS.
MomsAVoxell 17 hours ago [-]
The purpose is to be able to run a decent Linux setup while also having MacOS for things. Not everyone is stuck on the anti-Apple train; some of us put software on all the platforms and thus using the hypervisor for this use case is quite comfortable. Disclaimer: personal experience - I too use UTM for highly productive things..
nsonha 16 hours ago [-]
Wanting to run a single OS at a time is anti Apple now? Run MacOS or run Linux, why run both and create more problems than it solves and waste resources?
MomsAVoxell 16 hours ago [-]
Run both when you need to build for both. Why not run both when you need to?
nsonha 8 hours ago [-]
yes, but you're arguing for running both whenever you need (only) linux?
MomsAVoxell 3 hours ago [-]
I’d need both, so I’d use both.
dylanger 1 hours ago [-]
I just don't trust macOS enough to run the hw, AsahiLinux/Linux Kernel I do, I love Apple hardware but want to run Linux.
codethief 8 hours ago [-]
I spent this past weekend giving UTM w/ Apple Virtualization a shot and can confirm that it really does work fantastically well! The only downside seems to be that it's not possible to pass USB devices through to the VM guest yet?
boredatoms 18 hours ago [-]
This misses the point entirely. What happens when apple inevitably discontinues support for this hardware.
charcircuit 1 hours ago [-]
Since the hardware will no longer get security updates for the firmware you should stop using it and move to a newer MacBook.
Linux doesn't solve the issue of not getting security updates anymore. For example the FCC does not allow letting users write arbitrary firmware they can run on their devices so this means you legally can't update the Bluetooth or Wifi firmware and need an update from Apple.
GeekyBear 17 hours ago [-]
The same thing that has previously happened with discontinued Intel Macs or PC hardware that is no longer supported by Windows.
You can still boot Linux natively on it.
jjtheblunt 17 hours ago [-]
i have no idea how you think apple silicon will discontinue support for itself.
the hypervisor framework documentation, that i linked above, is pretty clear; the linux builds for arm run extremely fast on apple silicon because hypervisor framework gives them hardware access, in some subsystems directly (memory mapping for example), in other systems through a shim (graphics hardware).
vlovich123 17 hours ago [-]
Apple discontinues support for this HW, not Apple discontinues support for running Linux in a hypervisor.
jjtheblunt 6 hours ago [-]
when apple discontinues support for older hardware, it doesn't get OS software updates. that doesn't disable the hardware from running the latest OS before OS updates for the hardware were ended. On the frozen-in-time OS, you'd still have a working instance of apple silicon hypervisor wrapping optimized drivers that make whatever linux arm build you're running still see the hardware.
happymellon 3 hours ago [-]
So you are wrapping Linux in an insecure and never updating wrapper connected to the internet?
Sounds awesome!
vlovich123 5 hours ago [-]
Some people would like to keep running a system that’s connected to the internet that’s still receiving security updates. Running an outdated host isn’t the best idea.
VCFundedGenYer 16 hours ago [-]
I don't think you understand what Asahi Linux is.
This isn't about running VMs.
jjtheblunt 15 hours ago [-]
I used Asahi linux on M1 for a couple years, and dual booted, and worked as an engineer in an inner part of Apple. I definitely know what Asahi is.
apatheticonion 10 hours ago [-]
I'd imagine it's for IP protection.
There's a lot of documentation required to write drivers for hardware; for the GPU, they'd need to share the instruction set of the GPU along with the specifications of the controller. Lots of weird things like power management too.
If shared, that's probably enough to create copycat hardware or at least an emulator.
Personally, I just want to run Linux on my latest MacBook Pro on day 1 with full hardware acceleration. If it was supported, MacOS would be on the device for as long as it took to install Linux.
I think the only way that would happen is if the EU extended "the right to repair" to include software, compelling companies to release documentation sufficient to produce drivers with. I'm sure Apple would maliciously comply, like provide the ISA but not power management specs - but that would still cut the work required by the Asahi team by 80%.
Danox 7 hours ago [-]
You can get a team together and do the work… Nothing worth doing is free.
apatheticonion 4 hours ago [-]
I'd love to. Want to join?
Retr0id 17 hours ago [-]
Aside from the "they have no incentive" answer, I imagine it's not so easy even if they wanted to. I suspect most of it won't be solely Apple's IP to share in the first place.
9 hours ago [-]
alt227 18 hours ago [-]
So that you have to keep buying Macs every few years of course. If they gave you a way to install linux easily then you could use it far past their intended lifespan and wouldnt keep you locked into the apple ecosystem. They have proved time and time again that Apple hardware running anything but MacOS or iOS is something they will work very hard to stop you doing.
dymk 15 hours ago [-]
> every few years of course
That sounds like a you thing; I've kept my macs for at least 5 years. My M1 is still going strong and I haven't felt any pressure to upgrade.
alt227 15 hours ago [-]
2 more years and your mac will not install the latest MacOS version, which then means you will no longer be able to update any software on your own computer or install any new software either. If you could install linux or any other OS on it you would be able to use it for decades to come, but instead you will be forced to buy another new shiny Apple box.
You will probably argue thats ok because you would have wanted one anyway by that time or some such point, but the fact remains that Apple will force you to upgrade your hardware not very long away by not allowing you to install anything on it.
dymk 14 hours ago [-]
That's not how macs work. You don't suddenly lose the ability to run new binaries just because they're not on the latest MacOS version.
Using your own conservative estimate, 8 years seems like a fine lifespan for a laptop, far longer than the "few years" you initially said. And in practice, there are plenty of macbooks that have been running even longer.
edschofield 12 hours ago [-]
The parent commenter described exactly how Macs work. I have a beautiful 10-core iMac 27” with 72 GB of RAM from 2020 that Apple has now decided to turn into a lemon. macOS Tahoe runs as slow as molasses and no more macOS upgrades will be forthcoming. I downgraded to Sonoma (which cost me hours) and the machine runs well again for now but the App Store has already started refusing to update apps like Pages because macOS is old. Soon I won’t be able to install a single app through the App Store and Linux (T2 Linux in my case, not Asahi) will be the only option to keep using this terrific hardware.
Gigachad 10 hours ago [-]
Intel macs suddenly will lose the ability to run programs because Apple has dropped the requirement to ship an intel build. And from experience, as soon as Apple stops requiring devs support old hardware, nothing works anymore.
dymk 8 hours ago [-]
That only affects new software, the stuff that runs on those macs now will continue to run on them in the future
testing22321 11 hours ago [-]
Which will make it 7 years old. That is hardly a machine that must be replaced “every few years”
MYEUHD 17 hours ago [-]
> past their intended lifespan
Thanks to the community, you can install macOS 15 (or older) on unsupported macs (as old as 18 years)
It's a bit awkward where newer Intel models with T2 chips don't support OpenCore, so e.g. the 2019 MBA is going to run out of security updates with macOS 14, sooner than a 2008 MBA that OpenCore will update up to macOS 15.
alsetmusic 18 hours ago [-]
> past their intended lifespan
This bullshit needs to die. The products are designed to last.
alt227 14 hours ago [-]
The hardware is designed to last, the software is designed to force you to buy a new device after 7 years at most.
dymk 14 hours ago [-]
Is it a "a few years" or 7 years?
10 hours ago [-]
Gigachad 10 hours ago [-]
Depends on your expectations. Throwing a perfectly working laptop out after 7 years because apple cut off software support is wasteful to me. It might not be for you.
dymk 8 hours ago [-]
Why would you throw it out after 7 years? The software that’s already on it will continue to work just as it always has.
Gigachad 7 hours ago [-]
My experience with iPads losing Apple support is every app just shows you an error message saying your app is out of date and can't be used, while the app store won't let you update it because the latest api version doesn't support your device. Unless you are using all FOSS software, most apps want to connect to some server, and that connection breaks rapidly without updates.
If you can load Linux on it it's still usable, but Apple OSs degrade rapidly after Apple stops supporting them. Apple is better about keeping devices on the latest OS version, but much worse about support after that period.
wa2flq 12 hours ago [-]
My iMac Pro 2017 is an Energizer Bunny. I got almost 10 years from by MacBook Pro.
specialist 9 hours ago [-]
My family continues to use my old 2009 MacBook Pro.
YMMV
meerita 18 hours ago [-]
It wouldn’t even be a problem for Apple to support Linux. Linux’s desktop market share has never been a threat to Apple at all. I hope Ternus, being the engineer he is, opens this up.
ChocolateGod 17 hours ago [-]
The sad part is that it's known that Apple internally maintains Linux ports to their SoCs
Hmm, odd listing. Looks like an embedded linux job working on a BSP, but they don't have any hardware I know of which ships with Linux. Even their constrained environments use things like their own L4 variant or RTKit.
15 hours ago [-]
kylec 18 hours ago [-]
I don't think Linus Torvalds has any sway on what Apple does. Or do you mean John Ternus, the new CEO?
meerita 18 hours ago [-]
My phone autocorrected Ternus to Torvalds, what a catch!
alsetmusic 18 hours ago [-]
> My phone autocorrected Termus to Torvalds, what a catch!
Kinda funny and definitely a word suggestion that will be locked in future code.
kylec 18 hours ago [-]
Also it's "Ternus" with an "n"
meerita 16 hours ago [-]
Fixed. Thanks!
whatever1 17 hours ago [-]
This message would be so badass if you were Ternus himself!
They want control on the walled garden. When was the last time apple did anything for public unless forced by FCC. Now there is no hope since they can simply donate to trump.
novafunc 18 hours ago [-]
Apple made some changes specifically for Asahi Linux to make it more robust.
I believe it was Hector Martin who discussed it on Mastodon a while ago.
Discussed there, but shame the original linked tweet is deleted
vallerie 18 hours ago [-]
Would you happen to have a link to this? I would like to learn about this but unfortunately treehouse.systems doesn't seem to be very well indexed by search engines, and Mastodon's search is failing me.
bitpush 18 hours ago [-]
Source? It's a welcome thing but very much not like Apple.
robertoandred 17 hours ago [-]
Apple has a long long history of supporting open source.
cute_boi 16 hours ago [-]
can you please tell us what have they done for open source except LLVM.
mikestew 16 hours ago [-]
Probably took me less time to search “Apple open source” and click the first link than it did to type your question:
I mean, if you can’t read I could see how one might walk away with that impression.
cute_boi 3 hours ago [-]
My argument was apple is doing nothing much for open source, then you suddenly come with link that shows Apple has done nothing for open source compared to other company like Microsoft or Google or even Meta.
Sure, but other then language tools, databases, printing, container orchestration, what have the Roman’s ever done for us?
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
If you have the will, and the knowledge all of those tools can be used to your advantage but no one has for the most part they want someone else to do it for them for free.
cute_boi 4 hours ago [-]
If you see google and microsoft contribution to OSS, apple contribution to OSS is basically nothing.
gehsty 15 hours ago [-]
LLVM / Swift / Webkit & XNU (I don’t really know of anything using Xnu up stream but the others are large open source projects?)
16 hours ago [-]
GeekyBear 11 hours ago [-]
Clang, OpenCL, MLX
cozzyd 6 hours ago [-]
Don't they ship a propetietary clang variant with weirdass version numbers? That was true at least at some point. Fortunately most Mac users on my experiments have given up attempting to compile any code in their Macs after SIP etc made it too annoying so rarely have to support them anymore.
burtness 16 hours ago [-]
and CUPS
seanmcdirmid 16 hours ago [-]
The FCC? I guess you mean their wifi chips or cellular modems or something? I can’t see the FCC having jurisdiction over anything else that Apple does. Maybe you meant the FTC?
Aurornis 17 hours ago [-]
> They want control on the walled garden.
It would have been trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
Even the Asahi team has been much more appreciative of Apple leaving this open.
xorcist 17 hours ago [-]
> It would have been trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
It is trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
16 hours ago [-]
specialist 9 hours ago [-]
Yes but: Apple has no incentive to open up.
Absent that, it'd take some kind of sustained right-to-repair, EU morality, many sternly worded letters pressure campaign.
Plus, once they did (officially), they're kinda committed to keep doing it. That's explains why they remain okay with emoloyees helping on their own time; all the upside, none of the down.
18 hours ago [-]
IshKebab 18 hours ago [-]
I expect they don't actually care whether or not people run Linux on macs. I mean they used to let you run Windows!
Probably the real reason is just that it's extra work - both in terms of producing the docs, and in dealing with complaints when they change things. From their point of view it's extra work with no benefit to them.
cosmic_cheese 17 hours ago [-]
Yep, I suspect the goal is to reduce support footprint/burden to the absolute minimum possible, which is also why they don't maintain their legacy virtualization/translation layers indefinitely (Classic mode, Rosetta 1 (PPC → x86), Rosetta 2 (x86 → ARM)). The benefit is being able to make major changes, refactors, etc with relatively little delay and encumbrance.
This applies on both the software and hardware layers. In the past, CPU suppliers dragging their feet and/or being unable to deliver on promises were the chief motivation for switching architectures, and now that they're their own supplier they can banish that issue entirely so long as they're not beholden to any kind of external behavioral contracts or expectations.
If the OS teams need some new capability or discover substantial benefit from redesigning some part of the SoC, the SoC/hardware team can just implement it and not have to care about breaking anything. That's a major competitive advantage that practically nobody else in the computer or mobile device industries has.
philistine 7 hours ago [-]
This is it; why make your own CPU, if you can't make large breaking changes because you've promised Linux support?
Apple is not interested in tying their hardware design to Linus Torvalds.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
Why would they? Linux on the desktop still has trouble with user friendliness for the general computer using public.
ajross 18 hours ago [-]
> they used to let you run Windows!
They let you run Windows when they were losing in the market and needed a path to migration for users of the winning platform. Once they started winning, they stopped.
Conversely, Microsoft refused to interoperate with Linux. Until Linux became the clear winner in the datacenter space. Now they have WSL and actually work pretty well as a cross-platform development environment.
VCFundedGenYer 16 hours ago [-]
Microsoft is being all kumbaya right now for those exact same reasons - they are hemorrhaging users to Linux and macOS. WSL only exists because of this.
In the 90s and 2000s, they considered Linux a cancer, and only kept macOS alive for antitrust reasons.
bel8 16 hours ago [-]
"Developers developers developers!"
BloodyIron 16 hours ago [-]
Because that's not their business model. How is that not obvious?
amelius 16 hours ago [-]
Legal reasons. Lawyers say "no".
amazingamazing 18 hours ago [-]
Why would they?
SoftTalker 16 hours ago [-]
When Intel-based Macs debuted they touted their support for dual-booting Windows (Bootcamp).
Apple makes money selling hardware.
amazingamazing 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah, they abandoned that, though.
varispeed 14 hours ago [-]
Competition could use it as well. Why make it easy.
carlosjobim 17 hours ago [-]
Community... is what you have with family, neighbors and such. Being a user of a mass produced thing is not a community.
But to answer your question: Why would they? Apple hasn't asked anybody to put Linux on their machines. They deliver them with a fully functional OS already and there are thousands of other computer models you can purchase instead of a Mac.
ajross 18 hours ago [-]
> Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community?
Because then they'll have to compete with Linux, which opens them up to someone else making a cheaper computer that does the same stuff.
I mean, I'm typing this on a junky Raptor Lake laptop I found on eBay for $220. Would I buy a Neo or MBP to replace it just to run the same software stack? Probably not.
If you believe OS X is the best environment and Apple Silicon will remain the best hardware in perpetuity, it seems silly for Apple not to allow some experimentation. Apple executives, to be blunt, know better. Lean times are always ahead.
smashed 17 hours ago [-]
Apple silicon is winning in performance and power consumption. It's not quite the same as the old Intel based generation, where they were more like premium/well built machines with good screens and hardware.
Now some people would like to use that top of the line Apple silicon but without MacOS that comes with it. I doubt this is a huge threat to apple but it's also not a huge market for them. From what I understand they are not actively impeding it but not actively helping it either.
I actually won a M2 laptop a while ago. I resold it, new in box still shrink wrapped because I did not care for MacOS, just a personal preference. People like me are a minority though.
nosioptar 17 hours ago [-]
I'm in the same boat.
Hell, I was given a bunch of old iphones recently, all of which are newer and better hardware than my phone. I wiped them and donated them to charity.
ajross 17 hours ago [-]
> It's not quite the same as the old Intel based generation, where they were more like premium/well built machines with good screens and hardware.
Not sure what generation you're talking about? Intel c. 18-25 years ago was wildly ahead on everything, much more so than Apple is now, in fact.[1] Apple Computer, quite famously, straight up abandoned their previous CPU architecture and started shipping Intel chips just to have something competitive in the market.
Again, everything goes in cycles in this industry and Apple's executive decisionmaking is 100% not placing bets on being the best forever just to make a bunch of Linux nerds happy.
[1] Process innovation mattered more at the time, where now we're hitting the scaling limit and chips are much more comparable.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
Intel have a chance to be relevant today, but they couldn’t imagine a future with smaller better faster, computers the same applies to IBM and Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois. They just couldn’t imagine anything beyond.
Intel was asked to design a chip for a new smartphone. They said no, which was the end…
Note: Intel and Microsoft have trouble competing when the playing field is level.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
The 1980s was filled with many companies that made the operating system and the hardware, Apple is basically the last vertical company left from that era. Why would they sacrifice that?
Many of those companies from the 1980s were very very good companies, but they gave up in the face of Wintel, Sun, SGI, Digital, Acorn (Arm processor), Amiga, Atari, etc… I would take any of those systems updated to today over Linux.
Only Apple with a mad man at the controls was able to survive (no Microsoft isn’t the reason). I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when Intel said no to designing iPhone chips and then Steve Jobs still mad told his manager group that we have to design a new processor in house that would’ve been interesting, of course everyone in the room probably, said it can’t be done and many are probably saying the same thing about in house memory today which needs to be done.
wat10000 16 hours ago [-]
How does providing the specs to run Linux on a MacBook open them them up to competition from junky used eBay laptops?
12 hours ago [-]
simonebrunozzi 12 hours ago [-]
What would be the best way to dual boot MacOS and Asahi on a Macbook M2 ?
jonesy827 12 hours ago [-]
The Asahi installer does this automatically, it guides you through sizing. You run it in a macOS terminal. By default, Asahi will be the default boot option, and to get to macOS you hold the power button on boot until it says "Loading startup options..."
I have two M1 pro asahi macbooks, and I only use macOS for VirtualDJ or AirPlay.
Reverse-engineering Apple's custom silicon is basically the modern equivalent of repairing a spaceship while it's actively launching. Incredible work by the Asahi team!
bigyabai 17 hours ago [-]
Makes you wonder who's choice it was to launch a half-finished rocket. AMD and Intel's rockets sit on the launch pad with GPU/CPU drivers shipped for Linux before T-10.
MBCook 14 hours ago [-]
They publish documentation because they need OEMs to be willing to support their products.
Apple doesn’t. Apple consumes it, so Apple always has a customer.
GeekyBear 13 hours ago [-]
If selling Linux servers (or parts used in Linux servers) is a major chunk of your revenue, your company is likely to start providing first party Linux drivers?
This is a shocking development.
BloodyIron 16 hours ago [-]
Their Silicon was written to be OS agnostic, Apple's was not.
fsckboy 13 hours ago [-]
>Their Silicon was written to be OS agnostic, Apple's was not.
i don't think that's accurate. the M series chips and memory architecture enable capabilities for the OS software to take advantage of, and the software and hardware teams get to collaborate to be ready for a simultaneously launch, but nothing about that is macos specific, just that they're on the same side of a walled garden.
bayindirh 13 hours ago [-]
Apple silicon has features specifically designed for macOS or software running on macOS. e.g.: Rosetta 2.
From Wikipedia:
One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the M1 SoC.[12] The SoC also has dedicated instructions for computing x86 flags.
So, Apple always adds one more thing to their hardware to enable their magic.
The reason Apple has the in house ability to run on multiple chip systems is because of their history going all the way back to Next and that little handheld from the early 1990s under Scully and all their work with Motorola and IBM over the years, that ability is what separates them from Microsoft who is having trouble getting Windows working with multiple CPU chips. Apple is simply better at it.
charcircuit 1 hours ago [-]
Windows in the 90s was ported from x86 to MIPS, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, and SPARC.
tensegrist 13 hours ago [-]
i wonder if this is not something that asahi could eventually make use of
macOS ships with full working drivers for everything. They're unfortunately not under AGPLv3.
16 hours ago [-]
Retr0id 15 hours ago [-]
You're replying to an LLM-written comment.
menno-sh 14 hours ago [-]
Why do you believe that comment was LLM-generated?
Retr0id 14 hours ago [-]
The dubious metaphor is what tipped me off in the first place, but then I looked at the account activity. Dormant for over a year, submits vibecoded AI project to Show HN (which gets immediately downvoted and flagged due to being slop), then leaves two LLM-style comments.
TomJansen 18 hours ago [-]
I am wondering how much the spec changes per M-chip iteration? I think that after some iterations, the spec stays the same, no?
dagmx 18 hours ago [-]
Your intuition here is wrong.
Processors, not just Apple’s, change constantly between generations. The core instruction set doesn’t change, but they get new capabilities, not just with new instruction sets.
Remember the SoC isn’t just the CPU. It’s display engines, GPUs, storage controllers, video decoders and more.
Even outside of Apple, you’ll see hardware vendors provide Linux patches for their latest CPUs to keep working well. There’s some baseline functionality that works out of the box but it’s never a free ride.
colesantiago 15 hours ago [-]
This is great news.
Hoping for M4 to the latest chip.
We need Ashai to support more chips.
wingworks 11 hours ago [-]
Me too. I've got an M3 Mac Mini running as a linux server with parallels, but it has a weird NIC bug that crashes the mini every few weeks, keen to get of macOS and it's buggy NIC driver. (really don't want to send it into an Apple repair shop, there are non local here, it's a whole thing)
Can't wait to get Linux running on it native.
trueno 9 hours ago [-]
we need to be supporting asahi if we want these things. their funding has fallen off.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
I wish they would get an Arm license and start the process like those three guys that worked at Apple and started Nuvia…
Not quite there yet though. No PCI or DisplayPort (latter is working but unstable). But at least they seem to be on it.
MYEUHD 18 hours ago [-]
You can contribute support for it
13 hours ago [-]
16 hours ago [-]
18 hours ago [-]
BowBun 18 hours ago [-]
Indeed, not sure why you are being downvoted. Contribute to open source with the energy you have to call out missing features.
izacus 16 hours ago [-]
Apple could contribute as well, like Intel does for their Thunderbolt controllers.
Why are you demanding a user does that for free instead of the big corp that made the platform?
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
Did Intel push thunderbolt five hard in PC land? Most of the PC vendors seem to be taking a slow boat to China in that area.
wat10000 16 hours ago [-]
The platform already supports it.
basisword 17 hours ago [-]
Because it's a lazy response. OP might not be a software developer. Should they learn complex software engineering to try and contribute or should they call out a missing feature that's important to them so the actual developers have some data on what to prioritise?
saghm 17 hours ago [-]
It's no lazier than saying "Still no <feature> support"
basisword 16 hours ago [-]
a) that's feedback
b) it's useful in a comment thread like this so people can quickly see what the 'caveats' mentioned in the title of the post are
saghm 15 hours ago [-]
Feedback in a forum stating something the developers are probably well aware people want in a location the developers might not even be reading is not particularly useful feedback. As for the comment thread utility, sure, I guess if you think that not reading the article is valuable for the HN community, but I could just as easily argue that pushing back against comments like that could be seen as valuable for a community that values more thoughtful feedback.
basisword 15 hours ago [-]
It was valuable for me. I've been waiting for Asahi on M3 and quickly wanted to know what the 'caveat' was. Saved me some time.
saghm 14 hours ago [-]
You're entitled to your opinion that scrolling to the last comment on the page is preferable to reading the article. I'm also entitled to mine that it's a net loss to the quality of conversation.
alt227 18 hours ago [-]
To be fair this is the thing that is likely to be the most difficult due to it being closed proprietary apple/intel tech.
bigyabai 17 hours ago [-]
Intel and AMD both support Thunderbolt on Linux, it's not impossible per-se.
MBCook 13 hours ago [-]
And it’s not. They’re working on it, I just saw a post about it today.
But Intel and AMD post documents to explain how to use their hardware. Apple doesn’t. So it’s not an equivalent effort by any stretch.
smm11 10 hours ago [-]
I don't understand this. Buy something else to run Linux, as in anything other than Apple M series laptops. And if you want to do AI stuff, suffer with OSX using too much RAM, or again, buy something appropriate.
pcunite 13 hours ago [-]
Let me know when we get M4 support.
TechSquidTV 17 hours ago [-]
I thought development officially ended?
weberer 16 hours ago [-]
Some contributors left, but others were able to take over. The project is still ongoing.
11 hours ago [-]
xrd 15 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I understand the target user for Asahi.
Is this someone that only wants to run Linux and wants to use their GPU on Linux? Seems like this is not the case, yet.
Or, is this for someone that wants to dual boot and use Linux sometimes, and then reboot into MacOS when they want to use the GPU?
bjackman 15 hours ago [-]
I don't think it makes much sense to expect such a cohesive/specific philosophy from an open source project like this.
The goal is "Linux on Mac". In a commercial product, specific details of what gets built usually stem from a more detailed vision that can be articulated as one. In open source projects those details are determined by what individual contributors are motivated to work on.
That doesn't means a cohesive vision can't emerge, there might be one for Asahi actually. But I think the default position is that it's kinda just a mob of people doing what they each feel like doing.
nottorp 14 hours ago [-]
I don't think it matters that Asashi is a generation or three behind, because the moment you really need it is when Apple stops updating the OS for your hardware.
When M1 drops out of support I bet Asashi for the M1 machines will be pretty polished.
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
Another thing is, the M1 and later hardware is still years later some of the best arm64 hardware youre going to find. Combine that with the really affordable prices you can find on the used market and Linux arm64 on this kind of great hardware at a low price is quite appealing.
brundolf 15 hours ago [-]
Asahi on previous M-series chips supports the GPU, they just don't support it on M3 yet (they have to reverse-engineer the GPU to write the driver)
Oh, so an M2 will support GPU usage? Can you run CoreML and unsloth models in the same way you would use them on regular MacOS? Are there benefits to using Linux/Asahi for running models on Apple hardware?
simcop2387 14 hours ago [-]
You wouldnt be using coreml since thats apples software, but likely vulkan versions of llama.cpp or pytorch or what have you. How well that works at the moment i dont know
brundolf 14 hours ago [-]
To my understanding the M1 and M2 have very functional GPU drivers. I don't know about the other specifics you asked
cfstras 11 hours ago [-]
It‘s going to be a godsend for people with M1 macs when Apple or App vendors decide to drop support for them.
The hardware is super capable and will make a great fileserver, TV box or HomeAssistant instance once I‘m done using it as daily driver.
Similarly, because of distros like Fedora and Ubuntu, I can keep using a 15y old Samsung notebook with a modern firefox, whereas Windows 8 already broke Samsung‘s display brightness driver and thermal management, and 10&11 are entirely unusable.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
They are envious towards Apple Silicon and think Apple owes them something once again take the ball by the horns and build an Arm processor with a fork of Linux running on it. If three former engineers from Apple can start a company called Nuvia it can be done.
herrkanin 15 hours ago [-]
I have an M2 Macbook Air that i sometimes boot into Asahi to play Steam games that doesn't work natively on mac. It works unreasonably well given that there is something like five different translation layers to make it work!
dylanger 1 hours ago [-]
I have an M2 Macbook Air that I love, it's the best machine to read news from and access other machines over SSH, I only use macOS to use rekordbox, 99% of the time I'm booting into AsahiLinux
menno-sh 14 hours ago [-]
Huh, I thought Asahi would still be too unpolished on M2 to play games reliably. Could you elaborate on your setup a little? What kind of games do you play? What is performance like? Is it really better than Crossover for example?
xrd 15 hours ago [-]
Steam is incredible on Linux. I'm amazed my kids can play so many games using proton on Ubuntu.
So, if there are five translation layers, why not run a Linux VM using UTM and play there? Is there a technical reason that does not work?
teaearlgraycold 15 hours ago [-]
It’s cooler to run Linux on bare metal
GeekyBear 14 hours ago [-]
> I'm not sure I understand the target user for Asahi.
If you want to run bare metal Linux on Apple's hardware (instead of running it in a virtual machine) you are the target audience.
eikenberry 14 hours ago [-]
I think it is more the technical challenge of doing it that drives development than any target users.
kristianp 12 hours ago [-]
Are you talking about using a thunderbolt dock and GPU? I doubt that's a use case high in the developers minds. I'm curious though, I wonder if the open source NVIDIA driver can be built for it.
tiffanyh 15 hours ago [-]
Why does it have to be for anyone other than the people involved in it?
(Though I’m sure people outside the project get value from it as well, like OpenBSD using Asahi bootloader)
fwn 15 hours ago [-]
I bought a Mac mini M4 simply because it was very cheap and the M4 chip offers great performance. It is currently mounted on the back of my TV and serves as a media station.
It runs macOS, but I have no particular interest in the operating system, nor do I own any other Apple hardware. (So no synergies.) It is alright (and better than Win11) but the preinstalled software does not even properly update without an Apple account. As soon as I can switch over to Linux, I will. ... I would just wait for all the ports to work.
wingworks 11 hours ago [-]
Same same. I love Mac, and macOS, but as a server, macOS is terrible, and bloated, and a pain to run docker/podman.
contingencies 10 hours ago [-]
Me too, M4 and keen to run Linux, partly because every damn system update bloats the system by 20GB but no memorably useful novel feature actually emerges and partly because it's long term stable. That said, at this stage in my career I appreciate a working system that doesn't require umpteen kernel recompiles!
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
Target user is someone that wants to use Linux on good hardware. Apple hardware has some of the best perf-per-single-thread-perf-per-watt there is. Also, apple desktops are really compact and easy to keep out of the way while having really good performance too.
My current linux PC cuda machine is the latest Intel Ultra 9 mini PC from minisforum, and it still isnt quite as fast as a years old M1/M2. The only thing it has that the mac doesnt is cuda egpu support.
raverbashing 15 hours ago [-]
Honestly I wouldn't waste any of my time trying to run a worse OS than MacOS in a hardware that wasn't completely supported by the sw
As much as I like Linux this kind of tinkering is only for people with more time and less expectations about the experience
If I need Linux I can always go for UTM or something similar
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you haven't used Asahi. I found the kde remix to be pretty nice to use. Literally the only thing that I found frustrating was:
1) for the longest time, but no longer, Google did not ship an official chrome linux arm64 package. Chromium Browser also has not included google sync for years now. But now, google chrome does ship for arm64 linux so its all good.
2) usb-c video still doesn't work, so not ideal for a laptop without hdmi that you'd want to dock
Otherwise, it works really well.
raverbashing 46 minutes ago [-]
Good to know, but even in a well rounded Linux it seems you hit several mini-annoyances every day
Case in point, any form of package management. Or then you have Flatpack, with its own list of issues
amelius 11 hours ago [-]
My bet: Apple is going to close it down. It is too much of a legal risk. What if some Linux enthusiast finds patent infringements in Apple's undocumented APIs?
dylanger 1 hours ago [-]
There used to be a rule in some of the AsahiLinux channels that no RE discussion was allowed, not sure why.
I also know the AsahiLinux team is very aware if there are any unintended things that cross the Linux-macOS boundary Apple would very likely just shut it down.
Apparently even the macbook neo has the ability to run AsahiLinux, so they can definitely allow access to running alt OSs pretty easily
dev_tty01 2 hours ago [-]
Why do you think they would be concerned about patent infringements? Like all major tech companies, they are constantly fighting numerous patent lawsuits, mostly from trolls but sometimes other tech companies. It is part of the cost of doing business today. Some Linux enthusiast finding a possible patent infringement is of no concern to Apple.
ravenstine 10 hours ago [-]
Why would they even care? 99% of people aren't going to be installing Linux on their Macbook. If Apple did care, they'd have stopped allowing dual booting a long time ago.
Danox 6 hours ago [-]
It works for now, but one day it won’t then what?
zer0zzz 3 hours ago [-]
FUD based in no actual facts. Recently with the new Golden Gate OS update, Asahi boot was made inoperable. Apple basically helped the Asahi folks work around a flag in the boot loader that they had not figured out how to handle in their reverse engineering. This doesnt strike me as the actions of an organization that is planning to close down the ability for asahi to boot after years of allowing it.
hurricanepootis 11 hours ago [-]
Asahi linux has been going on for a few years now
amelius 10 hours ago [-]
I recently read somewhere that someone wrote a letter/email to Apple's legal team, explaining the risks. Sorry if I cannot be more specific, I already went through my browser history and cannot find it back right now. PS: Browsers really need to improve here, it is crazy that I cannot search through my history in a meaningful way.
On the topic of browsers, I feel your pain. There were a good few years where they were shipping new and useful features, but they plateaued and started removing features. I can't remember the last time I was excited about browser features.
zer0zzz 10 hours ago [-]
Man… they absolutely do not care. An Apple engineer made the boot loader for Mac open in the first place.
Danox 5 hours ago [-]
Darwin is still sitting there all these years. It’s called market inertia.
zer0zzz 4 hours ago [-]
What is the context here? I am saying, if they cared what OS users booted on their mac they would have used the same boot process the iPad has. They wouldn't have gone out of their way to make it possible to boot systems not signed by Apple.
Why would they "chip in" here?
It wouldn't be economically rational for Apple to bring down its own moat.
When they switched to x86, it didn't take long for them to release Boot Camp, so they could take Windows users' money, too.
How could that possibly disrupt their Software/Services infra?
Amazon do the same with the fire.
That is putting a lot of strain on the word "conservative". To quote Wikipedia [1]:
> In 2025, Hansson published a blog post expressing support for far-right British activist Tommy Robinson and the 2025 British anti-immigration protests, as well as mourning that London is "no longer full of native Brits". In response, some members of the Ruby on Rails community called for his removal from project governance.
> Hansson published another blog post[36] in July of 2026 comparing the Romani population of Copenhagen to Denmark's struggles with its wolf population growth, stating that "When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them."
This isn't "conservative", this is blatant far-right talking here.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson#Contr...
I wish the team every success.
Sadly the hardware is amazing and so much more efficient compared to Intel/AMD x86. We need M-series chips for Linux.
Do you think Apple should be funding this work out of revenue? What possible justification could they provide for such a waste of money? This will not sell any more laptops.
Even if Asahi didn’t do it, the work would still be necessary by someone inside Apple. Drivers don’t spontaneously appear from the ether.
Every time something new comes out hardware wise in the tech world , there’s this dying quail chorus of Linux geeks, who cry about it, not having Linux support.
The only long-term solution is for a group of smart talented people to get together and take out a license from Arm and proceed to design a chip with Linux support from ground zero however, such an endeavor probably would make everyone in the Linux world mad/unhappy because in order to do something well/professional said group would have to fork Linux in order for it and hardware to have the best chance at success selling to the general public you know the group that just wants to use a computer and not jump underneath the hood to tinker with every little thing to get it working.
https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
https://www.puredarwin.org/
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200658399-0645/linux-ke...
I suspect that they might be changing their mind about upstreaming?
In ideal world the society would make it an obligation for general computers to remain free (as in freedom) and accessible.
I remember overhearing an older person being explained Boot Camp while waiting for my iPhone to be repaired and it was very obviously a way for them to sell a Macbook so they could dual-use windows on it to run some windows apps. The ultimate pull would eventually be MacOS because it was easier (if you already had a macbook and iphone). Apple knew they'd get curious eventually and see how awful the Windows UX was.
The main argument for Linux on Macbooks would be developers but that doesn't mean there's a similar strong marketing/sales incentive to do so. Especially since there's no shortage of devs who default to mac (like legacy windows corporate users). Apple clearly doesn't see much money to be made by creating an olive branch offering to Linux users.
My only blocker for installing Asahi on my Mac Studio (M1 ultra) is that llama.cpp performance is very bad when compared to using the Metal backend on the same hardware.
When running inference, I would love to use all of my hardware please Apple.
A true HAL, any OS can run on that HAL.
I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You have to work through provided code samples and then eventually get the vendor’s engineers to look into problems that couldn’t be resolved through the documentation, where they would go look into the other teams and their sources to discover the answer.
The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny. The honest answer is that it’s not worth the huge effort investment needed to document an entire platform for public consumption.
I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open.
Many are undocumented. A lot can’t be disabled, even with SIP disabled. And, they’re chatty and persistent in trying to communicate out. You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
I only use my mac for development. I’m a simple man and don’t need all the bloat and hidden behavior. Plus, I always feel like I’m one automatic update away from it becoming unusable.
My Mac Mini M4 is for building the Mac/iOS apps, other than that it's useless as a daily driver. I will patiently wait for Asahi while I use my other computers that can run serious operating systems.
Sure you can
> You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
No
Yes, I'm exaggerating about the networking. Yes, you can lock it down by turning off all of the devices, but honestly, I'm still not 100% on that. It was a surprise to me after I disabled ethernet and wifi and turned off everything in system settings, and someone passed by with an ios device.
However, if you're an expert - please save me a year of trial and error and point me to the minimal list of services and daemons.
I suspect there would be an element of induced demand here. IMO the MacBook range are the only laptops on the market worth buying - but not having support for gaming (or at least, hilariously bad support for a limited range of games) is compelling enough reason to install Linux for a large portion of users (filling the void left behind by the widely adopted Bootcamp).
> but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF.
Yeah, GPU ISA, controllers, power management, NPU, and who knows what else. I still believe that companies should be compelled by regulators to offer documentation and support necessary to write drivers as I believe it is part of the "right to repair" (M1 will lose support in 2 years, it's still a great platform).
> They chose to leave it open.
I _really_ wonder on this point. It's so uncharacteristic of Apple. Were they concerned about potential anti-competitive lawsuits and maliciously did the bare minimum to avoid them? "It's technically open hardware, but good luck figuring out how it works"
No docs is clear statement Apple hates FOSS. "how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop" argument is very weak considering that only consumer platforms that engage in a complete lockdown are maybe some gaming consoles, and those are basically appliances and not a general computing machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://www.puredarwin.org/
It's only going to grow every year as apple stops releasing OS updates for perfectly functioning hardware.
Right now, yes. But Linux support is like freedom of speech in a dictatorship.
Everyone makes fun of it and says it's useless but fundamentally the powers that be are deathly afraid of it ever turning the tide.
That would be like you buying something at the dollar store.
At some point the ongoing maintenance and support as well as coordination and organizational distraction mean it wouldn't get approved if internal engineers offered to start it off for free.
They're avoiding it because installing Linux (or Windows, even), would actually decrease their income. I doubt people running Windows on Intel Macs were avid Apple Music subscribers.
or are you saying apple devices are loss-leader prior the app store revenue ?
that's the model taken to the extreme
It's fairly clear which direction the wind is blowing.
Also, hardware - software integration pushes more hardware sales. People with iPhones are a lot more likely to buy Macs than people with Android phones. Same story for Airpods & co. I've also basically never seen an Apple keyboard used with non-Apple computers.
Oh please - Apple provided a full suite of Bootcamp drivers for their hardware just a couple of years ago, not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.
It allowed a machine running Intel's EFI firmware (as Intel Macs have always done) to boot an OS that only understood the older BIOS standard.
Once Microsoft and the various PC vendors started supporting UEFI directly, Bootcamp was just a bundle of existing Windows drivers from the component vendors.
If you put a specific Broadcom Wi-Fi chip in the Mac, Bootcamp included Broadcom's Windows driver that was best suited for that chip.
I find it so bizarre that some of you here are defending a megacorporation that could have easily afforded to provide drivers for Linux Kernel like their competitors do.
You're clapping for free volunteers to spend hundreds of hours reverse engineering Thunderbolt controllers when companies like Intel outright contribute them.
Sure, they relied on community Linux drivers in the past, but that didn't have anything to do with money.
The person you're replying to didn't say that. Please don't misrepresent and please keep it respectful
They just don't care.
They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.
It’s all there and it’s been 25-26 years no one has bothered maybe that’s Apple is still the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s.
At one time there were many choices in hardware and OS software combined with that hardware that era is basically gone because no one wants to take the bull by the horns and do anything they want someone else to give it to them free.
That's not what they said. Please don't misrepresent
> is laughabe
And this disparaging language about commenters is not OK. Please stop.
Nothing about that statement is disparaging - just because you don't want to hear it, doesn't make it insulting.
Calling out nonsense is important, especially on this website.
The challenge isn't finding an engineer. It is picking what project doesn't get done in its place.
I use UTM in emulation mode, NOT Qemu simulation mode, which is wasteful.
just my $0.02.
For folks lamenting that the (awesome) Asahi efforts are challenged by reverse engineering of changes from M2 to M3, and so on, those changes vanish into the abstraction, but their benefits do not. That's why i switched from Asahi a couple years ago to UTM in apple silicon hypervisor mode.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-virtual-machines
You can run any flavor of Linux you like in a virtual machine, while booted into the native OS.
Linux doesn't solve the issue of not getting security updates anymore. For example the FCC does not allow letting users write arbitrary firmware they can run on their devices so this means you legally can't update the Bluetooth or Wifi firmware and need an update from Apple.
You can still boot Linux natively on it.
the hypervisor framework documentation, that i linked above, is pretty clear; the linux builds for arm run extremely fast on apple silicon because hypervisor framework gives them hardware access, in some subsystems directly (memory mapping for example), in other systems through a shim (graphics hardware).
Sounds awesome!
This isn't about running VMs.
There's a lot of documentation required to write drivers for hardware; for the GPU, they'd need to share the instruction set of the GPU along with the specifications of the controller. Lots of weird things like power management too.
If shared, that's probably enough to create copycat hardware or at least an emulator.
Personally, I just want to run Linux on my latest MacBook Pro on day 1 with full hardware acceleration. If it was supported, MacOS would be on the device for as long as it took to install Linux.
I think the only way that would happen is if the EU extended "the right to repair" to include software, compelling companies to release documentation sufficient to produce drivers with. I'm sure Apple would maliciously comply, like provide the ISA but not power management specs - but that would still cut the work required by the Asahi team by 80%.
That sounds like a you thing; I've kept my macs for at least 5 years. My M1 is still going strong and I haven't felt any pressure to upgrade.
You will probably argue thats ok because you would have wanted one anyway by that time or some such point, but the fact remains that Apple will force you to upgrade your hardware not very long away by not allowing you to install anything on it.
Using your own conservative estimate, 8 years seems like a fine lifespan for a laptop, far longer than the "few years" you initially said. And in practice, there are plenty of macbooks that have been running even longer.
Thanks to the community, you can install macOS 15 (or older) on unsupported macs (as old as 18 years)
https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...
https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
This bullshit needs to die. The products are designed to last.
If you can load Linux on it it's still usable, but Apple OSs degrade rapidly after Apple stops supporting them. Apple is better about keeping devices on the latest OS version, but much worse about support after that period.
YMMV
> https://talents.vaia.com/companies/apple-inc/software-engine...
Kinda funny and definitely a word suggestion that will be locked in future code.
I believe it was Hector Martin who discussed it on Mastodon a while ago.
https://opensource.apple.com/
It would have been trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
Even the Asahi team has been much more appreciative of Apple leaving this open.
It is trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
Absent that, it'd take some kind of sustained right-to-repair, EU morality, many sternly worded letters pressure campaign.
Plus, once they did (officially), they're kinda committed to keep doing it. That's explains why they remain okay with emoloyees helping on their own time; all the upside, none of the down.
Probably the real reason is just that it's extra work - both in terms of producing the docs, and in dealing with complaints when they change things. From their point of view it's extra work with no benefit to them.
This applies on both the software and hardware layers. In the past, CPU suppliers dragging their feet and/or being unable to deliver on promises were the chief motivation for switching architectures, and now that they're their own supplier they can banish that issue entirely so long as they're not beholden to any kind of external behavioral contracts or expectations.
If the OS teams need some new capability or discover substantial benefit from redesigning some part of the SoC, the SoC/hardware team can just implement it and not have to care about breaking anything. That's a major competitive advantage that practically nobody else in the computer or mobile device industries has.
Apple is not interested in tying their hardware design to Linus Torvalds.
They let you run Windows when they were losing in the market and needed a path to migration for users of the winning platform. Once they started winning, they stopped.
Conversely, Microsoft refused to interoperate with Linux. Until Linux became the clear winner in the datacenter space. Now they have WSL and actually work pretty well as a cross-platform development environment.
In the 90s and 2000s, they considered Linux a cancer, and only kept macOS alive for antitrust reasons.
Apple makes money selling hardware.
But to answer your question: Why would they? Apple hasn't asked anybody to put Linux on their machines. They deliver them with a fully functional OS already and there are thousands of other computer models you can purchase instead of a Mac.
Because then they'll have to compete with Linux, which opens them up to someone else making a cheaper computer that does the same stuff.
I mean, I'm typing this on a junky Raptor Lake laptop I found on eBay for $220. Would I buy a Neo or MBP to replace it just to run the same software stack? Probably not.
If you believe OS X is the best environment and Apple Silicon will remain the best hardware in perpetuity, it seems silly for Apple not to allow some experimentation. Apple executives, to be blunt, know better. Lean times are always ahead.
Now some people would like to use that top of the line Apple silicon but without MacOS that comes with it. I doubt this is a huge threat to apple but it's also not a huge market for them. From what I understand they are not actively impeding it but not actively helping it either.
I actually won a M2 laptop a while ago. I resold it, new in box still shrink wrapped because I did not care for MacOS, just a personal preference. People like me are a minority though.
Hell, I was given a bunch of old iphones recently, all of which are newer and better hardware than my phone. I wiped them and donated them to charity.
Not sure what generation you're talking about? Intel c. 18-25 years ago was wildly ahead on everything, much more so than Apple is now, in fact.[1] Apple Computer, quite famously, straight up abandoned their previous CPU architecture and started shipping Intel chips just to have something competitive in the market.
Again, everything goes in cycles in this industry and Apple's executive decisionmaking is 100% not placing bets on being the best forever just to make a bunch of Linux nerds happy.
[1] Process innovation mattered more at the time, where now we're hitting the scaling limit and chips are much more comparable.
Intel was asked to design a chip for a new smartphone. They said no, which was the end…
Note: Intel and Microsoft have trouble competing when the playing field is level.
Many of those companies from the 1980s were very very good companies, but they gave up in the face of Wintel, Sun, SGI, Digital, Acorn (Arm processor), Amiga, Atari, etc… I would take any of those systems updated to today over Linux.
Only Apple with a mad man at the controls was able to survive (no Microsoft isn’t the reason). I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when Intel said no to designing iPhone chips and then Steve Jobs still mad told his manager group that we have to design a new processor in house that would’ve been interesting, of course everyone in the room probably, said it can’t be done and many are probably saying the same thing about in house memory today which needs to be done.
I have two M1 pro asahi macbooks, and I only use macOS for VirtualDJ or AirPlay.
the devs strongly discourage single-booting
Apple doesn’t. Apple consumes it, so Apple always has a customer.
This is a shocking development.
i don't think that's accurate. the M series chips and memory architecture enable capabilities for the OS software to take advantage of, and the software and hardware teams get to collaborate to be ready for a simultaneously launch, but nothing about that is macos specific, just that they're on the same side of a walled garden.
From Wikipedia:
One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the M1 SoC.[12] The SoC also has dedicated instructions for computing x86 flags.
So, Apple always adds one more thing to their hardware to enable their magic.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)#Rosetta_2
you can find more apple-specific stuff by digging around in these docs: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/subsystems/
edit: https://lwn.net/Articles/970907/
Processors, not just Apple’s, change constantly between generations. The core instruction set doesn’t change, but they get new capabilities, not just with new instruction sets.
Remember the SoC isn’t just the CPU. It’s display engines, GPUs, storage controllers, video decoders and more.
Even outside of Apple, you’ll see hardware vendors provide Linux patches for their latest CPUs to keep working well. There’s some baseline functionality that works out of the box but it’s never a free ride.
Hoping for M4 to the latest chip.
We need Ashai to support more chips.
Can't wait to get Linux running on it native.
Not quite there yet though. No PCI or DisplayPort (latter is working but unstable). But at least they seem to be on it.
Why are you demanding a user does that for free instead of the big corp that made the platform?
b) it's useful in a comment thread like this so people can quickly see what the 'caveats' mentioned in the title of the post are
But Intel and AMD post documents to explain how to use their hardware. Apple doesn’t. So it’s not an equivalent effort by any stretch.
Is this someone that only wants to run Linux and wants to use their GPU on Linux? Seems like this is not the case, yet.
Or, is this for someone that wants to dual boot and use Linux sometimes, and then reboot into MacOS when they want to use the GPU?
The goal is "Linux on Mac". In a commercial product, specific details of what gets built usually stem from a more detailed vision that can be articulated as one. In open source projects those details are determined by what individual contributors are motivated to work on.
That doesn't means a cohesive vision can't emerge, there might be one for Asahi actually. But I think the default position is that it's kinda just a mob of people doing what they each feel like doing.
When M1 drops out of support I bet Asashi for the M1 machines will be pretty polished.
More info: https://alyssarosenzweig.ca/blog/asahi-gpu-part-n.html
The hardware is super capable and will make a great fileserver, TV box or HomeAssistant instance once I‘m done using it as daily driver.
Similarly, because of distros like Fedora and Ubuntu, I can keep using a 15y old Samsung notebook with a modern firefox, whereas Windows 8 already broke Samsung‘s display brightness driver and thermal management, and 10&11 are entirely unusable.
So, if there are five translation layers, why not run a Linux VM using UTM and play there? Is there a technical reason that does not work?
If you want to run bare metal Linux on Apple's hardware (instead of running it in a virtual machine) you are the target audience.
(Though I’m sure people outside the project get value from it as well, like OpenBSD using Asahi bootloader)
It runs macOS, but I have no particular interest in the operating system, nor do I own any other Apple hardware. (So no synergies.) It is alright (and better than Win11) but the preinstalled software does not even properly update without an Apple account. As soon as I can switch over to Linux, I will. ... I would just wait for all the ports to work.
My current linux PC cuda machine is the latest Intel Ultra 9 mini PC from minisforum, and it still isnt quite as fast as a years old M1/M2. The only thing it has that the mac doesnt is cuda egpu support.
As much as I like Linux this kind of tinkering is only for people with more time and less expectations about the experience
If I need Linux I can always go for UTM or something similar
1) for the longest time, but no longer, Google did not ship an official chrome linux arm64 package. Chromium Browser also has not included google sync for years now. But now, google chrome does ship for arm64 linux so its all good.
2) usb-c video still doesn't work, so not ideal for a laptop without hdmi that you'd want to dock
Otherwise, it works really well.
Case in point, any form of package management. Or then you have Flatpack, with its own list of issues
I also know the AsahiLinux team is very aware if there are any unintended things that cross the Linux-macOS boundary Apple would very likely just shut it down.
Apparently even the macbook neo has the ability to run AsahiLinux, so they can definitely allow access to running alt OSs pretty easily