[HN Gopher] Asahi Linux Still Working on Apple M3 Support, M1n1 ...
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Asahi Linux Still Working on Apple M3 Support, M1n1 Bootloader
Going Rust
Author : LorenDB
Score : 252 points
Date : 2025-10-24 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.phoronix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.phoronix.com)
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple's yearly
| release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean task.
|
| Though in the plus side, even the base M1 is so capable that even
| if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| We're witnessing the end of the IBM PC-compatible era, and
| maybe more ominously of general-purpose personal computing. The
| future looks like custom chipsets with signed bootloaders that
| only run signed OEM applications. You will not have root on any
| of the devices you nominally own.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| The tide does seem to be turning that way, though I do think
| it will be possible to buy general purpose computers for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| Also as a minor counter point, the only reason Asahi is even
| possible is that Apple explicitly designed in support for
| booting other operating systems into the M-series chips. They
| certainly could have locked them down just like they did the
| iPhone and iPad, but they didn't. That was a conscious choice
| according to the Asahi folks.
|
| So while they may not be sharing technical
| documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the
| Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to
| have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in
| the way you're describing.
| transpute wrote:
| _> Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other
| operating systems into the M-series chips_
|
| Thank Xeno, who has since been creating open-source
| training on low-level firmware security at
| https://p.ost2.fyi, a new iteration of open training
| material published ~15 years ago at
| https://opensecuritytraining.info before joining Apple.
|
| https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah
| / his final project was leading the M1
| SecureBoot architecture - being directly responsible for
| designing a system that could provide iOS-level security,
| while still allowing customer choice to trust arbitrary
| non-Apple code such as Linux bootloaders.
| Rohansi wrote:
| > _Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other
| operating systems into the M-series chips_
|
| Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option for
| Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC.
|
| > _So while they may not be sharing technical documentation
| /drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs,
| even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have
| explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in
| the way you're describing._
|
| Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far
| behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can
| just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on new
| hardware.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option
| for Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC.
|
| Apple has always sold iPads as a closed walled garden and
| Macs as an open platform.
|
| Apple designed the Apple Silicon Mac hardware to allow
| you to run an unsigned third party OS without a negative
| security impact when you run MacOS, because it is an open
| platform.
|
| However we have definitely seen examples of other
| formerly open platforms facing new restrictions.
|
| Android was sold to the public as an open platform that
| Google is actively closing with new restrictions to side
| loading apps
|
| Windows was sold to the public as an open platform, but
| Microsoft is locking out users who refuse to use an
| online account to access their local computer.
| transpute wrote:
| _> an option for Macs but not iPad Pros_
|
| PTSD can block lights in tunnels.
|
| 2024: UTM SE entered iOS App Store,
| https://www.tomshardware.com/phones/iphone/utm-se-
| emulator-r... The team implemented a
| version of the Qemu Tiny-Code Threaded Interpreter
| (TCTI). Qemu TCTI interprets the code rather than
| compiling it, allowing Turing Software to get around the
| JIT ban. Mind you, this results in a rather slow
| experience even by the standards of the emulated
| hardware.
|
| 2025: https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/01/jit-enabler-lands-
| on-app-stor... StikDebug enables on-
| device JIT for any app, making it possible to run
| DolphiniOS without sideloading or tethering to a PC or
| Mac.. approved in the U.S. App Store.
|
| Sep 2025: sideloaded UTM supports JIT on iOS26 with
| StikDebug,
| https://x.com/utmapp/status/1967990008364798091
| Rohansi wrote:
| Emulation is completely different to actually running a
| different OS on your device.
|
| The fact that you need to launch apps through a debugger
| to enable JIT is hilarious though. Every other platform
| either allows it all the time or doesn't! I would not
| count on it staying on the App Store - Apple can remove
| it whenever they want to
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| > Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option
| for Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC.
|
| I think that has more to due with product positioning.
| They see the iPad as an iPhone style device (though it's
| slowly getting more Mac-like), so kept it locked down.
| Not saying I agree with their decision, but I get why
| they made it.
|
| > Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far
| behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can
| just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on
| new hardware.
|
| Unfortunately I think this is probably going to be true,
| but fingers crossed.
|
| I will say though that while I like the idea of Asahi in
| theory, I installed it for more than a year and ended up
| really never booting into it. When I needed Linux for
| something (which is pretty rare since most any tool I
| would want I can just run natively in macOS terminal) it
| was always more convenient to use a VM, so I personally
| won't lose anything if I can only run macOS, but in
| principle I'd like it to stay open just like the Intel
| Macs were with Bootcamp.
| debugnik wrote:
| > Asahi will probably be so far behind that it wouldn't
| even matter.
|
| Why would they fall behind? Asahi caught up from scratch
| the first time, they might catch up again. Maybe not for
| every new model, but they can simply skip some of them if
| forced to prioritise.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other
| operating systems into the M-series chips
|
| Is it possible to buy a compatible M-whatever Mac and
| install Linux on it without network access, without it
| phoning home to Apple for permission?
|
| Sincere question since I have only used one Apple Silicon
| Mac ever, and it was a work machine so I never tried Asahi
| on it. I am curious about the privacy implications of non-
| macOS support.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Hmm you know I'm actually not sure. I think at least
| currently you have to do the install from macOS so I
| guess you have to set it up once at least, but I'm not
| sure if that actually requires internet access.
|
| I so know that once you have Asahi installed you never
| need to boot into macOS again if you don't want to and
| don't require network checkins or anything like that to
| keep using it.
|
| Also unlike Windows 11, it's trivial to set up macOS
| without ever creating an account with Apple, so you don't
| have to give them personal info or even an email or
| anything to do the initial macOS setup.
| bluedino wrote:
| > even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped
| there it would be useful for years to come.
|
| My M1 Air is 4 years old and it's by far the most capable 4
| year old Mac I've owned.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Yeah when I got the first gen base model M1 Air, I put it to
| the test against my maxed out i9 MacBook Pro (basically the
| last Intel model they released, so it was the "best of the
| best" they had to offer on the Intel side).
|
| I tried out using Handbrake to CPU encode the same video on
| both devices. Amazingly the M1 Air was slightly faster than
| the i9, while comparatively sipping power, and staying
| relatively cool without even having a fan. The i9 on the
| other hand drained its battery super fast, sounded like a jet
| plane taking off, and was too hot to sit on my lap.
|
| That's when I knew it was really a massive leap forward.
| DannyBee wrote:
| "I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple's
| yearly release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean
| task."
|
| This is more true on the gpu side than the cpu/soc side for
| sure. Speaking as someone who worked on this (i did a bunch of
| the m3 work here, and some wifi work) - it's not anywhere near
| as bad as embedded work i used to do many eons ago.
|
| Apple doesn't like to spend tons of time/energy either, and
| since they make most of their own hardware interfaces (or force
| others to their specs), most of the time the driver->hardware
| interfaces are just being extended/improved year over year.
|
| Sometimes things move from one bus kind to another, and there's
| different hookup to do, or you have to get around to some
| functionality you never did, etc. But it's not like you need a
| brand new driver every year for the usb controller, for
| example.
|
| Power management is probably one of the worst changing areas,
| along with NPU/GPU obviously.
|
| Put another way - outside of NPU/GPU, you can slowly build up
| enough of the driver base that it can be maintained and kept up
| to date by a small number of people with not huge amounts of
| time.
|
| It's not there yet, but it's possible to get there.
|
| This is because Apple doesn't get a lot from changing this
| stuff either.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Thanks for the insight!
| jasoneckert wrote:
| I was an early adopter of Asahi Linux on my M1 Mac Mini (and
| later M1 Mac Studio). As a result, I benefited from the most
| amount of support for the platform at the beginning of the
| project (laptop-specific hardware support was provided after
| desktops) and have been using Asahi ever since (now Fedora Asahi
| Remix).
|
| It's nice to see that M3 and later is coming, but as a Linux
| person, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a bit behind the
| latest hardware. After all, many of us still use ancient
| Thinkpads running Linux, and prefer to buy used hardware for a
| better cost (M1/M2 hardware can be had much cheaper now).
| xbar wrote:
| Well said. There is a large number of inexpensive, long-
| batteried, powerful devices with lovely designs, good keyboards
| and trackpads that Asahi Linux has enabled to run Linux on
| beautifully.
|
| There are a 1st gen M1 Air wedge and M1 Macbook Pro 14 in my
| home that belong to other family members. I look forward to
| running Asahi on them when the users eventually upgrade.
| mort96 wrote:
| I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro.
|
| It's getting a bit old, so it would be nice to replace it with a
| new MacBook Pro in not _too_ long. But honestly, losing Linux
| support would be pretty devastating.
|
| Docker and virtualization just isn't the same. There's lots of
| interesting stuff you can do with your hardware in Linux, there's
| for example Linux-specific software which puts the WiFi card in
| promiscuous mode and does useful stuff with that. That sort of
| software doesn't work virtualized. And I have all sorts of issues
| with loopback devices in Docker in macOS; 'losetup --partscan'
| doesn't seem to work at all, even in a privileged container. For
| these sorts of things, having a genuine bare-metal Linux install
| I can reboot into is invaluable.
|
| I wish things had turned out otherwise, and we didn't have to
| choose between buying a Mac without Linux support and buying a
| 3-5 year old Mac with Linux support. And I expect that as time
| goes on, Asahi will just fall further and further behind.
|
| I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe this MacBook Pro was just a
| one-off, and I have to go back to buying Windows laptops and
| putting Linux on them. But they just aren't as nice.
| bestouff wrote:
| I used to have the same one, with Asahi. There were some
| problems which were never fixed (battery drain in sleep mode,
| no working Thunderbolt ...). Now job will give me a brand new
| one (I guess M4 or M5), I don't know how I'll do to run Linux
| on this. Either it'll be a VM or I'll use my own thinkpad. So
| sad.
| mort96 wrote:
| The battery drain in sleep mode is why Linux is relegated to
| a dual-boot option for use when necessary for me, rather than
| my daily driver. Battery drain when in use or idle seems
| perfectly acceptable, but I can't use a laptop which
| discharges itself overnight while the lid is closed. I'm sad
| that Asahi never implemented a proper sleep mode.
| intrasight wrote:
| Honest question: why would you care about battery in your
| daily driver? aren't you sitting or standing at a desk?
| mort96 wrote:
| When I'm at my desk at my office I use my Linux desktop.
| My use case for my laptop is to use when I'm out and
| about, commuting on the train or bus, visiting people, or
| just relaxing on the couch.
| intrasight wrote:
| I do that too. But it's like 5% of my computer usage
| time. And maybe 10% of that fracrion I don't have access
| to power outlet. My point is that it's just a tiny
| fraction - for me anyway.
| wara23arish wrote:
| which begs the question why even get a laptop as a daily
| driver
|
| people do it all the time for gaming laptops etc when
| probably 99% of their usage is at the same desk
| iknowstuff wrote:
| I would go nuts if I was confined to working from one
| spot. Versatility and mobility are too important to give
| up. And there's no tradeoff with apple silicon.
| mort96 wrote:
| I have a desktop, but I could imagine a life with only a
| laptop. Sure, maybe 99% of my usage would be at one desk,
| but if I _need_ that other 1%, I _need_ a laptop. It 's
| the desktop that's an optional nice-to-have. And not
| everyone can afford or wants to have _two_ computers
| which are powerful enough to do what they need.
|
| In reality, _far_ more than 1% of my computer use happens
| away from the desk where my desktop is located. I 'm
| guessing I'm not alone in that.
| WD-42 wrote:
| You still only need 1 powerful computer. Networks are so
| fast these days and we have stuff like Tailscale it's
| pretty easy to use the laptop as a dumb terminal and do
| all your work still on the fast computer.
| mort96 wrote:
| Completely depends on what you're doing. If you're
| working on GUI software for example, you _need_ to run
| that on your local machine. This is much easier if you
| 're compiling and running the software on the same
| machine.
|
| Then there are non-development tasks, like 3D modelling
| or video editing.
|
| Remote desktop is a kind of solution, but it's extremely
| sub par. Latency is _not_ good unless you 're on the same
| LAN in my experience.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Ever try Parsec or Moonlight/Sunshine? They're very low
| latency because they're made for gaming
| selectodude wrote:
| There's a latency cost to encode and decode, and there's
| a definite PQ change going from uncompressed video to
| h.265.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Powerful desktop at home + Tailscale + super light old
| Thinkpad with amazing battery life has been working
| really well for me whenever I need to be out and about.
| As long as remote development works for you I think this
| is the way.
| password4321 wrote:
| Yes a MacBook Air as remote terminal back to the beefy PC
| at the mothership is ideal usually even for for GUI
| remote desktop unless internet is already unbearable
| and/or pay-per-GB.
|
| It's not going to support WiFi promiscuous mode but maybe
| pick up a Pi Zero 2W or similar if that's a requirement.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I made this determination myself recently, and switched
| back to a Mac Mini after about a decade of docked laptop
| use. I use my 13" iPad w/keyboard and 5G when I want to
| be mobile.
| almosthere wrote:
| I bought a m4 mac mini but even if 95% of my usage would
| have only been at my desk, that 5% actually makes me
| regret not going at least paying about $400 more for a
| macbook air so I can take it to the bedroom or to a
| coffee shop.
|
| Thankfully my worklaptop is an m4 mb pro, so I have
| flexibility with that.
|
| And indeed with virtual backgrounds in I do probably 3
| meetings a week in my car so I can do quick errands
| without skipping a meeting here or there.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| For my case, and probably the case of many such people,
| that's closer to 90%. The 10%, however, is a big deal.
| When you need to take it somewhere, you need to take it
| somewhere, and a device you can use in that 10% of the
| time is better than a device you can't use in that 10% of
| the time, regardless of how superior the latter is in the
| happy path cases.
| prmoustache wrote:
| For the same reason people tend to buy much larger cars
| than they really need.
|
| They could own a much more economical car, and have
| enough money left in the pocket to rent a van when they
| go on big trips, get delivered or rent a trailer the few
| times a year they need to carry large stuff.
|
| Personally I like having a laptop because I use my
| computers in different rooms depending on the use case
| and occasionally on travel.
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| Why not just suspend to disk?
|
| My Asus laptop with 32 GB of RAM is 4 years old, but
| resumes from the encrypted swap partition in under 5
| seconds, which is fast enough for me.
| cmurf wrote:
| If UEFI Secure Boot is enabled, Fedora kernels detect
| this and lockdown. And hibernation is then disabled. The
| reason is lack of an autheticated hibernation image. This
| work has had several proposals but still isn't
| implemented.
|
| I'm not sure of the status on other distro kernels but
| allowing it would be a significant bypass of Secure
| Boot's purpose.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Can secure boot be disabled on Macs?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Macs allow the device owner to install an OS that isn't
| signed at all, without having it degrade the security of
| the system when you do boot into MacOS.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Fine, but can it be disabled? If secure boot is
| interfering with another function of the computer, the
| owner might decide they prefer hibernation over secure
| boot.
| bri3d wrote:
| This exact thing is irrelevant to Asahi; the reason they
| don't support suspend-to-disk is that their drivers don't
| support full reconfiguration. This is a difficult task,
| as is "true suspend," because Macs have tons and tons of
| peripheral SoCs running firmware with their own SRAM, so
| resuming from suspend or hibernate creates a delta
| between the firmware state and the system state. (and,
| before the usual Apple trolls show up, this is true on
| x86 lately too, but on x86 the driver and platform
| interface is more standardized to support these kind of
| state changes without as much OS support).
|
| Needing a way to securely verify the hibernate image is
| ALSO a problem, and one of the reasons Asahi haven't
| focused on suspend-to-disk, but it's not the first-order
| issue.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You can always set the system up to boot in insecure mode
| via shim, even if UEFI Secure Boot is active. It requires
| an explicit configuration step with physical presence,
| but it's doable.
| izacus wrote:
| Yeah, the security freaks basically broke hibernation
| across Linux ecosystem.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't think suspend to disk is properly supported in
| Asahi. I remember looking into it a couple of years ago
| and found that it wasn't a solution, and a quick Google
| search now indicates that it's still not implemented.
| jorvi wrote:
| Suspend-to-disk (or rather, suspend-then-hibernate) is
| notoriously unreliable on Linux. Hell, its occasionally
| unreliable on Windows and OEMs taper their firmware to
| Microsoft's spec and quirks.
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| I think buying a year old laptop helps give time for the
| quirks to get worked out in the kernel.
|
| I was able to follow a fairly standard NixOS config with
| lvm and encrypted swap. I've never had any issues after
| hibernating a couple times a day for 3 years.
| array_key_first wrote:
| It's very reliable on normal desktop hardware.
|
| I don't know what the fuck is going on with laptop
| hardware. That stuff seems to barely work, despite the
| chips and stuff being off the shelf. Most windows laptops
| cannot handle sleep correctly either.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| All the Lenvo laptops I've bought for personal use and
| the HPs my work gets have fully functional sleep under
| windows. The Lenovos also sleeps just fine under Linux.
| Wonder if its really specific brands that don't put the
| effort into their HW or drivers support for sleep?
| devilbunny wrote:
| My Lenovo would just randomly kill its battery even when
| it was supposed to be full suspend-to-disk - under
| Windows.
|
| Setting the BIOS option to "Linux-compatible sleep mode"
| fixed this, but it took me FOREVER to figure this out and
| I'm reasonably certain I first heard about this fix in a
| comment here.
|
| Not a bit of a problem since.
| Lerc wrote:
| How Linux-like can you make a Mac act without changing OS
| now? It's been a few years since I used a Mac regularly, but
| even back then you could go a fair way towards making it seem
| nice enough to use.
| viraptor wrote:
| You can mostly do that, but: forget about system wide
| debugging, desktop shell changes, easy security sandboxes,
| being able to just run new AI software (they're often
| assuming cuda or CPU), building obscure software without
| patching makefiles. And the get the general feeling of
| "whatever I want to change, I'm fighting against the
| system".
| simjnd wrote:
| On macOS you can use OrbStack [1] for a much better experience
| working with Docker on Mac, as well as quickly spinning up
| headless Linux VMs (WSL on Mac kind of thing). The free tier
| will probably be rug-pulled someday, but I've been using it for
| a couple of years and it makes my life a lot easier when I'm on
| macOS.
|
| [1]: https://orbstack.dev/
| mort96 wrote:
| And you're saying that this can set my WiFi card in
| promiscuous mode as if I was running Linux bare metal?
| simjnd wrote:
| I'm not.
|
| You mentioned Docker and virtualisation and this tool has
| addressed most of my pain points with those, that's it.
| mort96 wrote:
| Sounds like it doesn't address _my_ pain points then...
| simjnd wrote:
| Indeed, I misunderstood "Docker and virtualization isn't
| the same" as "Docker and virtualization on Mac is not as
| good as on Linux". Now I understand you meant "Docker and
| virtualizating Linux isn't the same as bare metal Linux".
| mort96 wrote:
| Oh, I get the misunderstanding now. Yeah I meant that
| Docker and virtualization isn't the same as bare-metal
| Linux. Sorry for being a bit unclear
| cozzyd wrote:
| You can in principle use USB passthrough to do that on a
| USB WiFi card to do that, I believe, but sucks to carry
| around a USB dongle especially since macs seem to barely
| have USB ports...
|
| I'm happy with my AMD Thinkpad running Linux ...
| tgma wrote:
| All of these things are running Linux under virtualization
| and faking it to the Mac user and they naturally have all the
| same limitations as running a VM. They are effectively like
| WSL.
|
| P.S. I believe that specific company did some level of rug-
| pull early on already and started charging people who already
| relied on it for free because they left Docker which started
| charging earlier, so I would be vary of relying on them.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Not a rugpull; monetization was at the top of the FAQ from
| the beginning.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230331034854/https://docs.orb
| s...
| ninkendo wrote:
| Them saying "we're going to pull the rug" in advance
| doesn't make it not a rug pull, it just means you have
| advanced notice of the rug pull.
| khamidou wrote:
| How is wanting to build software sustainably a rug pull?
| Like seriously, if you get value from orbstack, it's fair
| to pay them.
|
| Otherwise you can still stick to free alternatives like
| colima which would be CLI only
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| There's also https://github.com/apple/container now
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I get this feeling but frankly I feel more comfortable running
| Linux on 2+ year old hardware than brand new hardware having
| experienced both now, if for no other reason than all the
| questions you have have probably been asked and answered.
|
| And yeah each iteration of the M chip has gotten better, but
| even a standard M1 is a very capable chip these days.
|
| My work laptop is a 2021 MBpro. M1, 16gb ram, nothing special.
| Still very capable machine for video editing. One of my
| department livestream machines is an M4 Mac mini, 16gb ram as
| well. I regularly juggle between the two and the only two big
| things I notice are 1) multi screen support (M1 can only push
| to one external which is annoying), and 2) noticeably better
| but not wildly improved render times (admittedly this
| difference is a bit more stark when you're doing heavy lifts
| like resolve fusion comps and intense coloring/masking). On any
| given day they are basically the same machine to me.
|
| Suffice to say if you're running on an M3 right now and are
| feeling the need for an M5, unless you're doing really bleeding
| edge heavy duty work, I just don't think there's that much
| you're missing out on. So Linux on an M3 to me is great.
| dangus wrote:
| My advice is if you're truly a Linux user first, give up the
| idea that Mac hardware is the only best/acceptable hardware.
| Break the cycle and don't just buy Apple because their hardware
| is 10% better than competitors.
|
| The market really isn't limited to "buying a windows laptop and
| putting Linux onto it" anymore.
|
| Lots of OEMs support Linux as a first-class citizen.
|
| For me personally I'm enjoying my Framework laptop a lot. Is it
| the same kind of hardware polish as a Mac? No, of course not.
| But owning a Framework is like owning an Apple in the sense
| that the community has fully integrated Framework systems into
| the ecosystem.
|
| One command installs Framework fan profiles into Bazzite Linux.
| One command inside Linux updates UEFI and device firmware, try
| doing that with Windows!
|
| Is the battery like half as good as a MacBook Pro? Yeah. It
| sucks a little bit. But also, owning/carrying around a $50
| portable battery isn't such a bad thing, and the weight
| difference is a wash since the 13" Framework is lighter than
| the 14" MacBook Pro.
|
| And on the plus side, I paid a less than MacBook Air money for
| a system with 2TB of storage and 32GB of RAM (DIY previous AMD
| generation model), fully upgradable, fully repairable, with
| customizable I/O.
|
| A new battery is DIY, $60, not $250 with a wait for service.
| Replacing a broken screen is DIY $200, not $700 and a visit to
| the Apple service depot.
|
| One day, I'm sure framework will be selling an ARM mainboard
| with similar battery life compared to a Mac, and when that day
| comes I don't even have to buy a whole new system to get one.
|
| And on top of all that, it's still a nice laptop that feels
| premium even though it's assembled DIY. I'd say the keyboard is
| better than a Mac keyboard (though the trackpad isn't).
|
| But also, there are other OEMs where running Linux is a joy and
| a breeze, along with being fully supported and even sold
| preinstalled. System76, Lenovo, Dell, and HP all have Linux-
| supported configurations.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I don't think any other competitor makes hardware of a
| similar class in terms of quality.
|
| Framework is great, but it doesn't even come close in terms
| of quality. Specs are one thing, how the product looks,
| feels, attention to detail, and most importantly: long term
| viability! even if you take away everything else, macbooks
| are though. I've used a couple for over a decade with no
| hardware repair (except when I broke a screen). Most mac
| users have similar experiences, so it's not survivor's bias.
|
| If all you care about is specs or open hardware, obviously
| Apple hardware is not for you.
|
| I don't want framework or system76 to move to ARM, a lot of
| people like me still _need_ x86 hardware.
| LilBytes wrote:
| That's the thing. Even when you consider the hardware
| benefits. Let's say they're 10% better (I feel but happy to
| be corrected, that feels understated).
|
| There isn't a single machine out there that's even
| moderately close in terms of build quality. Either at the
| dollar cost for an entry series MacBook Pro or Air with
| 36GB (38?) memory.
|
| I don't think there's an OEM Linux or Windows laptop with
| Linux as a first class citizen laptop out there even
| moderately close for value, performance and build quality.
|
| Shit I'm not sure if there's even one out there if you
| spent considerably more than on a MacBook. MacBook Pro's
| are pretty good value now.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| From personal experience, laptops that cost $30000+ (yes,
| USD) still come nowhere close to even a macbook air in
| terms of build quality. They have much better specs, but
| if you run Windows on it, the effects are much less
| pronounced. I have moved from a new Dell to a macbook
| with half the cpu and ram and for me t least it "feels"
| like the macbook is twice as fast and as responsive. I
| don't know if it is just better architecture or fine
| tuned software, but that's my experience.
|
| Apple used the whole "economy of scale" effect to invest
| in specialized tooling/machining that would be too costly
| to recover the ROI for other OEMs. Keep in mind that
| consumer laptop makers to the most part don't make a
| profit (or have a low profit margin - last i checked at
| least) on laptops and printers. No one else has made the
| economics of using quality material, top of the line
| design, and specialized machining/tooling work like
| Apple.
| rzerowan wrote:
| I think for generic OEMs that may hold , however for
| manufactures like Huawei with their matebookX line the
| build quality is pretty much on-par while the components
| and options being offthe shelf standard means it should
| be easier to upgrade/support and port Linux to than
| MacBooks.Also the price is pretty much competititve for
| the kit that one gets. The blocking isseu would be
| getting one as the whole US attack on the company means
| their kit is pretty much limited edition within China at
| the moment currently.Maybe in a year or two they should
| be available at previous volumes.
| pjmlp wrote:
| My 2000 euro Thinkpad has better specs, I run Windows 11
| on it, get to do CUDA and Vulkan natively, and there is
| DirectX 12 Ultimate as well.
|
| Macs are great as an OS with UNIX infrastructure, aa
| graphical laptops relevant for workloads besides
| Photoshop and Sketch, not so much.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| And then there's battery life and sleep drain. Only a
| handful of competitors come close, and those have caveats
| like significantly reduced peak performance and the usual
| papercuts so common in the x86 laptop world.
|
| It's such a problem that if I were to switch away from
| Apple, I'd try to find a way to go desktop-exclusive and
| not use a laptop at all, because everything else on the
| market is so compromise-ridden as to not be worth the
| trouble. And I say this as the owner of an X series
| ThinkPad, which are among the better options in that
| world.
|
| It's as if most laptop manufacturers can't be arsed to
| take their products seriously. So frustrating.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Thinkpad X1 is very solid and sexy hardware imo, tastes may
| vary
|
| But my favorite machine of late is a tiny ultra portable
| with a Ryzen AI 9 chip with 64Gb RAM, it's an x86 that's
| competitive with the new ARM stuff on power efficiency
| sedatk wrote:
| I'd say newest Surface Laptops are on par.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| What does it matter if hardware still works in 10 years if
| you can't upgrade software anymore, nor can you replace it
| with something you have control over (like Linux)?
|
| I still have a fully functioning iPhone 4s somewhere. I
| could still use it as a daily driver hardware-wise, but it
| is sadly deprecated (32-bit), so - no software support
| anymore.
| jwar1767 wrote:
| I installed Linux Mint on a 2014 macbook pro for my wife
| and its still going strong.
| dangus wrote:
| I can't believe you're gaslighting us all by claiming "long
| term viability" is better on a MacBook, a system with zero
| user-replaceable components, a glued-in battery, soldered-
| in memory, etc.
|
| A MacBook loses software updates in 10 years. Sometimes
| less. You can install what amounts to reverse engineered
| Linux on one if you lose your macOS updates. You have a
| choice of basically one viable distro.
|
| And this idea that no other competitor makes hardware in a
| similar class of quality is extremely outdated. I actually
| own both a modern MacBook and a Framework. This isn't some
| HP shitbook from 2011. It's all aluminum, like I said the
| keyboard is literally superior to Mac systems, and are we
| just going to gloss over 2016-2020 when Apple just shit the
| bed and made utter garbage? Are we going to gloss over how
| the current systems have a gigantic notch blocking the menu
| bar that's somehow bigger than FaceID but only houses a
| middling webcam?
|
| You admit you broke a screen on your MacBook. How much did
| that cost you to repair? How long did you wait without your
| system to repair it? Or did you just go off and buy a new
| one?
| FlameRobot wrote:
| > I don't think any other competitor makes hardware of a
| similar class in terms of quality.
|
| This is nonsense. I've owned Dell Business, Thinkpads and
| several Apple products including an iBook g4, Macbook Pro
| and a Mac Mini (G4 and Intel).
|
| The Dell Business and Thinkpads while they don't look as
| nice are far more rugged. My Dell 6410 could probably be
| used as a make shift weapon in a fight and easily survive.
| I have a T480 and it while it is small and pretty thin IMO,
| it is built pretty sturdy.
|
| Do they look as nice? No they don't. But they are similar
| quality if it is business. I personally prefer No BS and
| strength as they are meant for work.
|
| The thing that macs do better than other laptops is the
| screens are usually nicer. However these days there is less
| of a gap. I was surprised how good the screen is on Dell
| Precision work provided me with.
|
| > Specs are one thing, how the product looks, feels,
| attention to detail, and most importantly: long term
| viability!
|
| You have this impression due to the packaging when you
| first open it. They deliberately design the packaging that
| way so you have that impression (there is a bit of science
| behind this).
|
| https://filestage.io/blog/apple-packaging/
|
| https://www.dreamcustomboxes.com/apple-packaging/
|
| A lot of companies ape this packaging because it works.
|
| > even if you take away everything else, macbooks are
| though. I've used a couple for over a decade with no
| hardware repair (except when I broke a screen). Most mac
| users have similar experiences, so it's not survivor's
| bias.
|
| This is nonsense. Macs have over the last 15-20 years have
| had a very mixed record on terms reliability and repair-
| ability. Repairs are cost prohibitive. Many of the
| components are proprietary and cannot be sourced easily
| other than removing from other dead laptops. I am fairly
| friendly with a Mac repair specialist in my area. He says
| it is basically getting harder and harder to repair them.
|
| I have first hand experience of the Mac Pro laptops circa
| 2015. Battery is glue'd in on many models and when the
| battery is EOL it will clock the machine down to 800Mhz
| even on mains. Removing the battery is difficult as you
| have to dissolve the glue. As it was out of warranty I had
| to get a local repair guy to remove it. Cost about ~PS200.
| Later the same year the official charger went bad and
| burned up the power traces. Same local repair guy said it
| was about PS150, that with the cost of a new charger made
| replacing the Mac a no go and I decided to recycle it.
|
| Compare this with any Dell Business model. I can for the
| most part just crack off the back and remove and replace a
| lot of parts without any specialist tools. This is
| deliberate because they usually have to be serviced by IT
| departments.
|
| > If all you care about is specs or open hardware,
| obviously Apple hardware is not for you.
|
| Apple computer hardware for the most part is bought by
| people that want things that look nice.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| if only it were 10%
|
| even the things you mention in your post paint a picture of a
| difference that for a lot of usage patterns is much more
| significant than just the last 10%
| mort96 wrote:
| Framework used to be an interesting option, but then they
| went ahead and made themselves a non-option by first very
| publicly financially supporting explicitly far-right software
| projects and then very publicly doubling down on that support
| in face of criticism.
|
| I _have_ been looking at the Lenovos though.
| monocasa wrote:
| I didn't hear about that and a simple search isn't
| surfacing that. Can you expand?
| michelb wrote:
| He's probably referencing Framework's involvement with
| Omarchy, which certain people had problems with.
| phpnode wrote:
| if you're going to hold Framework to that standard,
| wouldn't you also agree that buying a Lenovo machine would
| be indirectly supporting an authoritarian government with a
| troubling human-rights record?
| timeon wrote:
| Sure for similar reasons (+ few other) I'm moving away
| from Apple. Framework is no longer on my list.
| mort96 wrote:
| You're typically not buying a Framework _just_ because
| you like the hardware. Framework represents a political
| project, so you typically buy Framework because you
| support their values and politics. I don 't.
| phpnode wrote:
| You can rationalise your decision however you want, but
| to me it sounds like you're mad with the little guy for
| their lack of moral purity, but you're implicitly fine
| with a larger company doing much worse. That seems
| inconsistent at best.
| mort96 wrote:
| You may find it inconsistent, and that's fine. But I _do_
| actually find it worse to buy from the explicitly
| political pro-fascist company than to buy from the
| "normal company" which just "incidentally" benefit
| fascist governments through their normal business
| operations.
| phpnode wrote:
| I don't see any mention of their explicit support for
| fascism on their homepage, can you justify this claim?
| mort96 wrote:
| They haven't exactly been quiet about it. Here are some
| links;
|
| * https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1960029405067313546
|
| * https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1975721241345728683
|
| * https://bsky.app/profile/frame.work/post/3lvm6ahbrf22n
|
| * https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-
| far-righ...
| Lammy wrote:
| Fascism is when Arch BTW
| tomnipotent wrote:
| So in other words you've got nothing? There is literally
| nothing in your links that backs up your claims.
|
| So conferences in every western country should also not
| invite Chinese or Japanese speakers because they hold
| similar views to DHH? I'm so over this exhausting need to
| feel self-righteous.
| mort96 wrote:
| Hm? My claim is that they back Omarchy and DHH, I think
| my links back that up?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| And that is not a transitive property which then means
| Framework supports fascism. The US buys from China, does
| that mean we support communism?
| mort96 wrote:
| International trade is extremely complex, funding and
| publicizing a project is not. Framework supports DHH,
| both financially and in terms of publicity. That's not
| something I wanna support.
| phpnode wrote:
| Your claim was that they _explicitly_ support fascism.
| That doesn 't seem to be the case at all. What you seem
| to mean instead is: They financially support a popular
| open source project called Omarchy, which is built by
| DHH, and you believe DHH to be a fascist.
|
| You're welcome to your opinion, and I have zero insight
| into whether DHH is a fascist or not, but by no means is
| that _explicit support for fascism_! It 's not just
| exaggeration, it's actually a lie.
|
| If you buy a machine from Framework you _might_
| indirectly support a project which is maintained by
| someone whose opinions you dislike.
|
| If you buy a Lenovo machine you _will_ contribute to the
| revenue of an authoritarian government that will use some
| of that money to perpetuate human rights abuses against
| its own citizens, and maybe the citizens of your own
| country too one day.
|
| Which is the most moral choice here in your opinion?
| mort96 wrote:
| I didn't say they explicitly support fascism. I said they
| are explicitly political, and they are pro-fascism.
| Melonai wrote:
| I don't know... As someone who many people would
| characterize as "way too woke", this doesn't really quite
| ruin Framework for me (though I don't own any of their
| products).
|
| DHH is certainly an ass, and this is my first time
| reading about the racist stuff (before this I just found
| him generally extremely unlikable), but just general
| association with someone with shitty opinions doesn't
| fully ruin a project for me. I guess Omarchy is popular
| nowadays (I'm really not sure why, if someone really
| knows, please explain), people are going to want to use
| it on their Framework computers, ergo: Framework has a
| reason to cooperate with Omarchy developers so their
| devices work like the customers want them to, and I guess
| I'm fine with it even if DHH leaves a bad taste in my
| mouth...
|
| I guess I sort of feel similar in regards to suckless, I
| don't really like most of their projects, from what I've
| heard there are some abhorrent people involved, but I
| wouldn't really put blame on the distro maintainer that
| packages their projects for their users to use, I guess?
|
| Though, I definitely get why people might feel
| differently.
| Lammy wrote:
| I bought my Framework 12 just because I like the
| hardware. It's so cute! And purple! The repairability is
| bonus.
| neoromantique wrote:
| hyprland? That's ridiculous.
|
| I would understand if it was Lunduke or XLibre folk, but
| that's a complete non-issue.
| mort96 wrote:
| Omarchy. DHH is absolutely on the level of Lunduke.
| neoromantique wrote:
| I don't know, I dislike DHH and actively debated with him
| on many occasions, but I wouldn't put him on the same
| level as Lunduke.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't have time to go over everything. But here are
| some things:
|
| * Here's his screed about how London was better before
| all the brown people moved in:
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
|
| * Here's your typical right-wing anti-DEI rant:
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-
| dominance...
|
| I'm sure there's more stuff I could link, but I don't
| have the time right now to go looking for more. I think
| this should get the point across.
| Lammy wrote:
| You don't seem to understand what fascism actually is.
| None of these things are that.
|
| Even though I disagree with DHH on all of these topics I
| don't see how it's relevant to Free Software at all
| unless the distro were using the webcam and IP
| geolocation and refusing to work for brown people in
| England.
| mort96 wrote:
| It's okay for you to disagree with me, I have explained
| my views.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I have a hard imagining a far right software project, can
| you explain this to me?
| mort96 wrote:
| You should look into the political views of Omarchy's
| creator and sole developer, DHH
| koiueo wrote:
| I tried, and all I found was some hearsay. Ethical
| concerns were raised by many publications without any
| specifics. Some mention the issue is building on top of
| hyprland, which (oh god, no) has some ethical issues.
|
| I couldn't find anything specific.
|
| Would appreciate a link to any based explanation
| rowanG077 wrote:
| That's the dev not the project. Quickly looking over
| Omarchy I see nothing aligned with the political right.
| Could you link it to me?
| mort96 wrote:
| The developer is the project.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Of course not, a project is removed from the person.
| Especially in open source.
| s__s wrote:
| Can you elaborate on 1) What makes dhh far right? And 2)
| How that makes the omarchy or framework projects
| problematic?
| xxpor wrote:
| My only issue with Intel at this point is Lunar Lake only
| supports 32GB of RAM max. If it supported 64GB, I'd buy it
| today.
| saratogacx wrote:
| I believe that Arrow Lake supports 64gb. I'm waiting on
| availability before I replace my aging (9yo) Lenovo X1
| Yoga.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > owning/carrying around a $50 portable battery isn't such a
| bad thing
|
| Carrying an extra powerbank that has to be charged daily
| (assuming you'll use your computer full day) is not something
| I'd just handwave like that.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For some types of work, I carry around 3 power banks if I'm
| to do a full days work away from power. Max screen
| brightness + high CPU use of long compiles means I'm
| averaging 40 watts
|
| Add on a starlink and you need a trolley to carry the
| weight of the power packs needed.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Sure. For your type of work, that's the only solution.
|
| To clarify, I'm totally fine with powerbanks, especially
| that these days even the cheapo ones support a subset of
| PD to charge a laptop (sometimes even 12V is enough, my
| Thinkpad allows that, I've read somewhere that Framework
| can charge from even 5V). I'm just not fine with solving
| an objectively poorer battery management (compared to
| Macs) by just buying external battery and calling it a
| solution. It's a workaround at best.
| dangus wrote:
| Why not? My framework weighs 1 pound less than my MacBook
| Pro did and the spare battery weighs about one pound
| itself. Net backpack weight is the same.
|
| If I am guilty of hand waving a spare battery aren't
| MacBook die-hard guilty of handwaving away major downsides
| to the device like soldered-in storage? I saved something
| like $500 compared to Apple by buying my own 2TB of
| storage.
|
| And let's be honest, it's rare to actually need MacBook Air
| levels of "sitting away from a power outlet" battery life.
| It's definitely nice to have and I definitely wish my
| framework had that level of battery life but it's a want
| not a need, and it's not as important _to me_ as having a
| system I can repair myself, having a system that runs Linux
| with first-class support, plays PC games easily, etc.
|
| I will also say that the spare battery being in my backpack
| now has coincidentally come in handy countless times
| outside of the laptop.
|
| And if you want better battery life than that there are
| other choices like Lenovo, you don't even have to use a
| Framework to get a great Linux laptop.
| linguae wrote:
| I have a Framework 13 that I use as my personal laptop and a
| work-issued M3 MacBook Pro.
|
| I love my Framework 13. I'm a long-time Mac user, but I
| increasingly found myself alienated by locked-down hardware
| and increasingly locked-down software, and so I ended up
| switching back to PCs. I greatly appreciate my Framework 13's
| user-serviceability. While I use Windows 11 + WSL (Microsoft
| Office is the main thing holding me back from using Linux
| exclusively, and yes, I was a regular LibreOffice user back
| in my student days when I couldn't afford a Microsoft Office
| license), it's great to have the option to go to Linux full-
| time on well-supported hardware.
|
| With that said, my M3 MacBook Pro has absolutely amazing
| battery life. By comparison, my Framework 13 has rather
| abysmal battery life by 2025 standards. In fact, it feels
| reminiscent of my very first Apple laptop: a 2006 Core Duo
| MacBook, which got roughly five hours when brand new. Even
| putting my Framework 13 to sleep drains the battery after a
| few hours, while on my MacBook Pro, it barely sips from the
| battery.
|
| I hope future releases of Framework laptops have better
| battery life; it makes a difference.
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| My beef with the Framework laptops is that their memory
| bandwidth is 5 to 8 times slower (depending on the
| generation, CPU, and RAM) than that of a $1,500 refurbished
| MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB.
| dangus wrote:
| But then you have a 5 year old laptop that's going to
| lose official Apple software support in 5 years and
| become a paperweight unless you install your choice of
| ONE Linux distro.
|
| If you don't specifically have a memory bandwidth-
| constrained workflow this doesn't matter at all and
| having upgradable memory is still better for most people.
|
| If Framework starts using CAMM modules or releases a
| Ryzen AI board with soldered RAM this difference is
| lessened/disappears.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| > choice of ONE Linux distro
|
| fwiw the asahi kernel and patches are usable from other
| distros just fine; i've done it on nixos in the past and
| the linked blog post shows some stuff running on gentoo
| dangus wrote:
| Sounds like a bunch of extra work and potential
| bugs/issues compared to "download iso, install iso"
| jen20 wrote:
| > A new battery is DIY, $60, not $250 with a wait for
| service. Replacing a broken screen is DIY $200, not $700 and
| a visit to the Apple service depot.
|
| This is a weird assertion to make, if you don't have the
| parts on hand and can't walk into a store to buy them same-
| day. A big part of the reason I _do_ buy Apple laptops
| (besides the fact I do like the OS, battery life and
| hardware) is that I can walk into an Apple Store in any major
| city I'm likely to be in and purchase a replacement
| immediately should disaster strike while I'm traveling.
| dangus wrote:
| But now you're comparing buying a whole new computer to
| repairing one. It's not like it's hard to buy an x86 laptop
| at a Best Buy.
|
| The fact of the matter is that sending a MacBook to depot
| and fixing it takes around a week including transit times
| to and from. Apple no longer does any computer repairs in
| store.
|
| At $60 for a battery or $200 for a screen those parts are
| so cheap that I could just buy them to keep on hand and
| they'd still cost less than AppleCare.
|
| Many parts like storage and RAM are standard where, yes, I
| can walk into a store and buy them and install them same
| day.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Honestly anything you get beyond MacOS is probably seen as a
| security hole by Apple and will get blocked and patched in the
| long run. It's the whole point of their locked down ecosystem:
| There is only Apple.
|
| Just get a Framework, they're Macs for Linux.
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| This is false. Per the asahi project,
| https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/security/#apples-
| unspok...
|
| > When documenting the security model, Apple use the example
| of an XNU kernel developer wishing to test their changes on a
| second macOS installation. It is apparent however that the
| platform security model was engineered to allow third party
| operating systems to coexist with macOS in a way that does
| not compromise any of Apple's security guarantees for macOS
| itself. *Rumours circulating that Apple are actively hostile
| towards efforts such as Asahi, or that their security must be
| bypassed or jailbroken to run untrusted code are unfounded
| and false*. In fact, Apple have expended effort and time on
| _improving_ their security tooling in ways that _only_
| improve the execution of non-macOS binaries.
|
| Regarding Framework laptops being "Macs for Linux,"
| Frameworks are fantastic in their own way but they don't come
| anywhere near the build quality (or battery life) you get
| with a Mac.
| soupy-soup wrote:
| IIRC, when the Asahi project first started, Apple's response
| was they they didn't care about the project, and would make
| no efforts to hinder or help them. They also hinted that
| running an alternate OS was an acceptable use of device.
|
| We will see if they continue that attitude.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Man you randomly reminded me of when magic lantern was
| completely changing the game with their firmware side load
| on Canon DSLR's. Then after a few years Canon decided "nah
| screw y'all" as they quietly pushed a firmware update that
| blocked it.
| Teever wrote:
| Can you tell me more about promiscuous mode in Asahi? I'm not
| able to find much reliable stuff when I search.
|
| Is they possible with the built in WiFi chipsets?
| hanikesn wrote:
| >I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe this MacBook Pro was
| just a one-off, and I have to go back to buying Windows laptops
| and putting Linux on them. But they just aren't as nice.
|
| Why would you think that? They're working hard on upstreaming
| all patches ATM, adding new hardware support will be much
| easier afterwards.
| mort96 wrote:
| And what's the ETA for M5 support?
| scuff3d wrote:
| If you want M5 support faster, maybe you should go
| volunteer your time and help out the project.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Alternatively, you can buy a laptop from an OEM that
| doesn't play keep-away with the Linux upstream using
| their drivers.
|
| I write lots of Linux software but I have no intention to
| explicitly support Asahi or Macs whatsoever. Apple's
| greed is not something I will support with my money or my
| time, if Apple wants to court the Linux community then
| they can do it the same way Intel, AMD and Nvidia get
| along with us. Making your fans reverse-engineer
| devicetree drivers is just insulting.
|
| Mac hardware is and will be a second-rate Linux
| experience, which is a shame because Apple could be
| competing with Nvidia for market share if they simply
| gave a shit.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| It's really pretty incredible - that people are putting
| up with Apple's "keep-away" is evidence of just how
| unbelievably far ahead they are in hardware.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Or it could be a symbol of an unhealthy emotional
| attachment to Apple, that customers perceive to be
| symbiotic but business-wise is wholly parasitic.
|
| Like I said, Apple _could_ be a real player... if they
| had any incentive to compete.
| latexr wrote:
| > Or it could be a symbol of an unhealthy emotional
| attachment to Apple
|
| Pretty hard to make that argument about people who
| explicitly want to get rid of Apple's OS from their
| hardware.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Nope, as a former macOS user myself I can assure you it's
| quite trivial.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Not really. Apple hardware is great, but MacOS sucks big
| time (compared to Linux).
| latexr wrote:
| And do you think it makes sense to argue that someone who
| says "macOS sucks big time" but likes their hardware has
| an "unhealthy emotional attachment to Apple"? If
| anything, it seems to show a _pragmatic_ relationship
| (that whatever you like /need from each).
| bigyabai wrote:
| If someone likes their partner's body, but despises their
| personality and the way they treat them, I would call
| that an unhealthy emotional attachment, not a pragmatic
| relationship.
|
| It's almost never pragmatic to assume that your own
| suffering will necessarily yield a better outcome.
| _Maybe_ your smoking hot partner eventually becomes a
| better person, but is it worth investing 10 years of
| mental anguish for the chance of getting there? A real
| pragmatist starts dating again, which forces their
| partner to stop taking themselves for granted. If Apple
| wasn 't a literal monopoly, their customers could be
| holding them over a barrel and forcing their software
| products to compete naturally.
|
| macOS sucks because their customers have an unhealthy
| emotional attachment to Apple. Americans forfeit their
| opportunity to regulate Apple into real competition, and
| now we are paying the price with top-down app censorship,
| UI disaster updates and bugfixes that add more bugs than
| fixes.
| latexr wrote:
| > If someone likes their partner's body, but despises
| their personality and the way they treat them
|
| Then they have to take the whole package or nothing at
| all. You can't swap your partner's brain. But you can
| change your OS on your computer. These things are not
| comparable.
|
| > macOS sucks because their customers have an unhealthy
| emotional attachment to Apple.
|
| No, macOS (currently) sucks because Apple is doing a bad
| job. Their customers' relationship to the company is
| orthogonal to the OS' quality.
| microtonal wrote:
| I don't think that the people who want to buy a Mac to
| run Asahi Linux have (an unhealthy) emotional attachment
| to Apple, they wouldn't run Linux on a MacBook otherwise.
|
| (I love macOS, though I also have a ThinkPad with NixOS.)
| xtracto wrote:
| I recently spent around $6k in a new 14in MacBook Pro
| with 128gb unified ram and 4tb HD. To replace my old
| Linux running 2012 MacBook pro.
|
| I searched throughly for something as close to that MBP
| hw conf but with Linux compatibility. There's just no
| hardware equivalent to what the Macbookpro, including the
| build quality.
|
| So I de idea to go for the MBP and install vmware +
| Linux. It's an amazing piece of hardware.
| internet2000 wrote:
| That's not a helpful answer.
| scuff3d wrote:
| How is that not helpful? A group of volunteers working in
| their spare time to do something incredibly difficult
| clearly aren't working fast enough for this person. The
| logical thing to do would be to jump in and help.
| jama211 wrote:
| Doesn't give anything like an ETA... which was the
| question.
| scuff3d wrote:
| If you read the rest of the posts above the one I'm
| replying to I think it's pretty clear this wasn't a
| serious question. It was asked ironically as in "the rest
| of the work doesn't matter, they're taking too long to
| get M5 support out"
|
| I'm saying it's an open project and if people want to
| bitch they're going too slow they are welcome to
| contribute.
| garbagewoman wrote:
| How is it helpful?
| scuff3d wrote:
| If you read the rest of the posts above the one I'm
| replying to I think it's pretty clear this wasn't a
| serious question. It was asked ironically as in "the rest
| of the work doesn't matter, they're taking too long to
| get M5 support out"
|
| I'm saying it's an open project and if people want to
| bitch they're going too slow they are welcome to
| contribute.
| Retr0id wrote:
| It's ok for a free thing to not meet someone's needs.
| scuff3d wrote:
| Agreed. But it seems a not insignificant number of people
| think they should get everything they want immediately
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's funny that this exact question is mentioned in
| marcan's "I'm leaving Asahi Linux" blogpost, haha.
|
| > _And, of course, "When is M3 /M4 support coming?"_
|
| https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-
| project-l...
|
| It's just amusing to me that Linux users since the
| beginning of time have been working hard on ensuring the
| maintainers of their software get upset at them and quit
| working on their software.
|
| Over decades of seeing this, it is entertaining that people
| never change. There will be a great beauty to the vim v
| emacs wars in 5723 CE between the people of Gliese 251b and
| Gliese 251c.
| mort96 wrote:
| To be clear, I would not ordinarily ask these kinds of
| questions. I understand that things take time. That's why
| I'm resigned to the idea that Asahi will never again be
| roughly up to date with the latest Apple hardware. I only
| asked this question because hanikesn seems to think that
| Asahi will magically suddenly be up to date once they've
| upstreamed everything.
| psanford wrote:
| I had an M2 air running asahi that I loved and had similar
| worries. I ended up buying a maxed out refurbished M2 which I
| expect will last me a few more years.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| how's the battery life / what's your usual workload
| gedy wrote:
| Son has a Framework with Linux and he prefers it to a MacBook
| Pro (with or without Linux).
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| another POV is that Asahi Linux would get way more adoption if
| it were "just" a better way to run Linux VMs and containers on
| macOS.
| a-dub wrote:
| lenovo p1 and x1 are pretty nice. lunar lake machines are
| posting macintarm style benchmarks for battery life for light
| tasks. the screens are matte by default. you can upgrade ram
| and disk rather than discard (all the framework hype has been
| the thinkpad standard of upgradability for over a decade). the
| keyboards are fantastic. they have a pointer stick.
|
| no unified cpu/gpu memory, but you can get nvidia gpus and work
| with cuda rather than mlx.
|
| it's actually getting really good.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I have a Framework laptop and it's pretty sweet.
|
| I also own an M4 so I can compare the two.
|
| The M4 wins on slickness due to 1) unibody 2) Apple Silicon
| (and running local AI models, and the occasional game that is
| actually optimized for Mac like BG3) 3) excellent screen (HDR,
| high contrast, etc.), but the Framework wins on cool-ness and,
| frankly, ethics. (Especially since I put NixOS on it with ZFS-
| on-root mirrored across 2 internal SSD's.)
| johnboiles wrote:
| > there's for example Linux-specific software which puts the
| WiFi card in promiscuous mode and does useful stuff with that
|
| In the past, I've made this specific thing work with USB
| passthrough, Virtualbox, and external USB WiFi adapters with
| monitor mode support.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >I'm not really sure what to do.
|
| Get any of the modern laptops with good battery life, install
| linux + Elementary OS without any hacks or workarounds (or
| better yet, i3wm which is the best window manager for laptops),
| and never look back.
|
| Or do what I do, which is buy $200 dells/thinkpads of ebay, and
| for anything requiring CPU, just ssh into your home server.
|
| Personally I went a step further and use a lapdock with a
| samsung phone - acts like a laptop with Termux, and I can do
| pretty much everything with good battery life, because lapdock
| battery also charges the phone.
| Difwif wrote:
| I used to be in this camp until I tried and bought an M1
| Macbook as my daily driver. I thought I was going to be
| Thinkpad/XPS w/ Linux until I die. I don't love MacOS but
| POSIX is mostly good enough for me and the hardware is so
| good that I'm willing to look past the shortfalls.
|
| Seriously I would love to switch back to a full-time Linux
| distro but I'm more interested in getting work done and
| having a stable & performant platform. Loosing a day of
| productivity fixing drivers and patching kernels gets old.
| The M-series laptops have been the perfect balance for me so
| far.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| This was me too. It just works and it's nice to use.
| Sometimes life's too short to be hacking around all day.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >Loosing a day of productivity fixing drivers and patching
| kernels gets old.
|
| You are talking like it was 1997.
|
| The typical linux users don't have to do that. Only those
| who buy unsupported devices on purpose for the challenge to
| make them work.
| Difwif wrote:
| Well you should tell that to Dell because I have
| coworkers with a range of their models that are
| constantly fighting with webcams, audio, bluetooth, wifi,
| and Nvidia driver updates.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am surprised. My former employer game me a Dell and the
| experience was quite smooth on Fedora.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| They have a line they sell with linux pre installed.
| Those always work fine. It takes so e work to figure out
| which old ones on ebay were in that situation.
| viraptor wrote:
| If they're new models, the webcam issue is not Dell
| specific, but an Intel / ipu6 thing. It should be
| integrated into most systems by now though, even as an
| out of tree module. The rest should just work, especially
| on xps machines. Without specifying the models/issues,
| it's hard to take it as more than an anecdote.
| thiht wrote:
| That's just not true. Every coworker I know who use
| Linux[1] have occasional issues with webcams, mics, Slack
| notifications, whatever. It's all fixable and this kind
| of inconvenience can be worth it when balanced with the
| perceived advantages, but saying driver issues are a
| thing of the past is just a lie.
|
| [1]: I've seen these issues on Dell (XPS 13), Thinkpads,
| and HP laptops
| n3t wrote:
| Every coworker I know who use Windows have occasional
| issues with webcams, mics, Slack notifications, whatever.
| pimeys wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you mean? I've been in fast and
| crazy startups now years, all the time ton of work to do.
| Never having issues with Linux, the CachyOS and Fedora
| spins I run just keep on chugging day to day.
|
| Using a workstation and an AMD Thinkpad.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I wonder if you'll find apples native contains support useful
| at all
|
| https://github.com/apple/container
| hamandcheese wrote:
| "Native" is a misnomer as it is still virtualizing Linux.
| mort96 wrote:
| No, it doesn't really solve any of the issues I mention.
| baby wrote:
| Why is docker so bad on mac and why is apple not fixing that?
| oblio wrote:
| Because they don't care and don't have to care.
| zbentley wrote:
| There is now work from Apple in that direction:
| https://github.com/apple/container
|
| No idea what the future of that project, or its potential
| integration with other container management systems might be,
| but it is certainly interesting at first glance.
| m463 wrote:
| Most engineers/scientists/tech people will just have to
| understand at a fundamental level that they are just not the
| target market for apple.
|
| That is the kind of thing that needs a strong vision from the
| top to provide.
| oblio wrote:
| The eternal optimism of the techie mind. I saw this coming
| when Asahi was launched.
|
| What they did was impressive but nobody is superhuman and
| inherently Apple is all about control. Linux will always be -
| at best - a third rate citizen.
| EbEsacAig wrote:
| /thread
| jacquesm wrote:
| My daily driver is a 2014 Thinkpad. The only mod compared to
| stock is that I maxed out the ram. It's been an absolutely
| amazing machine, especially given that it cost all of $200
| second hand (W540). I find it really hard justifying buying
| hardware that doesn't allow me to do anything that I couldn't
| do before. Up to 2003 or so I was always chasing the latest and
| the greatest but now I find that I can do everything I need on
| this old beast.
| EbEsacAig wrote:
| I used to have a W540. It was a stunningly useful and
| practical machine. Fond memories.
| EbEsacAig wrote:
| > I wish things had turned out otherwise, and we didn't have to
| choose between buying a Mac without Linux support and buying a
| 3-5 year old Mac with Linux support. And I expect that as time
| goes on, Asahi will just fall further and further behind.
|
| IMO your expectation is correct. Such is the fate of _all_
| reverse engineering projects, or more generally, all heroism-
| based projects. Heroism is not sustainable. A sustainable
| business model is sustainable.
| thiht wrote:
| > I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro. It's getting a bit
| old, so it would be nice to replace it
|
| Why though? My 2021 M1 still feels more beefy than pretty much
| any other laptop on the market. I have a M1, and an M4 for work
| and I barely feel any difference between the 2, they're pretty
| much top notch. Sure, the M4 pro is more future proof, I can
| imagine myself still using my M1 in 2030 and my M4 in 2035. But
| I honestly don't see the point in replacing an M1 with an M4
| today.
|
| Just my opinion though, I'm sure you have your own reasons for
| wanting to upgrade (I would guess RAM), but manage your
| expectations: the M1 is still an amazing machine.
| nicce wrote:
| How is the project actually doing? Feels like most original core
| developers have quit.
| dagmx wrote:
| The project is currently focusing primarily on reducing the
| number of patches against the Linux kernel which has somewhat
| slowed their rapid development rate.
|
| It's a massive task keeping the large number of patches going,
| while simultaneously trying to land them in the mainline
| kernel.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The project is currently mainly focused on upstreaming as many
| of their patches as possible, and maintaining the existing
| code. M3/4/5 have a completely different GPU instruction set
| from M1/2, so they would need a large amount of new reverse
| engineering to get the GPU support where it is on M1/2. I don't
| believe there's anyone working on GPU support for those newer
| platforms.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| They're still working on M1 support. Still no thunderbolt or
| display port alt mode.
|
| Its painful to watch people choose Apple over a user respecting
| company that supports Linux well
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There really aren't that many companies that respect users and
| support Linux well that need this sort of work done on them.
|
| Then again, the hardware that those companies release isn't
| quite as good as Apple Silicon, IMHO.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's not so much that other companies support Linux. It is
| that they support industry standards and protocols. Apple is
| totally vertically integrated and they always cut corners on
| hardware implementation to save money. This means their
| hardware does not work how it should and requires custom work
| arounds and patches if you want to run a normal OS.
|
| This is very different from PC hardware. It doesn't need to
| support linux. It just needs to not cut corners.
| DannyBee wrote:
| i mean, i did a bunch of the m3 support that m1n1 has, and i
| did it because it was fun. The reason you get blinking cursor
| and not linux is because hacking on the linux kernel is
| decidely less fun (I did a bunch of wifi work).
| transpute wrote:
| Is it theoretically feasible for Apple Silicon M3 (with
| nested hypervisor support) to run pKVM as bare-metal
| hypervisor?
| donaldihunter wrote:
| Oh, that's interesting. Linux kernel hacking is the area
| where I have the best chance of contributing something. If I
| can get my m3 max bootstrapped to a blinking cursor then I'd
| be very happy to participate in kernel work.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I appreciate the focus on older hardware and virtualization
| challenges in this thread, but I'm also interested in the broader
| implications of the Asahi work beyond just running Linux on used
| Macs. Getting a bespoke SoC supported in the mainline kernel and
| rewriting low-level firmware in Rust could set a precedent for
| other ARM64 platforms with opaque boot chains.
|
| It might also encourage more laptop makers to ship machines with
| first-class Linux support so people aren't forced to pick between
| hardware they like and the OS they want. And for folks who don't
| need a Mac specifically, the growing ecosystem of non-Apple ARM
| laptops could offer a smoother path than shoe-horning Linux onto
| proprietary silicon.
| nightski wrote:
| I mean sure, but ARM SoC in Linux has been a thing for quite
| some time in the embedded space. This is hardly new.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| That's true, but the Apple chips are not built on the base
| Arm designs and don't use Adreno, they also use more
| proprietary IP in the SoC.
| monocasa wrote:
| Adreno is proprietary IP; it's an exclusively Qualcomm
| thing.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| True, meant Mali, mb
| achairapart wrote:
| Twenty years ago people went to great lenghts to run the best OS
| available at that time on cheap commodity x86 hardware with
| hackintoshes. Fast forward to today, similar efforts are made to
| run linux on the best hardware available. It's funny how things
| turn around.
| fluoridation wrote:
| To clarify, people then and now have in common trying to run
| the software they prefer on the hardware they prefer. There's
| no objective "best"; it depends on what you need.
| wyager wrote:
| For the vast majority of customers' utility functions, Apple
| has the best hardware (both in absolute and per dollar terms)
| on the market right now. It's not "objectively best", but it
| certainly meets the most stringent definition of "best"
| that's still useful in conversation.
| fluoridation wrote:
| If that was the case, the vast majority of the world would
| be using Apple hardware and/or software, and yet that's not
| the case.
| philistine wrote:
| The various Hackintosh projects are on life support not because
| the interest for that kind of thing has died; it's because
| Apple doubled down on chain-of-trust and is abandoning x86.
|
| Apple made it impossible to use iMessage on a Hackintosh
| without spoofing another Mac that's not in use. That pushed A
| LOT of people away from using a Hackintosh.
|
| The second thing is abandoning x86. Apple has already announced
| that macOS 26 is the last release to support their Intel
| machines. That means that next year, there will be no way to
| run the latest macOS on any Intel machine. That's basically the
| end date for all these projects, as the Hackintosh crowd has
| always been about running the latest version of the OS. They're
| not interested in running System 7!
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Even before the AS transition, GPUs were becoming more
| important and Mac OS GPU support was becoming even worse. At
| some point you were basically limited to a few AMD options.
| Very unattractive OS for a custom tower by then.
|
| Like I did put a Nvidia 650ti? in my Mac Pro, and it sorta
| worked initially under OSX, but way slower and glitchier than
| in Windows and eventually just fully incompatible.
| philistine wrote:
| Yeah, Nvidia was forsaken by Apple after a kerfuffle where
| Apple blamed Nvidia for problems and Nvidia didn't want to
| take that blame.
|
| Only Nintendo and the OEM PC companies have been able to
| make an integration relationship work.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Well there's that (I think cause MBPs kept BBQing) and
| also Mac OS deprecating OpenGL and overall being
| different in ways that often prevent you from taking
| advantage of a dedicated GPU.
|
| Which I'm fine with on my laptop or Mac mini, but if
| you're building a tower with a GPU, yeah
| pengaru wrote:
| Hate to break it to you but before the term "hackintosh"
| existed there was an army of folks making linux work well on
| cheap commodity x86 hardware, the success of which ushered in
| the dot-com booms - filling datacenters across the globe with
| cheap x86 hardware running linux. A reality persisting to this
| day, though with far fewer players thanks to decades of
| consolidation.
|
| The hackintosh is a far smaller and more ephemeral niche hardly
| qualifying as ever orienting the proverbial table.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > Fast forward to today, similar efforts are made to run the
| best OS available now (linux) on Apple hardware.
|
| Ftfy.
| risho wrote:
| when this project was first announced I was incredibly skeptical
| it would ever become something useful. then sometime last year
| they actually put out something that worked way better than i
| ever imagined and i became incredibly optimistic and hopeful.
| then hector, lina and alyssa all left and this project appears to
| be on life support.
| hanikesn wrote:
| >this project appears to be on life support
|
| Why do you think that? The upstreaming efforts are more
| fruitful than ever.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Symptomatic of "if it's not growing it's dead"
| investor/programmer outlook
| thiagobbt wrote:
| While upstreaming is incredibly important for long-term
| support it isn't nearly as exciting as the reverse
| engineering work the people mentioned were responsible for
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Honestly, I almost wish there was a push to get Apple to be more
| open on their OS code instead of trying to get Linux to support
| Apple Silicon. MacOS is a BSD of sorts, after all.
|
| While it'd be nice to be able to run Linux on my M2 MBP someday
| when Apple stops supporting it, ultimately, the reason many (but
| not all) power users buy Macs is because they want the UNIX/UNIX-
| like work done for them and for it to run on fast hardware. If I
| want something more customizable, I'm barking up the wrong
| hardware tree.
|
| Does that solve the question of "what do I do with this Mac that
| no longer gets updates?"? No, but most people either list theirs
| for sale to someone who isn't as bothered by that, or trade it in
| at an Apple Store for credit towards the new shiny.
| FallCheeta7373 wrote:
| Not happening--at least not under the current leadership--
| apple is not in it from the tech side, they're a design
| company, they make appliances not computers. Your macbook is
| like a fridge with certain restricted interfaces. The mindset
| and tradition is different from purely unix hacking, despite
| the userbase having an overlap. If you can convince your fridge
| manufacturer to be more open with their code in a competitive
| market, then maybe you can convince apple with similar sort of
| reasoning, probably involving some benefit in terms of profit.
| bjackman wrote:
| The actual update: https://asahilinux.org/2025/10/progress-
| report-6-17/
| icar wrote:
| Thanks, this should replace the current URL.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I don't understand the obsession with the new apple hardware. How
| is it worth this much trouble? My XPS13 works perfectly with
| Linux straight out of the box for half the price... and never in
| my entire life have I needed more than the eight hours of battery
| life it reliably delivers for me.
|
| I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's
| the disconnect? But seriously, there are few things in the world
| that matter less to me than how fast my laptop is. I did some
| real work a few weeks ago on a ten-year-old Celeron POS and it
| didn't bother me at all.
| pankalog wrote:
| > I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe
| that's the disconnect?
|
| Yeah, I believe that's where the disconnect is. I moved from a
| Thinkpad to the 16in Macbook Pro with the M3 Pro chip, and I am
| able to reliably build and write code that runs locally on 5
| different Docker containers, for at least 10 hours. I once did
| a 48hr hackathon with this laptop and I only had to charge it I
| think 4 or 5 times. I need to be very mobile as I'm going to
| different locations to attend meetings or write code, and it's
| able to do everything reliably for a (very extended) workday.
|
| I would have to move from wall socket to wall socket on my old
| Thinkpad, but something to note is that I was using Windows 10
| at the time. The Macbook's best-in-class (in performance-per-
| watt and per-kg) hardware combined with the software was
| something that became unbeatable for my workflow.
|
| That being said, my next laptop will be a reliable, non-Apple,
| but Apple-like performance, ARM64 laptop, and I'll be using
| some Linux distribution on it.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| It's not that I actually write code over SSH (I usually work
| with wifi disabled), more that I just push things to big
| machines for building and testing them, rather than doing
| that locally. My pair of 32-thread Ryzen machines are worth
| their weight in gold for the amount they juice my
| productivity. No laptop can ever touch that, for obvious
| physics reasons.
|
| I can do everything you're describing with my XPS13. I
| regularly go days without plugging it in.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I do most of my work over SSH on a Mac. Keyboard, trackpad,
| screen, battery life, video call peripherals.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I suppose for folks here, they like being able to do dev work
| (as well as web browsing) on a fast laptop with low power draw.
| Sounds like that's not exactly your use case.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| > they like being able to do dev work (as well as web
| browsing) on a fast laptop with low power draw.
|
| I guess that's hard for me to understand... do you just not
| have to compile things? Or do you just not mind waiting?
|
| No matter how exceptional the laptops are for laptops, a real
| computer plugged into a wall is always going to _vastly_
| outperform them...
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| To add a bit (I wrote this in response to a deleted
| comment):
|
| The yocto build I'm currently working on takes about six
| hours to complete on my biggest machine. Yes, it's an
| incremental build, but warming up a laptop would require
| several days of 100% CPU :)
|
| It's also not really possible to test locally, even a VM of
| the right architecture is insufficient without doing a
| bunch of work to make it match the target hardware.
|
| Often you can build a quick little ad hoc thing that lets
| you test some piece of it locally, but sometimes it's too
| much work.
|
| Frequently I need to compile test several dozen Linux
| kernel configurations with different cross compilers, each
| of which takes half an hour to run on the huge box.
|
| I can't imagine doing any of this locally on a single
| laptop, I would get 1% as much done as I currently do.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i was using Asahi on my M1 laptop, it was great, but have since
| switched to UTM.app (from the app store, but available outside it
| too), and configured to use Apple Silicon Hypervisor rather than
| QEMU, and it's been excellent, on M2 series processors at least.
| UTM warns its wrapping of the Apple Silicon hypervisor is not
| perfectly tested, but it's perfectly great.
|
| (When configuring a new hypervisor-ed OS, i use a Fedora ISO for
| arm64 (or aarch64 (?)) and in the UTM.app gui choose Linux, which
| reveals the option to use native Apple Silicon hypervisor over
| QEMU.)
|
| just my $0.02
| qudat wrote:
| If I was stuck on Mac and wanted Linux for my dev machine, I
| would go the VM route. I did that over a decade ago and it was
| great.
|
| Asahi, while a heroic project, was always going to struggle
| long term and I wonder what kind of battery hit you take using
| it. I'd rather keep the vertical integration in the Mac
| ecosystem and just log into a vm that I full screen. Best of
| both worlds
| ai-christianson wrote:
| I'm mainly a Linux user, but recently switched to a M4 mbp for
| video editing (davinci resolve) and local LLMs.
|
| Is Asahi able to run mlx with the full Apple hw optimizations?
|
| I'm guessing it's a long shot for Resolve to run there, let alone
| with hardware optimizations.
| shortformblog wrote:
| They mention Hollow Knight in their update, but I should note
| that Silksong also works on my M1 Air flawlessly. Games with more
| 3D graphics also work to some degree. I tried Bakeru on it and
| got decent results though the texture load time was significant.
|
| Asahi has been fun to watch, and I'm happy it's still moving
| along, even with the messiness of the past twelve months. I
| rarely boot into MacOS on the machine these days, and while I'm
| mostly using a PC these days, I am debating getting a used M1 Pro
| or Max for the battery life benefits (and access to Mac graphics
| programs on the rare occasions I need them).
|
| The fact that M3 is technically possible, even if likely a while
| off, is promising.
| porphyra wrote:
| I remember my mind was blown when Alyssa Rosenzweig demoed
| Cyberpunk running on Asahi Linux a year ago.
| https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html
| rootnod3 wrote:
| I am still waiting for OpenBSD to add support. They do use Asahi
| to get the install going. But unless I am mistaken, only up to M2
| is supported now.
| cchance wrote:
| I honestly dont get why apple isn't more open with their drivers
| and stuff to get linux working on macbooks, they don't charge for
| macos, most of their profit comes from hardware it feels like
| opening up macbooks to be used by people that are linux diehards
| would just open up more sales
| smith7018 wrote:
| Most of their profits come from software or ecosystem lock ins.
| So while they do profit off of each Mac sold, if those sales
| don't translate to more iCloud subscriptions, app purchases, or
| iPhones then it really doesn't make financial sense for them.
| Even if they only had 3 people and a PM dedicated to Linux
| support, that's still roughly a million dollars a year for a
| nebulous promise of "slightly more hardware sales." It sucks
| but it's the reality of the situation.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| casual observers "discover" that Apple is deeply controlling
| with regards to monetization.. sharing or open-for-its-own-
| sake are not welcome
| Analemma_ wrote:
| As other comments have mentioned, they have kind of a "total
| hands-off; neither help nor hinder" policy around 3rd-party
| operating systems on Apple Silicon. They aren't providing any
| kind of assistance, but they aren't doing anything to obstruct
| it either: even though the Linux drivers have to be reverse-
| engineered, the actual installation process is very easy and
| not inhibited at all by the extensive cryptographic boot chain
| protections built into macOS, even though it easily could be.
| And as far as I know, what little they have said publicly about
| this is that they don't intend to ever try and actively block
| Linux.
|
| So in that sense I think it's mostly just a resources thing:
| they don't feel it's worth their time and money to assist this
| process. Which, honestly, I can't get that upset about: we're
| not entitled to Apple spending resources to help people install
| other operating systems on their hardware; so long as they
| don't actively impede the process I see no reason to get upset.
| ef2k wrote:
| The amount of effort and polish that goes into Asahi is
| commendable. I installed it on an M1 MBP and the process was
| seamless, from the initial curl, to it handling the disk
| partitions. It was a work of art. Fighting to install native
| linux on apple silicon is an uphill battle though.
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