[HN Gopher] Apple Helps Asahi Linux
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Helps Asahi Linux
Author : CraigJPerry
Score : 496 points
Date : 2021-12-17 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| shmoogy wrote:
| That's fantastic news. I hope it expedites and stabilizes the
| project as much as it sounds like it will.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think Apple recently has kind of pulled a Microsoft, where
| they're actively trying to turn a new leaf and become more
| open/listen better.
| ggfgg wrote:
| No Apple quietly and understatedly did something positive.
|
| Microsoft just said they did, bulldozed telemetry and Edge on
| everyone, released a shit show of an OS and buried it under a
| pile of marketing and blogs that everyone bought hook line and
| sinker.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it. I recently got an iPad, and
| sideloading apps is a ridiculous endeavor that involves a
| server app (that depends on iTunes and thus only works on macOS
| and Windows) that has to re-sign your sideloaded apps once
| every 7 days.
|
| And regarding Microsoft, while I certainly embrace them being
| more open than before, VS Code still has proprietary bits, and
| you'll need to run your own extension store if you don't want
| to use those (which the VSCodium project does, I think). Of
| course, that's not even mentioning the forced telemetry in
| Windows...
| kall wrote:
| Since apple stuff is expensive anyway, you can just consider
| the developer program a 99$/year sideloading feature unlock.
| I use TestFlight to push some private apps to my own and
| friends devices and find it quite convenient. It even updates
| in the background for them. 90 days is still kind of a chore
| but doable.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| There are only 1-2 apps I want that are locked out of the
| App Store due to Apple's policies, so at that point it's
| cheaper to subscribe to the developer's Patreon to get
| access to their private beta TestFlight (which I might do,
| it's not expensive).
| zepto wrote:
| Why did you buy it if you wanted to do sideloading?
|
| Apple has literally written documents about why they think
| sideloading is a bad idea.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| If you look at tablet OS reviews online, a recurring theme
| is that the app ecosystem is more developed on iPadOS, with
| reviewers lamenting the Android tablet app ecosystem. I
| also thought that iPadOS might be a bit better privacy-
| wise.
|
| As it turns out, doing things in the browser is more
| convenient than apps anyway (given that it's a tablet), and
| I underestimated the restrictiveness of the OS, but those
| are the things that are hard to glean from reviews. It's my
| first tablet in a decade, so you'll have to forgive me for
| not having any prior knowledge on these things.
| zepto wrote:
| > I underestimated the restrictiveness of the OS
|
| This may not be something that is made clear in reviews,
| but it's hard to see how someone could read HN and not
| see hundreds of comments about this.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I chose a product to the best of my abilities, and it
| turns out that it may not have been a right fit. Next
| time I will try another product. I don't see why that
| warrants such a confrontational tone and/or downvotes;
| nobody's perfect.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Hacker News users tend to take device choices pretty
| personally, unfortunately. It seems like the level to
| which they defend corporations is directly proportional
| to the amount of money they have sunk into their
| purchases. If you're looking for sympathy towards how
| truly reprehensible modern iOS/iPadOS is, you're not
| going to find it here. The majority will just tell you to
| get rid of it, since criticism is verboten wherever
| trillion-dollar companies are concerned.
| zepto wrote:
| You are one of many people who go to great pains to
| inform people on HN about how 'truly reprehensible'
| modern iOS/iPadOS is. Had they listened to you, they
| might have been saved from their mistake.
|
| What surprises me is that a regular visitor to HN has not
| seen this opinion expressed. It also seems weird that
| they wouldn't know that sideloading was a problem given
| how many front page stories have either attacked Apple
| over this policy or defended it.
|
| I have sympathy for anyone who buys something they don't
| end up liking. I'm just very surprised that this
| particular fact was somehow not known to an HN commenter.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > I'm just very surprised that this particular fact was
| somehow not known to an HN commenter.
|
| Perhaps we misunderstand each other. Of course I have
| read that sideloading specifically is more difficult on
| iPadOS; this was not an unknown fact to me. However, that
| wasn't the sole factor in my choice of device (and if
| openness was my #1 priority, I could've just asked for
| (it was a gift) a PineTab).
|
| The usability of the device for day-to-day tasks is the
| most important, and since I use a lot of apps on my
| phone, I mistakenly thought that this would also be an
| important factor w.r.t. usability when it comes to
| tablets. Therefore, when I read in reviews that the app
| ecosystem was much worse on other tablet OSes, that
| pushed me towards iPadOS. Again, privacy was also a
| factor (when compared to Android).
|
| In 2021, any OS choice is ultimately a balance between
| usability, privacy and openness. If your last experience
| with a device class was a decade ago, it can be difficult
| to balance those factors.
|
| (Now, if the mobile landscape resembled the PC landscape
| a bit more, trying different OSes wouldn't be so
| cumbersome. But that's a whole other can of worms...)
| nicce wrote:
| > VS Code still has proprietary bits, and you'll need to run
| your own extension store if you don't want to use those
| (which the VSCodium project does, I think). Of course, that's
| not even mentioning the forced telemetry in Windows...
|
| VSCodium has just disabled that Microsoft store by default.
| You can enable it and use all the extensions normally,
| without proprietary bits.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| Isn't part of the problem that some of the extensions
| themselves are proprietary? e.g. the Remote Development
| extensions.
| nix23 wrote:
| Wait...since when is microsoft listening to anything?
| morganvachon wrote:
| Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general to
| the extent that it helps them expand into larger markets.
| Linux is to servers as Windows is to desktop computing,
| Microsoft has finally acknowledged that they can't "win" in
| the server and cloud market without conceding to that, and
| have been "supporting" Linux and open source/free software in
| various ways over the last several years.
|
| It's not because they believe in open source and free
| software, it's more that they realized they can coexist with
| and even benefit from helping such projects. It's a
| beneficial means to a selfish end, but it's better than the
| old Microsoft who just wanted to destroy anything related to
| Linux and free software out of pure spite.
| rvz wrote:
| > Microsoft has embraced Linux and open source in general
| to the extent that it helps them expand into larger
| markets.
|
| Yeah. Basically they're smarter this time and found a way
| to remove the reason to install a Linux Distro on any
| desktop by just _' extending'_ WSL2 and adding optimized
| NVIDIA drivers that are designed only for WSL2.
|
| Which means Windows is the best Linux distro then. Why
| bother with the Linux Desktop since that has failed anyway?
| morganvachon wrote:
| Yep. The saving grace is they don't have a need to reach
| the third stage and extinguish anything; their focus is
| on developers and server/cloud, they likely don't feel
| intimidated by "desktop Linux".
| [deleted]
| sebow wrote:
| Yes... "helps" as in 'help Asahi grow sales for Apple laptops'.
|
| Not saying it's a bad thing, just pointing out the obvious for
| those who're not seeing it.Apple is well-aware of the state their
| operating system('s') and ecosystem is, especially to the tech-
| savy and skeptics around privacy and the shitty general trend
| that computing follows. In the case that people magically start
| growing a conscience or care more about these things, they're
| prepared to switch gears or stop "thinking differently".
|
| Arm macs are a nice piece of HW(with the exception of non-
| upgradable memory due to SoC but it's a understandable compromise
| given the gained performance of such glued design-choice),
| however it's a shame we need to pray the Gods for decent
| ports/development of Linux distributions to make them usable.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Surely Apple can see the value in having devs buying and using
| its machines... Why not contribute to this project in an even
| more substantive manner? Share documentation and donate money, it
| would be a great feel good story that harkens back to Apple's
| pirate roots.
| markphip wrote:
| I can only guess ... and my guess is that Apple likes this
| project and would like to see it succeed but to formally help
| it creates a situation that in the future could be problematic
| for them. Imagine their team that builds the MacBook wants to
| make some change that would bring some big improvement to the
| platform but it breaks projects like this.
|
| Formally helping this project creates a potential burden on the
| organization that they do not want to have.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| A former Apple engineer basically said as much on Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914716454526979
| pcr910303 wrote:
| Everyone is like how having Asahi makes Apple more profit, so it
| makes sense in a business sense, e.g... but am I the only person
| thinking that this is probably just one or two core kernel
| engineers just feeling good someday and decided to provide this
| to Asahi? I don't think the high-level people would really _know_
| that these changes even existed...
| sixothree wrote:
| It's not like they're huge contributors to anything open
| source. I have to agree. This is probably an engineer or two.
| They may even have personal reasons for wanting it to work.
| tombert wrote:
| I didn't work on the OS team, but when I worked at Apple, if I
| had snuck in an altruistic change without direct
| order/approval, I would be in trouble. I suspect there's a good
| chance that the higher-ups are aware of this.
| m12k wrote:
| Yep, there seems to be this tendency to evaluate all the
| actions of all the people inside a company as a single coherent
| whole, expecting there to be single coherent thread running
| through it all. It's almost like people think of the company as
| a single person - a kind of anthropomorphization maybe.
| Companies may strive for alignment, but they're not the Borg,
| and they certainly don't have the capacity to micromanage every
| single decision for every single employee.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It's interesting how American/Canadian English uses the
| singular for groups of people, while British English uses the
| plural:
|
| "Apple helps Asahi Linux" (American).
|
| "Apple help Asahi Linux" (British), as if there's a "people"
| after Apple.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Another American here. I never knew this. How common is
| this? Have I just assumed it's a typo every time I see it?
| Or has (have?) the British media just become more
| Americanized like most places?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I am Canadian myself and generally follow the American
| style, but I believe it is very common, though not
| universal. Scanning The Guardian, they (!) seem to follow
| the American style, though this paragraph popped out at
| me where they use both:
|
| > Labour [singular] takes comfort partly from the fact it
| expended little effort or money on the seat, allowing the
| Lib Dems [plural] to declare themselves in the best
| position to challenge the Tories.
|
| But an American publication would probably write the
| same, because the name _Lib Dems_ is itself pluralized.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| "Labour" is a party name, and it is singular. "Liberal
| Democrats" is a party name, and it is plural. The verb is
| agreeing with the number of the noun, just as is usual in
| English.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I don't think that's the case; British English would say "X
| help Y" when X is a collective noun referring explicitly to
| a group of people, eg a football team ("Manchester United
| have scored"), or a band ("Radiohead are playing a concert
| today"). This means that "Spain (the country) is ..." but
| "Spain (the football team) are ...".
|
| See here for details:
| https://editorsmanual.com/articles/collective-nouns-
| singular...
| sockbot wrote:
| It's not that American English uses singular for groups of
| people. It's that American English sees Apple as a singular
| corporate entity.
|
| British English peers past the corporate veil to see the
| singular corporation as it's underlying people.
| handelaar wrote:
| No. Singular nouns require singular verbs, in both
| countries.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Sure, but there is some disagreement across the pond on
| which nouns are singular.
|
| Brits would be more likely to say "Led Zeppelin are on
| stage", while Americans would prefer "Led Zeppelin is on
| stage", and the reason is the disagreement between
| whether Led Zeppelin is singular (one band) or plural (4
| people constituting the band.)
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| American English generally uses singular for collective
| nouns. British English generally uses plural. There are
| exceptions (such as if the name itself is pluralised),
| but that's the general rule. Whether its "peering past
| the corporate veil" or not is neither here nor there, as
| they treat all collective nouns this way.
| azinman2 wrote:
| That seems odd to me (as an American) because Apple is not
| plural, and often times when it is a group of people by
| identity you do use the plural for them (eg Americans help
| Asahi Linux). Would British folks say "England help Asahi
| Linux" as well?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes, I believe that would be correct. _Apple_ is plural
| in the sense that it is made up of multiple people acting
| in unison. Same as "My family are visiting over
| Christmas."
|
| However, the word _Americans_ is not a group of people in
| the same sense that _USA_ , _England_ , _Apple_ , or
| _family_ is. Its kind of like the distinction between
| _people_ and _persons_.
|
| Edit: the term for words like _family_ is "collective
| noun". More at
| https://blog.harwardcommunications.com/2017/02/07/the-
| family...
| handelaar wrote:
| No, they would not. Don't mistake erroneous colloquial
| speech for what's "correct" in written English. This is
| wrong, and so is the original example.
| handelaar wrote:
| As someone who has worked as a sub (copy-editor) in the UK
| for many years in the past I cannot begin to describe
| exactly _how completely incorrect_ this is.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Have to agree - as a Brit, using 'help' there is just ...
| _wrong_
| badtoro wrote:
| British or American version?
| tomComb wrote:
| If you are going to write something like that you really
| should explain.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Well he said he can't begin to describe...
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Is that because whatever company we work for ourselves, those
| in charge tend to push that narrative so much?
|
| We get constantly bombarded by our own employers with
| messages of unity and vision statements and the business plan
| and the message etcetera. So even when we pause and think
| about our own experiences and we realize how many varied
| voices and agendas there are within, we're conditioned when
| referring to a brand employer like Apple to reduce them to a
| single point of view.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| we're conditioned when referring to a brand employer
| like Apple to reduce them to a single point of view.
|
| Maybe? Americans also tend to be individualistic (often to
| a fault, many would say)so I'm not sure there's a cultural
| significance at work here.
|
| It's probably informative that British English tends to
| refer to most (all?) collective nouns this way. It's not
| some corporation-specific thing.
|
| Sports teams are the most obvious example - a Brit would
| say "Team A have defeated Team B" rather than "Team A has
| defeated Team B."
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I agree that this is mostly a small number of engineers (with
| approval) being helpful. This has almost no bearing on Apple
| profit. The number of people who want to run Linux on an Apple
| Mac is very small compared to their other markets. The only
| tangible benefit to the company is that this may add a bit of
| goodwill and slightly reduce the volume of the vocal
| detractors.
|
| As others have pointed out, it may also help if they are moving
| to add back bootcamp support for Windows (on ARM).
|
| Apple has added better support for virtualization at the OS
| level in recent years and that handles the needs of most devs.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > I agree that this is mostly a small number of engineers
| (with approval) being helpful.
|
| The M1 Macs have their security settings applied per
| partition instead of per computer.
|
| If you set the bootloader to "permissive security policy",
| you can boot from a Linux partition without effecting the
| security of the system when you boot from the MacOS
| partition.
|
| This is a big change over the way things have previously
| worked on iOS (where there is no option to unlock the
| bootloader) or the Mac. It probably wasn't a quick hack that
| a couple of guys stuck in when nobody was looking.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Note there's also macOS-related reasons to use the
| different modes:
|
| Reduced security mode is needed to boot into outdated macOS
| installs (specifically, I believe this is "outdated,
| insecure, at install-time"), along with loading kernel
| extensions (which aren't supported in full security mode on
| Apple Silicon).
|
| Permissive security mode is needed to boot into macOS with
| a custom XNU kernel.
|
| But yes, this is a significant change to iOS devices, but
| not to older macOS devices.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > But yes, this is a significant change to iOS devices,
| but not to older macOS devices.
|
| Previously the Macs had their security settings applied
| per computer, not per partition.
| sharikous wrote:
| The fact that you can boot the M1 from a different OS (but
| you still need the internal SSD even if you boot from an
| external disk) is a corporate decision.
|
| The fact that someone decided to provide support for a raw
| image instead of a Mach-O file could very well be the work
| of someone ar a much lower level.
| larkost wrote:
| I disagree with your assertion that the requirement for
| the internal SSD was a marketing decision (your word was
| "corporate", but that could mean anything). I think that
| it was probably a technical decision.
|
| Likely there is a very small bit of bootstrap code
| stuffed into a ROM somewhere, and the only thing that
| bootstrap code enables it to read from some protected
| part of the onboard SSD, which then gives you the next
| round of bootstrap enabling you to read from other
| devices (e.g. all the code needed to power up and use the
| hardware needed to get to an external drive, and the code
| to read the partitions on said drive).
|
| Someone made the decision that it would be better to use
| the bit of internal SSD (since it would "always" be
| there), that could be changed later, rather than hard-
| code this into comparatively expensive silicon. Unless
| your internal drive goes bad, it is a pretty good
| compromise. I seriously doubt that anyone in marketing
| cared about this.
| pbronez wrote:
| Oh cool, I wasn't aware of that. I like that option a lot.
| It's nice to have access to both a walled garden and an
| open one.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you're saying, but focusing on the
| number of people that want to run Linux on a Mac and the
| tangible short-term benefits misses the larger dynamics that
| could play out over time.
|
| The bigger opportunity is expanding the footprint and
| flexibility of Apple Silicon in general. As a developer the
| new MacBook Pros performance characteristics were too juicy
| to ignore, the main pain points are virtualization and
| architecture shift. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the
| low level details to have a fully formed idea of impact of
| these pain points yet--maybe Apple Silicon and ARM support
| are equivalent in practice when it comes to
| development/deployment--but it certainly makes me feel more
| comfortable paying the Apple premium the more diverse and
| open the supported use cases are.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > I don't think the high-level people would really know that
| these changes even existed...
|
| if anyone on the outside knows, then Federighi (sp?) and
| insiders know and approved publishing with visibility?
| merbanan wrote:
| Well I think this falls right into the anti-competitive
| argument. With the option of booting unsigned code the platform
| is available for anyone. Microsoft did sign boot loaders so
| linux can boot, there would have been some kind of fallout if
| they had not. So the booting of unsigned Mach-O sunds like a
| minimal action to not let it become a public issue for Apple.
|
| The addition of raw mode sounds like a stable abi for booting
| linux. The Asahi developers have found "stuff" with the
| hardware. Just that feedback will be of great value to the
| continued development of the Apple SoCs. So my guess is that
| the raw mode is a gift with the expectation to be able to see
| how the Linux folks solves other issues.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Mac's have a 16% market share. I don't think Apple is
| concerned about antitrust in this part of their business.
| tw04 wrote:
| Why would it become a public issue for Apple? You're going to
| have a _REAL_ tough time getting the government to intervene
| because you can 't run linux on a macbook. You have literally
| thousands of alternatives.
|
| And outside of government intervention, the response from the
| general public will be: who cares? None of them want to or
| care to run Linux on a macbook. Heck even within the HN
| community I'm willing to bet the number of folks who run
| linux as a daily driver desktop on a macbook is a rounding
| error.
| bestouff wrote:
| This may have security implications, I highly doubt they would
| be authorized to make such a change without consulting anyone.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| The shift to moving the Mach-O parsing from iBoot to kmutil
| has _positive_ security implications. Adding a raw input
| option on top of that has zero additional security
| implications. It 's a strict subset of the attack surface.
| uranusjr wrote:
| I believe parent is not talking about the security
| implications of the contributions themselves, but the
| security implications of the act of making contributions as
| an Apple employee. And it's a reasonable assumption; from
| my (not many) interactions with Apple employees in OSS
| world, they are generally very careful about doing this
| sort of things, and I would be very very surprised if not
| at least a few managers know about this beforehand.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| No Apple employees made any OSS contributions here. They
| just added a tiny feature to an existing Apple tool that
| happens to make our lives easier.
| uranusjr wrote:
| Yes, sorry, the wording I used was misleading. What I
| meant by "contribution" is in a broad sense "something
| that helps", not actual OSS code contributions.
| elteto wrote:
| There is no way that two random kernel engineers pushed a
| feature that allows booting unsigned kernels on Apple hardware
| (I'm assuming that's what raw image is?). I don't know how
| _high_ up it goes but I am very certain it was not some low-
| level skunkworks thing.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > I'm assuming that's what raw image is?
|
| You're assuming wrong. Booting unsigned kernels on Apple
| hardware has been possible since January. This just makes it
| slightly less annoying since you don't need to build a Mach-O
| binary to do it, and more future-proof since it decouples it
| from Apple's binary format which they can change the
| requirements for at any time (as they did this time). It
| means I don't have to go off and reverse engineer what the
| new requirements are, I can just stop using Mach-Os and know
| the raw option will never break (assuming it continues to
| exist), since there is nothing to break with a raw file.
|
| Apple's machines are designed as an end-to-end ecosystem that
| suits their needs, and that they can change at any time -
| open, but without stability guarantees. This feature is
| effectively an acknowledgement that people using these
| machines outside of their ecosystem exist, and might want
| some stability guarantees.
| elteto wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. Glad to see these steps being
| taken by Apple.
| bpye wrote:
| I agree, this seems likely to be a couple folks at Apple trying
| to be helpful rather than a real policy. If Apple were serious
| about helping open source efforts they could, for example,
| release the documentation for their different peripherals and
| ISA extensions.
| darthrupert wrote:
| They're not _that_ different people from the rest of us, so why
| wouldn 't some of them want to run Linux themselves on those
| machines? MacOS isn't that great.
| rajishx wrote:
| I think it was something already enabled for internal testings,
| engineering just left it for the oss comunities since there was
| no harm for it
| retskrad wrote:
| Apple has tried to phase out and slowly kill off the Mac for the
| last 10 years but people kept buying them for school and work so
| they have begrudgingly updated it alongside the iPad.
|
| Apple was right. Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows
| belong in corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still
| use the file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers
| need or want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their
| primary computer.
| jagger27 wrote:
| If Apple killed the Mac, what would they develop all of their
| software on?
| bogwog wrote:
| Linux! See OP :P
| markild wrote:
| Regardless of controversy, how is this relevant to the matter
| at hand?
| samwillis wrote:
| I don't believe this for a second. That would have been a
| completely daft thing for them to do (not that corporations
| can't be daft).
|
| I think the stagnation perceived with the Mac was a combination
| of distraction (focussed on mobile), lack of general invasion
| on desktop in the market, Intels recent problems, and waiting.
| I believe they were waiting for their silicone to get the point
| that they could do a proper coordinated refresh.
| jamil7 wrote:
| As well as Ive having way too much influence and not grokking
| what the mac is actually used for, trying to turn it into an
| aspirational luxury product.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Yeah Apple tried to kill the Mac... and then popped out with
| the biggest jump in laptop chips in a decade. That chip
| effort, along with everything that supports it in the new M1
| machines was many years in the making.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| This is proper nonsense.
|
| Developing in house silicon over around 10 years that craps
| all-over competitors is 'begrudgingly' updating?
|
| The mac is the pinnacle of their product line up - it may not
| be their biggest priority or largest profit center... but its
| clear they consider it as a pro level device and treat it very
| differently from the iOS based products.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Developing in house silicon over around 10 years that craps
| all-over competitors is 'begrudgingly' updating?
|
| ...developing in-house silicon that has architecture parity
| with your iPad an iPhone. They've quite literally made the
| statement that "you people don't want computers anymore, so
| we're removing 32-bit support, we're taking away every
| mainstream GPU and graphics API, we're giving you a few more
| years before we disable x86 support altogether, and you'll be
| happy about it".
|
| If that's not a begrudging update then I honestly don't know
| what is. You'd have to be pretty deep in their marketing
| campaign to tell yourself that removing those features is
| just business as usual.
| tpush wrote:
| > They've quite literally made the statement that [...]
|
| They've very literally _not_ made that statement.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Can you point to which part is false, or are you
| disagreeing on the basis that I've said the quiet part
| out loud?
| zepto wrote:
| By 'quiet part', you mean the part that they have never
| literally said, which instead you wrote and attributed to
| them.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I should have anticipated that people would refute this
| with pedantics instead of logic.
| ajross wrote:
| The M1 is quite clearly a derivative of designs developed for
| and deployed first in iOS devices. It's great, really. But
| other than die size and instance count, it's just a "phone
| chip". It's an iPhone with more cores/cache/etc...
|
| The upthread point wasn't that the "M1" wasn't good as a
| laptop chip (it is!), it was that the "Macintosh" product
| line is clearly evolving in a direction where it's a derived
| product from the main revenue-producing lines.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _Desktop operating systems like MacOS and Windows belong in
| corporate, not consumers. They are archaic and still use the
| file system, which is no longer a thing that consumers need or
| want. Most people use a tablet and smartphone as their primary
| computer._
|
| I don't believe most people use a tablet/phone as their primary
| computer (though maybe their primary web surfing device).
|
| I also don't believe most people want their files on someone
| else's computer.
|
| Do you have any studies to back up these assertions?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > I also don't believe most people want their files on
| someone else's computer.
|
| They wouldn't want that if they knew how the cloud works,
| true. But it seems marketing did a great job at convincing
| people their new shiny tech product is trustworthy and pure
| magic.
|
| A lot of people already use their phone/tablet as their "PC".
| I don't think it'll be the majority in the foreseeable
| future, but appstores cover a lot of use-cases and are
| supported by all mainstream services. And for some the
| smartphone/tablet is the first and maybe only contact with a
| computer. It runs Fortnite, so what more do you need? ;)
| Someone wrote:
| > I don't believe most people use a tablet/phone as their
| primary computer (though maybe their primary web surfing
| device).
|
| I may be too pessimistic, but I think most people use little
| else than browsers and apps to access social networks, mostly
| from phones and tablets.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/273495/global-
| shipments-... says about 275 million PCs shipped in 2020,
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-
| smartphone... 1,280 million smartphones. That's almost 5
| times as many, ignoring about 40 million tablets per quarter
| (https://www.statista.com/statistics/272070/global-tablet-
| shi...)
|
| Some of that will be because smartphones last shorter than
| desktops, but It wouldn't surprise me if half the smartphone
| users didn't even have a desktop PC.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Now, Godspeed to get GPU cores working in Linux!! If we can get a
| usable Linux distribution working in Apple Silicon without too
| many compromises, the new hardware would make a heck of a laptop.
| IceWreck wrote:
| If Apple wanted to help Asahi, they would just release drivers
| for Linux.
| [deleted]
| fartcannon wrote:
| They're helping by being well wishers, in that they don't wish
| them any specific harm.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us.
|
| This[1] is exactly what I claimed would happen when ARM Macs were
| announced and people bemoaned lack of support for booting other
| OSes. I'm glad to see it.
|
| 1: specifically that Apple would not prioritize booting other
| OSes, but that they'd let the community drive the effort, and
| eventually embrace it.
| conor_f wrote:
| The bar is at the floor for "helps".
|
| I understand this is very useful to the stability and future of
| the project, but we should expect more than the bare minimum from
| big companies in matters like this. Not being actively harmful !=
| helping.
| pxtail wrote:
| I'm seriously admiring spirit of people working on Asahi Linux
| project. In my eyes Apple, it's hardware, software, whole
| ecosystem and philosophy is openly hostile towards any
| tinkering, customization, modifications - kind of antithesis of
| open source/linux. Yet another angle which would be a problem
| for me is about putting personal non-paid time towards
| increasing value of one of the wealthiest corporations on the
| globe.
|
| Probably I'm too cynical (or maybe realistic?) because it's not
| hard to imagine situation in the future where thousands of work
| hours poured into project like this is easily and effortlessly
| decimated by corporation execs decision.
| majou wrote:
| Check out https://libimobiledevice.org ; using it iOS will
| provide access to your Photos.app's SQLite database,
| including machine learning tags and other metadata[0].
|
| Or the defaults(1) command, or how networking config works
| (it's just plain BSD configs with a GUI on top).
|
| Apple isn't against tinkering or customization, they just
| don't document or guarantee it.
|
| --
|
| [0] Simon Willison has neat demos with it
| https://simonwillison.net/2020/May/21/dogsheep-photos/
| terafo wrote:
| The sad fast is that given Apple' track record even not
| interfering might be considered by some as help, let alone
| adding specific features for people who reverse engineer their
| hardware.
| pkulak wrote:
| Considering that it's very possible for the bar to go into the
| floor (Apple actively frustrating the project, as it may not be
| in their interest), this is pretty huge.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| See: Nouveau and Nvidia.
| todd3834 wrote:
| It sounds like they were doing more than just not being
| actively harmful. They were actively helpful but we can only
| speculate on their motive.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes
| the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Perhaps this help is
| profitable to capture the Linux crowd?
|
| Personally, I wouldn't consider buying a Macbook unless I
| knew I could run Linux on it after it EOL. My oldest laptop
| is 14+ years old and is still useful because I run Linux on
| it. A 2022 Macbook should make a very nice ssh Linux client
| in 2037.
| djrogers wrote:
| > The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that
| makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers.
|
| Nope. The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely
| if they can run Linux on it is _tiny_. Incredibly so. Apple
| sells over 20 million of these things a year, they're not
| looking at a few thousand people who want native asahi
| Linux as a product center.
| dochtman wrote:
| I agree about the "consumers" angle, but I don't think
| it's entirely crazy to think that unlocking Linux on
| Apple Silicon will eventually have a non-negligible
| impact on Apple's bottom line. Think Linux on PS3.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Even if it's tiny, it's still thounsands of people in the
| world. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars of margins.
| Capitalists would hang for less.
| pmontra wrote:
| To validate the point if I'll ever buy something Apple it
| would be a Mac to run Linux on, but I don't see why I
| should pay an Apple premium and throw away many of the
| reasons to pay for it. The Mn processor of the future
| should be so much faster than anything else (say x10) to
| leave me no choice. I doubt it will ever happen.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely if
| they can run Linux on it is tiny.
|
| Exactly. One argument that I can see it that Apple want
| to be able to say: When we're no longer supporting old M1
| Macs, you can run Linux, or sell it to a Linux user,
| rather than throwing it out. Branding it as an
| environmental benefit.
|
| It's a bit far fetch though.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Pretty sure Apple's answer to environmental issues is
| recycling, which to be fair they're good at. (...And also
| to be fair, which is quite possibly strictly inferior to
| keeping the same hardware going indefinitely)
| ArchOversight wrote:
| Apple won't say that though, Apple instead will tell you
| all about their new recycling robots and incentivize
| trading in older devices for newer ones.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's also one of the best high-performance ARM machines you
| can currently buy (unless you go for insanely expensive
| exotic servers). I consider buying one just to have a low
| power server.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Actually running server Linux on Mac Mini for some
| workloads might be very useful and economical thing to
| do. I wouldn't be surprised to find out many companies
| buying those babies for their internal needs. It's like
| HP Microserver.
| criddell wrote:
| Asahi Linux is really interesting to me. A distro that only
| has to care about a very small number of hardware
| configurations could be great. I could see it becoming the
| number one desktop Linux very quickly if they succeed.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Engineering goodwill is probably limited by legal / marketing
| departments. To do more or provide documentation would
| probably amount to a potential liability with little added
| benefit to the bottom line.
| [deleted]
| masklinn wrote:
| They literally added a feature which they don't need, and which
| only seems useful to asahi.
|
| The bare minimum would have been to not do that.
| conor_f wrote:
| I agree, and that's exactly what they had done before now! I
| am glad they've done this and think it's a good thing all
| round, but it would be nice for the expectations to shift and
| the standards we hold companies to be higher where a
| situation where they allow you to install your own operating
| system without jumping through hoops is viewed as the norm as
| opposed to a benevolent action.
| Aissen wrote:
| Not exactly, before now they added a feature to boot any
| arbitrary OS. Yes, it had to be a Mach-O, but they didn't
| need to add this AFAIU... See the kmutil doc:
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126018068955136
|
| https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/kmutil.8.html
|
| I recall an Apple developer saying that no one internally
| believed it would get any traction, but they did it anyway.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a feature they do need though...? They test their
| hardware on Linux, if it doesn't work properly then they can
| potentially lose money. This is a random internal change that
| _just so happened_ to align with the Asahi project. If they
| were trying to help, they 'd let us know. It strikes me as
| desperation to call this a tacitly helpful move on their
| behalf.
| masklinn wrote:
| > It's a feature they do need though...?
|
| That is an assertion with no evidence to support it, and
| lots to do the opposite (starting with the fact that this
| appeared a year after the initial M1 public avail).
|
| > They test their hardware on Linux, if it doesn't work
| properly then they can potentially lose money.
|
| That doesn't make any sense, apple does not support Linux
| on their machine (as demonstrated by Asahi having been
| working on that for more than a year now).
|
| And even if they did "test their hardware on linux", that
| would have no relevance to the issue and change: Apple can
| build mach-o linux kernel files in whatever fashion they
| need, that is quite literally what Asahi did. TFA states
| that unambiguously and they're the Asahi project lead,
| they'd know.
| nvx736 wrote:
| I see this as Apple eyeing a server market segment. Unless Linux
| is fully ported on m1 cpus it can't be achieved.
| asimpletune wrote:
| With their super low-power/high-perf chip architecture, this
| actually makes a lot of sense. I don't think we'd see anything
| for a really long time, but Apple actually needs to expand into
| new verticals if they want to continue providing value for the
| shareholders.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I don't give a fuck about apple providing value to
| shareholders.
|
| Following that path is how companies lose their way.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Yup.. Apple needs to grow somewhere. Cars? Maybe in terms of
| software.. The real margin currently is in cloud hosting. Even
| more than in appstore fees.
|
| They've learned enough from using azure, gcp and aws. Their
| multi-billion contract with aws will end soon..
|
| They will offer a fast energy efficient public cloud. First the
| xcode cloud, then their own hosting, and later it'll become
| public
| simonh wrote:
| Apple currently uses commodity PC hardware, from vendors
| including HP, and Linux as their standard data centre
| platform. I suppose it's possible they might start
| experimenting with Apple silicon servers in their data
| centres, but I doubt it mainly for supply reasons. They need
| all the 5nm TSMC fab capacity they can get for their consumer
| products. There's no way there's enough spare capacity to
| start diverting significant numbers of these chips into their
| data centres. Maybe one day.
| treesknees wrote:
| But that's more of a short term blocker, isn't it? Fab
| capacity shouldn't be a roadblock to pursuing it long term.
| I could definitely see a desire to take all of the security
| and efficiency features and use them in the datacenter.
| E.g. it seems a bit silly that my Mac is encrypted with
| special hardware etc, but as soon as I sync my data to
| iCloud that security disappears.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > I suppose it's possible they might start experimenting
| with Apple silicon servers in their data centres, but I
| doubt it mainly for supply reasons.
|
| I strongly believe they will, and that it's a natural
| progression.
|
| Mac hardware is extremely popular with developers. M1 on
| Macbooks has lead to ARM platform Docker containers, which
| in turn will lead to a much increased demand for ARM
| platform Docker hosting. Meanwhile, ARM is much more power
| efficient than x86, and who has by far the best ARM CPUs
| for the foreseeable future? Apple.
| kall wrote:
| I wouldn't mind a cloud computing offering from Apple that
| allows you to keep your hands clean of customer data like
| CloudKit does.
| nouveaux wrote:
| There is 100% certainty that Apple has compiled Linux on their
| M1 chips. At the bare minimum, they are using it for testing.
| gspr wrote:
| Sure. That shouldn't be too hard. But it also has nothing to
| do with running Linux on the M1, which is what Asahi and this
| whole thread are about.
| mbreese wrote:
| Do you really think that Apple couldn't port Linux to an M1
| chip without outside help? If Apple wanted a server product,
| they wouldn't need to rely on outside volunteers and they would
| be more actively helping. Apple used to make servers, and
| hardware wise, they were great. Software wise, it was more of a
| mixed bag.
|
| If Apple wanted to help push a server or cloud product, do you
| think AWS would be racking retail Mac Minis?
|
| This has informal geek cred motivation written all over it.
| More of a good-will measure than anything else. If this was an
| explicit market/new product motivation, any assistance would
| look very different and be more formal.
| danieldk wrote:
| _More of a good-will measure than anything else._
|
| Or maybe as a preparation for Boot Camp for ARM64 Windows?
| Rumors are that Qualcomm's exclusivity deal is soon over.
| Hamuko wrote:
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471812619380326408
| cromka wrote:
| > Do you really think that Apple couldn't port Linux to an M1
| chip without outside help?
|
| It could be that they work on it internally and naturally
| want to keep it a secret for as long as possible. However, in
| that case, they would absolutely also want the community to
| advance "independently" so that Linux software on Apple
| Silicon has most of the practical issues ironed out by the
| time Apple is ready to announce their stuff. Think of it as
| having a free alpha/beta testing even before your product is
| publicly announced. A pure win-win.
|
| This, at least, is how _I_ would do it if I was pulling the
| strings at Apple.
| nvx736 wrote:
| I think you answered your own question they had server
| hardware with bad software , with community and ecosystem
| enablement they could get into it . Why they can't release
| a server rack with m1 macs ??
| DCKing wrote:
| Apple really has no business getting in the way of this - it
| would just hurt them on a general purpose computing platform like
| Macs are.
|
| It's quite likely this isn't specifically for Asahi Linux. Some
| BSDs are also working on booting on this, which might permit
| Apple some flexibility in future products using Apple Silicon
| (Apple's Time Capsules, say, have apparently run NetBSD as
| opposed to an iOS derivative).
|
| Apple would also likely be welcoming to Windows for Arm running
| natively on macOS. While Apple wouldn't probably be justified in
| coughing up the costs for writing complicated drivers - notably
| graphics drivers - to make Windows run on it, they have
| incentives to make someone else doing that as easy as possible.
| Macs running Windows just sells them some percentage more Macs.
| As does Macs running Linux/BSD most likely, but that percentage
| is smaller.
| todd3834 wrote:
| I was really hoping to see Apple acknowledging that they were
| helping rather than assuming based on code changes that make it
| seem like they are. However, happy to see the direction this is
| going. I'm grateful for the work of both sides.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| "Microsoft loves open source, so please ignore the way we are
| stripping hot reload out of .Net 6 to force you to buy Visual
| Studio instead" would be an improvement?
|
| Deeds, not words.
| Nbox9 wrote:
| I would 10x rather see Apple helping than see Apple say they
| are helping.
| bombcar wrote:
| Not saying anything and helping is much better than saying
| you're helping and doing nothing.
|
| By not being official, they can probably do _more_
| internally.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> By not being official, they can probably do more
| internally.
|
| People don't often think about that, but in some cases it's
| very true.
| dagmx wrote:
| A company saying they're helping has lots of side effects
| people don't think about:
|
| - it means they've made a public commitment to a project, and
| suddenly will get bombarded by other projects, making them less
| willing to engage again
|
| - any failure of the project to run well will also be a
| reflection of the company, even if it's outside their control.
|
| - it can be seen as an endorsement of a single project, when
| multiple ones might benefit. Also if that one project becomes
| problematic it is hard to detangle.
|
| - the commitment to it would make it difficult to move in a
| different, better direction if needed in the future
| pedrocr wrote:
| They don't need to endorse Asahi to endorse the use of
| alternative OS on ARM Macs, which wouldn't have any of those
| downsides. The first Intel Macs were great machines to run
| Linux on. Later machines had too many compatibility issues.
| From that experience I'll steer away from Macs as I have no
| interest in OSX and don't trust them to not break Linux. If
| they publicly commited to alternative OS friendliness that
| would go a very long way for me.
| dagmx wrote:
| If the bar is just supporting the use of alternative OS's,
| they've already done that.
|
| Craig Federighi (their SVP of software) mentioned that
| support for other OSs is an explicit goal of their boot
| setup in interviews.
| sigjuice wrote:
| Is there another interview that goes into the details of
| Apple's boot setup goals?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg9F1Qjv3iU&t=3785s
|
| In this one, Craig Federighi says _"We're not direct
| booting an alternate operating system. Purely
| virtualization is the route. These hypervisors can be
| very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn't
| really be the concern."_
| pedrocr wrote:
| Allowing booting other OSs is different than actually
| supporting those efforts with documentation for example.
| The problem with Intel Macs is not being able to boot
| another kernel it's all the device support that's now
| gone.
| simonh wrote:
| The fully documented BootPolicy system, all new to M1
| Macs and not found on iOS devices, explicitly supports
| running your own kernel on these devices. It's also
| supported by new tools for implementing boot code. Apple
| has clearly devoted a lot of resources to this, as the
| Asahi Linux team have repeatedly pointed out.
| dochtman wrote:
| It's different with Apple Silicon because their hardware is
| more differentiated; meaning it might be more interesting
| for them to see non-macOS usage for it.
| [deleted]
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Even it for $REASONS it has to be informal, seeing some active
| help from Apple is a sight for sore eyes. This is absolutely
| welcome news.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Heartening to see Apple reaching out to Asahi and providing them
| with a stable kernel image format. This is proof that Apple cares
| about open source on the M1
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Some context: "Asahi Linux is a project and community with the
| goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the
| 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro."
|
| https://asahilinux.org/about/
| reaperducer wrote:
| Maybe Apple is headed toward Bootcamp for Linux, since Bootcamp
| for Windows doesn't exist for the M1.
|
| Interesting, since Microsoft is also putting so much work into
| Linux interoperability these days. Perhaps these are the seeds of
| convergence. Or at least Linux being the common denominator OS on
| all machines.
| alberth wrote:
| I'm confused, so these are code changes in macOS itself?
|
| Does the latest macOS provide a firmware update to M1 which is
| what's making it easier to install Asahi?
| NobodyNada wrote:
| The changes are in macOS's bootloader. Previously, the
| bootloader was only designed to load a macOS kernel executable,
| which was stored on disk as a Mach object file with some
| particular constraints. The Asahi project had to use a rather
| ugly linker script to generate an executable that "looks like
| like" a macOS kernel but is actually a first-stage Linux
| bootloader [1].
|
| In macOS 12.1, Apple engineers changed the format of the kernel
| image, which broke the Asahi install process. However, they
| also added a "raw image mode" which allows the bootloader to
| load things that don't look like macOS kernels -- it's an
| officially-supported boot flow for the Asahi project to use
| going forwards without fear of macOS updates breaking it again.
| (Plus, it makes that linker script much simpler [2]).
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/84acf60c24b8c9e28e60...
| [2]:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/blob/92aca22119a0afda9799...
| herpderperator wrote:
| Ok, but nothing stops them from removing it. It might allow
| for a raw image to boot in 12.1, but there are no guarantees
| it won't go away in 12.2. Why is there no concern about that?
| hraedon wrote:
| Because it isn't a new problem? Apple could have locked out
| Asahi at any time, but have shown no inclination of doing
| so. There's no reason for them to build a feature that
| facilitates this specific use case and then remove it in a
| future version.
|
| Assuming for the sake of argument that they did, what
| you're left with is what you had before: having to build
| the process around format changes to Apple's supported
| process. The Asahi devs went into this project knowing that
| they were working around Apple's internal needs, and having
| to revert back to their original solution and its tradeoffs
| at some undefined future point isn't an existential threat
| to the project.
| sigjuice wrote:
| It is a huge assumption that Apple is explicitly doing
| anything for the benefit of Asahi Linux. Apple likely has
| their own reasons for doing whatever they are doing.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| From the OP:
|
| > Seriously, I can't think of a single reason why they'd
| add that for themselves. They build real Mach-Os with
| their own process. They have no use for raw images.
|
| > They are saying "hey, use this, it's easier and we
| won't break it in the future". This is for Asahi.
|
| Previously, the bootloader only supported loading macOS
| kernels. Asahi had to work around this by creating a
| second-stage bootloader that looked like a macOS kernel.
| Now, Apple has added official support for booting things
| other than macOS kernels -- which is not something Apple
| needs to do internally.
|
| Remember, Apple spent a LOT of engineering effort
| developing a boot policy system that allows users to run
| unsigned operating systems on an M1. This is not
| something that came about by accident; the M1 uses an
| iPhone-based secure boot chain that's not anything like
| the UEFI-based bootloaders on x86 Macs. The Apple
| engineers who designed this system often hang out in
| marcan's livestreams and answer questions.
|
| If Apple didn't want people to run alternative operating
| systems on Macs, the M1 would have been the perfect
| excuse to block them for good. In fact, it would have
| been _easier_ to lock down the bootloader -- just use the
| iPhone bootloader as-is, instead of developing all the
| extra features needed to boot unsigned kernels. The sheer
| amount of effort they spent on the boot policy system
| indicates that they plan to keep it around for a long
| time.
|
| Now, people are using Apple's custom-operating-system
| support to run custom operating systems, as intended.
| Apple engineers realized upcoming changes to macOS would
| break their customers' officially-supported workflows,
| and so they added a better workflow that won't break
| again in the future.
| dest wrote:
| For context: Mach-O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-O
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Basically Apple's equivalent to ELF. I personally think the
| multi-architecture support via fat binaries is really neat and
| I kinda wish Linux adopted the format so we could use one
| binary for multiple architectures.
| pcwalton wrote:
| FatELF exists, though not widely used, and would make more
| sense than adopting Mach-O, which has worse tooling than ELF.
| Because of tooling, it'd be preferable for Apple to switch
| from Mach-O to ELF in fact (though they won't do so, because
| that would require a lot of work and Mach-O is working fine
| for them).
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| You can use one binary for multiple architectures on Linux
| with a carefully crafted shell script.
| rollcat wrote:
| I don't like being cynical like this, but Linux can't even
| sort itself even on a single architecture: glibc (with the
| whole versioned symbol mess), musl variants, and so on,
| before we even consider shared libraries and package
| managers. Despite all the hard work of so many people, if you
| aren't running Ubuntu on x86-64, you will very quickly run
| into real problems running any kind of third-party software.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It can be difficult depending on your ecosystem, but often
| you can; when I said I'd like multi-arch fat binaries I was
| specifically thinking of Packer (and most Hashicorp
| products, actually), which distributes as a nice static
| binary per architecture right now. Also musl is quite
| friendly to static linking.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| There is also good news on the GPU front from Alyssa Rosenzweig.
|
| >we're up to a 94% pass rate for dEQP-GLES2
|
| https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1470870852422053890
| pengaru wrote:
| That this happened is neat.
|
| That this infinitesimally small consideration potentially
| interpretable as done deliberately on your project's behalf was
| worth shouting from the rooftops is pathetic, and speaks volumes
| to the general state of affairs between Apple and Linux/FOSS.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Unfortunately, the people here would rather cash in on a nice
| coincidence rather than use it as an opportunity to discuss
| Apple's relationship with libre software.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wonder what Apple executive will see this post and start asking
| questions.
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