[HN Gopher] Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19
___________________________________________________________________
Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19
Author : mkurz
Score : 382 points
Date : 2026-02-18 10:00 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asahilinux.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (asahilinux.org)
| sohrob wrote:
| I often wonder whether the folks at Apple have the Asahi team on
| their radar. Are they in awe of the reverse engineering marvels
| coming out of the Asahi project, or are they indifferent to it?
| Kenji wrote:
| Certainly they know about it. There is no way they don't.
| Bigpet wrote:
| I think the dev that was responsible for the bootloader or some
| security chip having the option to be opened posted on twitter
| a while ago. Pretty sure he implied or mentioned that this was
| what he was hoping for.
|
| Edit: this was what I was remembering:
| https://x.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914714055368704
| bigyabai wrote:
| In fairness; that decision predates the existence of Asahi.
| Unless Apple was working with the community before Apple
| Silicon dropped, this isn't much acknowledgement of their
| existence.
| worldsavior wrote:
| I don't think they care. It brings more customers to Apple.
| chippiewill wrote:
| IIRC Marcan mentioned something he found that had been
| deliberately put into the Mac boot loader that made booting
| alternative operating systems easier and perhaps making it
| possible altogether.
| jsheard wrote:
| That's apparent enough from the fact that you don't need a
| jailbreak exploit to boot non-Apple-signed kernels on a Mac,
| unlike iPads with exactly the same silicon. They are
| intentionally configured differently.
| imglorp wrote:
| Why the locking difference on platforms?
|
| I so want to run my os on ipad and save it from the ewaste
| bin.
| szmarczak wrote:
| iPads are cheaper than MacBooks and more popular. They'd
| rather prefer if you bought another one instead of using
| it indefinitely. The same with smartphones. The answer
| always has been: I like money!
| signa11 wrote:
| xeno-kovah is responsible for that one. see the most
| excellent 39c3 video "asahi linux porting linux to apple
| silicon" for more information.
| wpm wrote:
| Yes, because if they didn't, the fact that macOS doesn't lock
| you down in a sandbox means that is more like the entire boot
| chain would've been jailbroken. The boot chain shared for the
| most part with iOS devices, where Apple 100% does not want
| "jailbreaks" because it means App Stores that they don't get
| to take 15-30% from.
|
| The happy path on the Mac was provided so the talent capable
| of booting Linux on it could take the happy path that hides
| all of the stuff Apple would rather not have a bunch of
| reverse engineers sniffing around.
| WD-42 wrote:
| They are aware. They are also aware of the designs sitting in
| the cabinet right next to them in Cupertino that would make all
| the reverse engineering instantly unnecessary.
|
| Such a monumentally Sisyphean waste of effort in behalf of the
| Asahi devs in my opinion.
|
| If you care about personal computing or Linux, don't buy a Mac.
| ckbkr10 wrote:
| I'm still surprised how much drive this project has, a
| platform that doesn't want to support it and could introduce
| breaking changes any day.
|
| Just why?
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| This horse has been beat to death on HN. Because the apple
| laptop ecosystem is the highest quality laptop you can
| purchase.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| Maybe so, but nothing beats the 2008-2013 Thinkpad
| keyboards. The key travel and tactility are unmatched
| even by later Thinkpads. Also no trackpoint.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > nothing beats the 2008-2013 Thinkpad keyboards
|
| Maybe so, but 15-20 year old laptops are definitely
| starting to show their age.
|
| An M2 MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is only 4 years
| old, has a fairly OK keyboard, and is still in striking
| distance of current high-end ultrabooks when it comes to
| performance.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| The only thing my X230 struggles to do is run LLMs
| locally. My needs are simple, and I think normal people
| (i.e. probably not most people on this site) don't have
| needs that are any more demanding than mine.
|
| Granted, this is running GNU/Linux rather than Windows.
| If you're running Windows then yeah, they show their age.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Asahi Linux is certainly not targeted at "normal people".
| Normal people would just run macOS
|
| There's this saying, all progress is done by unreasonable
| people, because reasonable people just accept things are
| the way they are
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > My needs are simple
|
| Congrats, but I think you may be in a small minority when
| it comes to developers shopping for laptops.
|
| Personally, I had to upgrade from a late-model i9 MacBook
| Pro to this M2 MacBook Pro, because the npm + docker
| setup at work was taking upwards of 20 minutes for a
| production build...
| criddell wrote:
| I think maybe you don't understand what the needs are of
| normal people. It's only partially about what software
| they run.
|
| I recommend Mac's to the people in my life because when
| they have a problem they can take the machine to the
| Apple Store in the mall. Or if they want to understand
| iPhoto or Pages better, they can go to the Apple Store
| and take a class. They like Apple laptops because they
| look nice, they feel great, sound amazing (for a laptop)
| and have excellent battery life.
|
| Like you, I have a ThinkPad (a P-something) and, frankly,
| it kind of sucks. It's all plasticy, it flexes, battery
| life is a joke, the trackpad is meh, and the fans are
| almost always running. I do like the keyboard though (I'm
| a fan of backspace).
| ac29 wrote:
| I think an X230 would be performant enough for 95% of the
| things I do, but a 14 year old CPU is going to have
| pretty terrible battery life for anything more than very
| light usage. And things that would be light usage on a
| recent PC, like watching video encoded with a modern
| codec, would be fairly taxing on an old CPU with no
| hardware decode.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| True. By the time I upgraded from my X200 (fantastic
| machine, noticeably outdated), the lack of software
| support for hardware decoding H264 was noticeable. Also
| being stuck with OpenGL 2.1 isn't the best either.
|
| I don't know what I'll do if and when my X230 stops being
| sufficient. If I could buy an Apple motherboard in an
| X200 chassis I'd do it in a heartbeat.
| dml2135 wrote:
| There are millions of Macbooks out there that will be out
| of MacOS support one day. If this project diverts just a
| fraction of them from becoming e-waste for a little, it
| will be a win.
|
| And then beyond that, there is simply no laptop
| manufacturer that meets the quality of Apple's hardware
| design. I like Macs for their hardware, the software is a
| compromise. A linux macbook would be my ideal laptop.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| dont most ppl just throw these laptops in the trash, or
| does someone give you money to turn an out of support mac
| in somewhere
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _does someone give you money to turn an out of support
| mac in somewhere_
|
| Yes, marketplace
| amelius wrote:
| > If you care about personal computing or Linux, don't buy a
| Mac.
|
| ^ This
|
| Also, the security teams at Apple must be watching Asahi
| closely from an exploit-perspective. They are basically holes
| that must be patched.
| gf000 wrote:
| Then why did they go out of their way and made the
| bootloader able to load another OS?
| amelius wrote:
| To get a better idea where their security holes are.
| celsius1414 wrote:
| So the opposite of a Trojan Horse? A Greek Gateway?
| amelius wrote:
| More like a Honeypot.
| Encounter wrote:
| From https://asahilinux.org/about/
|
| > Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple
| Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn't a hack or an
| omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these
| devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does
| not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though
| they probably won't help with the development).
| gf000 wrote:
| > don't buy a Mac.
|
| As opposed to what hardware, then? Because this is pretty
| much how most other drivers became a thing in the first
| place. Linux has come a long way and due to it "winning the
| cloud" many hardware vendors started properly supporting it,
| but this was absolutely not the case for the longest times.
| WD-42 wrote:
| So we make excuses for apple because that's how it used to
| be back in the bad old days? This is flawed logic.
|
| As for alternatives, there are many.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Like which, especially with an ARM processor?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Your pick of the litter, if you intend to run Linux.
| Snapdragon laptops, Ampere desktops, or even a Raspberry
| Pi with an RTX 5090 if you wanted.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| I'm sure Apple has data showing that their extremely lockdown
| strategy is good for their business but I feel like I'm one
| of the potential customers Apple could gain if they didn't
| have that.
|
| They're a fantastic hardware company. But my admittedly very
| limited experience with Apple software, from iPad to their
| streaming service website, has been miserable. The UX doesn't
| work for me, the software just doesn't do what I want.
| Understandable, Apple very much designs their software to
| work for a particular workflow they come up with, if you like
| that workflow it's great, for someone like me it's miserable.
| But I would gladly buy their hardware if I could freely run
| an OS of my own choosing.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| I doubt that any company actually cares about what any of
| the myriad of metrics they collect mean at the C-suite
| level. I mean, "maybe" I just think it is unlikely. I bet
| 9/10 times someone just makes a decision about how things
| "ought" to be and then that's the way it is going forward.
|
| The assumption that this is a triangulated and well
| researched strategy doesn't match my experience in "real-
| job" world. I mean, maybe Apple is different because of
| their history, but I am not convinced anyone listens to
| anyone that articulates any math ideas beyond Algebra
| outside of some niche specialties because they don't
| understand it. And it's not that I'm some math god - I
| mean, that's what I studied, but there are people SO much
| more knowledgeable and capable, and they seem to get
| ignored too.
|
| Like, I'm sure the guy who runs an insurance company
| listens to the actuaries about relative risk, but mostly,
| what I've just seen is someone makes a decision, and then
| finds post hoc ergo proctor hoc rationales for why this was
| a good decision down the line when they have to account for
| their choices.
|
| For instance, it took my like a year at my old job, but I
| finally got most of the KPIs we were using to set strategy
| cancelled. The data we were using to generate those KPIs?
| Well in a few cases, after you seasonally differenced the
| data was no different than white noise. No autocorrelation
| whatsoever. In ALL the cases the autocorrelation was weak
| and it was all evaporated after a month or 2. You could
| MAYBE fit an MA model to it, but that seemed dodgy to me.
| And like, I'm not a major expert - I took 1 time series
| class in gradschool, and frankly, time series is kind of
| hard. But management had ZERO idea of what I was talking
| about when I was like, "hey, I don't think these numbers
| actually mean anything at all? Did anyone run an ACF?"
|
| Then each month someone higher up the chain would say, "why
| is this number low?" And then they go out and search
| through the reams of data they had to come up with an
| answer that plausibly explained things. Was the number
| particularly "low?" No, it was within expected statistical
| noise thresholds, you are probably going to have at least
| have 1 number out of whack every 20 cycles or so... You
| still had to spend an hour in a meeting coming up with
| reasons for _why_ it was low that went beyond "ummm, well,
| this is kind of random, and we'd expect to see this sort of
| thing ever couple years once or twice, we won't know if
| it's a trend for a few more months."
|
| Anyway, this is a long anecdote to explain why I have no
| confidence that most companies do any sort of actual
| introspection. CEO creates targets and underlings build
| models that show how they're meeting or not meeting those
| targets. Now, hilariously, with Apple in particular I might
| be wrong, because in Tim Cook's defense, I'm pretty sure
| his education is in Industrial Engineering? So if any CEO
| is thinking about that stuff, it's him. Still, I am totally
| and completely unimpressed with the C-Suite sort of
| thinkers.
|
| They're not dumb - like I've never really had a straight up
| dumbass manager outside of shitty lower jobs or small-mom-
| and-pop businesses? But I have seldom met any company that
| actually cared about the numbers - most say they do, but
| most just use those numbers to justify decisions they've
| already made.
|
| Am I just unlucky? I'm I the witch in church here?
| cardanome wrote:
| The problem is that now one else is currently making hardware
| that is competitive with apple silicone. Apple is the only
| one offering both performance and battery time.
|
| I love my Thinkpads, I really do but they are bulky, loud and
| the battery doesn't last very long. They are not an option
| for many people.
| porphyra wrote:
| Technically:
|
| 1. Asahi Linux's battery life is like 2/3 as long as on
| macOS
|
| 2. The Thinkpad X1 Carbon is just about as thin and nice as
| a Mac but it also costs just as much.
|
| 3. Apple is still leading in single core CPU speeds but x86
| has caught up or surpassed M devices in both multicore and
| graphics. And even last gen x86 can beat the 3-generations-
| old M2 that is the latest one supported by Asahi Linux.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Re:3- only because they've only released the base M3 so
| far- once they release Pro/Max configs they'll easily
| regain the lead, as seen by the single core dominance.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| If I have learned one thing it's is that current corporate
| strategy is no guarantee for the future. If you want to
| purchase a laptop now and want a great linux experience, then
| the M2 Is a great option. But don't assume that M(n+1) will
| ever get support.
|
| This reasoning is essentially just as true for any other
| laptop maker Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Framework, HP etc might also
| decide to bomb linux support at any time.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| Great work. I believe used M1/M2 machines will be favored by
| young developers as their personal fun laptop in a few years,
| like the Thinkpad T420 used to be. For different reasons, of
| course.
|
| Do the M4 and M5 GPUs also change a lot from the M3? I hope it's
| not too much work to get those going once M3 is usable.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Public information seems to describe the M4 GPU as mostly a
| performance-oriented refresh of the one from M3. M5 has brought
| bigger changes, not least neural/tensor accelerators on chip.
| haunter wrote:
| I just like the build quality and they are reaching the 200EUR
| threshold on the used market. I bought one with 16GB RAM and a
| small black strip one the side of the screen (don't bother me)
| for 230EUR last week
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> they are reaching the 200EUR threshold on the used
| market._
|
| Where?! I just cheeked the used market in Austria and 2020
| M1s go for at least 350 for the 8GB RAM models and 450 for
| the 16GB model. Your 230 for the 16gb one fells more like a
| rare exception but not them norm everywhere.
| haunter wrote:
| I'm in Hungary and usually check Facebook Marketplace,
| Vinted, and another two local sites
|
| Here is another one from today, just messeged them. 230EUR
| rose gold one, and that's without any bargaining offer
| https://files.catbox.moe/exbrfc.jpg
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Damn that's lucky. I checked facebook marketplace in
| Austria and prices are double that of what you're
| showing, even on Intel macbooks, there's no M1 macs for
| 200 Euros, only 400 Euros and up. Same on Vinted. No 200
| Euro M1s, only at 2x the price.
|
| The ones that I saw similarly low to yours are obvious
| scams from scam profiles all repeating the same message
| in the ad.
|
| So maybe the ones you saw are scams as well. Otherwise
| hungary seems to be a lucky exception for some odd
| reason. Maybe because people have less disposable income,
| IDK?
|
| Anyway, I wouldn't spend 400 Euros on a used mac with no
| warranty. The point of buying an old ThinkPad for cheap
| was that if something broke on it you could easily swap
| that part yourself for cheap because it was easily
| repairable and the used market was flooded with spare
| parts. But if your used macbook dies out of warranty,
| then you're shit out of luck, you can't fix anything,
| it's 400 Euros wasted.
| haunter wrote:
| >So maybe the ones you saw are scams as well
|
| I bought one already so I know it's not a scam. Scams
| usually communicate badly and they don't want to meet you
| in a public space (like a McDonald's with free wifi)
|
| Obviously ymmv
|
| >Anyway, I wouldn't spend 400 Euros on a used mac with no
| warranty.
|
| This I agree with. I still prefer Thinkpads too but these
| M1s are also pretty good in almost every sense except for
| repairability
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| isn't this is just exchange rate? 1AUD is 0.6 Eur
| karmajunkie wrote:
| Austria, not Australia.
| barnabee wrote:
| I still haven't felt much urge to upgrade my 64gb MacBook Pro
| M1 Max.
|
| The biggest issue I have with it is macOS Tahoe. Guess I really
| should be checking out Asahi on it!
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Before you do, note that battery time on Asahi is abysmal at
| best, so if you're on battery often I'd really reconsider.
| cromka wrote:
| Abysmal? I am getting 8 hours on my M1 air with 80% battery
| life on it. What are you talking about?
| testing22321 wrote:
| Abysmal by macOS on m series standards, pretty decent by
| everything else standards.
| drooopy wrote:
| S**, I haven't felt much urge to upgrade from my 16GB M1 Air
| and I even use it to play some Windows games under Crossover.
| Quite possibly the best laptop I've ever owned.
| monocasa wrote:
| Apparently there's changes to boot that are more or less
| understood, but require some heavy work to handle.
|
| Basically starting with M4 you have a choice between starting
| with Apple's page table monitor already running in their
| guarded mode extension, or all apple extensions disabled on the
| CPU cores.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > I believe used M1/M2 machines will be favored by young
| developers as their personal fun laptop in a few years
|
| I doubt it. For one, the SSDs have limited lifespans, and are
| soldered on the mainboard. They'll be fine enough for the
| planned life of the laptop, but eventually secondary market
| laptops will start seeing waves of failures, at which point
| people learn that purchasing one is a gamble.
|
| The entire Apple silicon lineup is designed for limited
| lifespan.
| netule wrote:
| Exactly, the entire appeal of Thinkpads is their ability to
| be repaired and upgraded by the end user. MacBooks are
| designed to be disposable.
| jonhohle wrote:
| It's really a shame. May last "favorite" MacBook was from
| 2013 where everything was upgradable. I bought the fastest
| Core processor with the lowest everything else and upgraded
| to 16GB of RAM, SSD (granted at SATA speeds) and a second
| data drive in the optical drive bay. What luxury!
| cromka wrote:
| Absolutely not.
|
| SSD can be resoldered and that service is actually becoming
| popular and inexpensive. It's not just MacBooks, nearly all
| laptops have SSD and RAM soldered. This will become a totally
| normal thing in a few years from now.
| nanliu wrote:
| It's on chip for the m series and not soldered to the
| motherboard.
| testing22321 wrote:
| The ram is on chip, the ssd is soldered to the
| motherboard. There are tons of YT vids showing people
| upgrading them.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Neither the ram nor the ssd is on chip. The ram is on
| package, the ssd is on board.
|
| On chip means literally on top of the silicon, like how
| AMD X3D cpus mount the SRAM chip. On modern Apple devices
| the ram is mounted on the organic package substrate. The
| difference is significant, and it's shitty that Apple
| outright lied about it.
| wtallis wrote:
| I think that particular definition of "on chip" is
| entirely your invention. I've usually seen it broadly
| used for anything on-package, whether it's on-die or on a
| separate die within the same package. "On chip"
| definitely does not have much if any history of referring
| specifically to stacked dies with TSVs, because that has
| been a very niche packaging technique until recently, and
| "on chip" is a much more broadly used term.
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| The RAM yes but not the SSD modules
| wtallis wrote:
| Soldered storage is extremely uncommon for laptops not from
| Apple. You pretty much only find it in very low-end
| Chromebook type hardware that's using eMMC for cost
| reasons, and a small fraction of more expensive Qualcomm-
| based laptops that use UFS for no good reason. All
| mainstream PC laptops use M.2 NVMe storage.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| I have a 120GB SSD from 2013 that saw typical
| gaming/workstation usage since it was bought, and it still
| works fine.
|
| I think repairability is important, but I don't think it will
| stop those laptops from being popular.
| Retr0id wrote:
| 120Hz is awesome! That was the last feature I personally felt was
| missing from my M1 Pro MBP.
| thunder_under wrote:
| For me lack of thunderbolt is a showstopper, when it's
| supported a lot of needed peripherals will be supported
| automatically. They have apparently been working on tb support
| since the m1 was released 4 years ago.
| 306bobby wrote:
| To be frank, TB support on Linux in general is kinda crap.
| I'm not surprised this might take them a while, and I'm sure
| it's lower priority compared to other things on the road map
| ForHackernews wrote:
| This is incredibly impressive and also quite sad. Six years
| later, we have a very-nearly-right kernel for the M1.
|
| Apple is launching the M5. It seems like the future is going to
| be a world of closed systems and custom silicon, with any free
| software lagging far behind.
| madduci wrote:
| But we have still the power of choice: moving consumers away
| from such closed platforms would affect their business.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| First you have to convince consumers to give up on systems
| that work with support to development kits that are build it
| yourself with (lots of) caveats, which is why the year of the
| Linux desktop still hasn't arrived.
| madduci wrote:
| Not really true. There are platforms and systems that are
| stable and open.
| jsheard wrote:
| And that's _with_ Apple deliberately leaving the bootloader
| open on Macs. If they had locked it down like they do on every
| other product then it would be even more of a struggle, and
| there 's always the looming possibility that they'll just
| change their mind with future models.
| imiric wrote:
| This is my main concern. I applaud the effort that the Asahi
| team is doing, but there's no way that I would rely on a
| small team of inarguably passionate and talented hackers to
| maintain a system that uses reverse engineered software
| running on hardware manufactured by a company historically
| opposed to everything they're doing, even if they left this
| small door open for that.
|
| It would be like going back to the days of early Linux and
| all the Windows-specific hardware we had to deal with, but
| extrapolated to the entire system. As impressive as all of
| their work is, it's not worth the IMO minor UX benefits of
| Apple's hardware.
|
| Mainline Linux on ARM is solid these days; new x86 chips from
| Intel perform very well and are reasonably power efficient;
| and battery life of most professional laptops in Linux is
| quite good. For example, I get a good ~12 hours of work done
| on an X1 Carbon Gen 13 from a single charge. This may not be
| as impressive as Macbooks, and the packaging certainly isn't
| as sleek, but it's good enough for me. The tradeoff for a
| solid software experience, modulo the usual Linux
| shenanigans, is worth it to me.
| kace91 wrote:
| Thankfully, hardware progress is relatively slow in a way that
| makes the m1 still a perfectly capable machine. Maybe we'll
| have a future of "flagship community devices" where only one of
| every X is chosen as the supported option.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| M1 and M2 hardware isn't going anywhere. They're still great
| machines. And progress will be faster once the project finishes
| getting their code merged into the existing Linux kernel and
| distros. They have a first alpha of M3 ready, they're just
| refraining from releasing it in that state because they're so
| busy with everything else they're doing - a key difference
| compared to when they first came out with alpha support for the
| M1.
| ctolsen wrote:
| To add to that, they'll continue to be great machines running
| Linux even after Apple has bloated MacOS to death. Tahoe has
| made my M1 MBP feel significantly less snappy for no good
| reason.
| freeAgent wrote:
| I'm sad because the WiFi on my M1 MBA is dying/dead and
| there's no way to replace it without swapping the whole
| "logic board." Apple also doesn't support any USB WiFi
| adapters in recent versions of MacOS, so it's now tethered to
| a wired network connection. I'm just waiting for the M5
| refresh to hit at this point. Anyway, all that's to say that
| at least some M1 hardware is going to to the trash heap soon
| :(
| zozbot234 wrote:
| USB is a standard protocol, so Asahi should support USB
| WiFi adapters just fine. Is Bluetooth also impacted?
| joleyj wrote:
| Most of my software development career was spent working at a
| small company that sold a product that emulated the operating
| system developed and sold by a much, much larger company. The
| work was interesting and when you had a breakthrough or a small
| victory, it sure felt good. The challenge of keeping up was
| exhilarating and kept folks motivated to keep pressing forward.
|
| But eventually it wears you down. It's nearly impossible to
| keep up in the long-term. Normal product evolution, the sheer
| size of the behemoth and sometimes even malice on their part to
| thwart the little guy make it really tough to stay current.
|
| Think of Wine vis-a-vis Windows. They will never catch up.
| qdotme wrote:
| Except they did with Wine, in a way. They got to the point
| where sufficient number of third party software developers
| target the common base between Wine and Windows
| (Steam/Proton), electing to have broader compatibility rather
| than catching all the newest Windows-only APIs.
|
| I wonder how much similar behavior influence other buying
| choices. I've been eyeing an upgrade from M1 for a while - so
| far punting on it, mostly because of Asahi.
| joleyj wrote:
| I guess I wasn't aware that Wine pivoted from trying to be
| a general purpose, drop-in replacement for Windows to being
| a platform for games that only supports a subset of Windows
| functionality.
|
| It's much more difficult to keep current and support the
| full functionality of a much larger competitor's offering
| when you have to support everything. In my experience it
| was an all or nothing proposition. Either you emulated it
| 100% or you had nothing. I think Asahi is more in this
| realm maybe than Wine. It really needs to support all the
| hardware, 100%, or it's value is greatly diminished.
| lonjil wrote:
| > I guess I wasn't aware that Wine pivoted from trying to
| be a general purpose, drop-in replacement for Windows to
| being a platform for games that only supports a subset of
| Windows functionality.
|
| It didn't.
| qdotme wrote:
| Or ,,just enough" for the subset of users that is
| ,,enough" to ensure product viability. The absolutism of
| ,,all or nothing" is rooted in the strictly-better
| mentality for replacing something.
|
| For Wine/Proton, the core demographic is essentially
| gamers, who tend to overlap heavily with engineering
| population later on, and thus core population for
| Microsoft to capture and retain. Once Steam removed that
| vendor lock-in, the corporate discussion became more
| flexible.
|
| For Asahi (proud Asahi user for 4y now), the added value
| of ,,most powerful Linux/Arm64 laptop on the market"
| outweighs the few things that don't work on Asahi (HDMI
| out is probably the only one that occasionally matters
| for me, but screencasting works well enough). Yes, there
| are gaps, but they are smaller than things from Linux
| that are missing on OSX or Windows for me.
| freeAgent wrote:
| They never got Office or any Adobe (or similar) apps
| working, which is a huge miss.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What do you expect when you nerds keep buying their closed
| systems?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I've never bought any Mac, but I've been issued several at
| jobs. At one company, I scandalized the Apple fans by wiping
| OSX and installing Linux on a 10th gen Macbook Pro.
| logicprog wrote:
| So all of the nerds that care about open platforms stop
| buying their systems. Everyone else is going to keep doing it
| and they number us massively.
|
| And then there's the fact that it's still a dark ending if
| the best hardware out there -- even if we all refuse to buy
| it because we're on a moral high ground -- is a closed
| platform that we _have_ to refuse to buy.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The problem is, many "nerds" have little other options in
| hardware. Which ARM laptop would be the alternative? Even if
| you allow x86, which ones are as nice as the Macbooks? Then,
| there is the problem, that not everyone wants to be Linux-
| only in their setup. I definitely prefer macOS to W11.
| lm28469 wrote:
| At least Apple usually supports their hardware for ~7 years so
| that's plenty of time to get Asahi working on newer Ms. I don't
| care too much about getting instant support but I definitely
| care about having the option to use my hardware more than 7
| years
| ErneX wrote:
| Pretty much this.
| ErneX wrote:
| Apple launched the M5 in October, they sell 2 devices already
| with it:
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...
| psychoslave wrote:
| Will the gap remain just as big once earlier architectures are
| fully covered? I would expect some inertia bringing positive
| feedback in the development loop.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well that's the thing, if you're buying an Apple, you are
| supporting these closed hardware and software systems.
|
| At least PCs are open to a greater degree, despite Microsoft's
| attempts otherwise.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Man, I know it's probably going to be a while longer, but I'm
| really looking forward to the day I can run Asahi on my M4 Air.
| signa11 wrote:
| the money quote (at least for some) In fact,
| the current state of M3 support is about where M1 support was
| when we released the first Arch Linux ARM based beta;
| keyboard, touchpad, WiFi, NVMe and USB3 are all working, albeit
| with some local patches to m1n1 and the Asahi kernel
| (yet to make their way into a pull request) required. So that
| must mean we will have a release ready soon, right?
| Noaidi wrote:
| Just came to praise the seven heroic souls who are working on
| this wonderful project that my M1 is just waiting to install once
| battery life meets my needs. And may I ask why, with all the
| crypto and tech money floating around, does Asahi not have a
| fully funded staff of fifty people?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Perhaps you should make the first step towards funding?
| Noaidi wrote:
| Well, wish I could contribute something which could help, but
| I am homeless living with Schzioaffective disorder and the
| inflation and wealth inequity caused by the tech industry has
| left my life on a razors edge when it comes to money.
|
| But I would gladly match my 1% of my monthly income to anyone
| here who can pledge the same 1% who makes over $500k a year.
| So that would be my $20/month vs their $416/month.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > why, with all the crypto and tech money floating around, does
| Asahi not have a fully funded staff of fifty people?
|
| Because all that crypto and tech money is trying to turn money
| into much more money, and Asahi isn't a great candidate for
| doing that
| burner420042 wrote:
| I was watching Bladerunner last night, specifically the part
| where Ford is zooming in on the photograph using voice commands.
|
| Above the display is an amber horizontal bar that changes in sync
| with the activity on the display and my first thought was,
| "Finally they found a use for the Mac Touch Bar!"
|
| The Touch Bar has so many uses in Linux I can't wait for it to
| work.
| api wrote:
| Yeah it could have been useful but I feel like they nerfed it
| from the start. Still wasn't a big fan.
|
| I was hoping it was a tease for a fully software defined haptic
| feedback based keyboard. There's the obvious usefulness and
| coolness of that, and then the fact that you could make a
| laptop closer to the sealed clean-ability of a phone. Probably
| not quite submersible/waterproof due to ports and fans but able
| to survive a spill and be cleaned well.
| Etheryte wrote:
| My favorite feature of the Touch Bar was that, if memory serves
| well, force push was right next to cancel in one of the IDEs,
| can't recall if Xcode or Intellij.
| bayindirh wrote:
| It's a shame that Apple discontinued 3D touch. That thing was
| so cool and working so well, but not enough developers used
| it apparently.
| dijit wrote:
| The issue was discoverability.
|
| If your design language is "flat as we can make it" how can
| you visualise a third dimension? You have to already know
| which things are 3D touch ready.
|
| I blame the software refresh of Apple after the 5-series UI
| language was removed. Minimal mechanical design with rich
| complex software is a beautiful contrast that strengthens
| how both feel.
| culopatin wrote:
| I think they are talking about git force push, not 3D push,
| but yeah, I liked the concept of 3D Touch too
| amelius wrote:
| Wasted effort. Apple will just lock down their hardware more in
| their coming releases.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| It would be nice if projects like this were more willing to take
| on paid devs, and accept regular payment. have some sort of a
| subscription? I don't say that because my money is burning a
| whole in my pocket, but because I want to see more hardware
| support and stability. more testing, QA, but hunting.
|
| With the attention this project is getting, I'd be surprised if
| they can't get the equivalent of a small startup's seed round,
| just by crowdfunding. Do they have all the funding and resources
| they need or not? that's really my ultimate question. I know you
| can't just throw money at these things and make them happen
| faster sometimes.
| Sayrus wrote:
| They accept financial help on OpenCollective:
| https://opencollective.com/asahilinux
| navigate8310 wrote:
| I don't own Apple hardware, but just reading through it made me
| appreciate how gifted these souls are, doing the god's work. I
| hope they succeed with upstreaming their contributions and have a
| first-class Linux on ARM support.
| rishav_sharan wrote:
| Would anyone knows if asahi is ready to be a daily driver on the
| m1 sir tet? How is the battery life against stock macos?
| rishav_sharan wrote:
| Sorry, typo. Meant macbook air m1.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Depends A LOT on what exactly you need for day to day usage.
| E.g. some have higher requirements than others.
| neobrain wrote:
| For me, it has been ready as a daily driver for more than a
| year. Battery life is shorter than macos but still long enough
| that I don't have to think about it (which I can't say about
| any x86 laptops, even when they use iGPUs).
|
| The notable missing features are external displays (an
| experimental kernel branch is publicly available though) and
| the fingerprint sensor. That's about it, though. Given the
| amount of polish combined with the hardware, it's arguably the
| most polished Linux laptop experience you'll get.
| aj_hackman wrote:
| `sudo cpupower frequency-set -g conservative` might help a
| bit with battery life.
| xbar wrote:
| That is a tremendous update. Thank you for providing a great read
| about the diligent efforts of an increasing number of talented
| contributors: Oliver and Janne and Alyssa M and Shiz and Robert
| and Sven and James and Neal and chaos_princess and Davide and
| Lina and Michael and Sasha and Alyssa R have been killing.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Anyone know if the M4 GPU support has improved? I might not use
| Asahi "today" but I'm sure the day will come when my M4 laptop
| will be deemed "vintage" despite being perfectly fine hardware,
| and on that day I am most likely to flip over. Hopefully by then
| the GPU support is much richer.
| philodeon wrote:
| There is no support for M3/M4/M5 GPUs, period. Asahi Linux is
| only installable on M1 and M2 Macs.
| ziofill wrote:
| I'm asking out of pure curiosity, no ill intent: what makes
| hdmi/usb-c support hard to implement?
| Bratmon wrote:
| I read a great article that explained that. It's called "The
| one we're commenting on"
| small_model wrote:
| Couldn't Apple make a change that renders all this work a waste
| of time? i.e. lock out other OSe's from booting for example. I
| applaud the effort but given MacOs is already a capable unix I
| don't see the rewards being worth it.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| macOS is a capable UNIX, but it's not Linux - which has since
| become the standard platform for most cloud/web/ML development.
|
| As a developer myself who uses Fedora Asahi Remix as my daily
| driver, I can also tell you that Linux runs 2x faster (often
| much more) for everything compared to macOS - on the same
| hardware! And that performance gain is also important for my
| work :-)
| small_model wrote:
| Totally, I have a mini forums pc that runs void linux that I
| ssh into from my MB air. My worry is hitching your wagon to a
| project that could stop working one day through no fault of
| the devs.
| MBCook wrote:
| They could have done that day 1 of Apple Silicon.
|
| It's clear Apple went out of their way to make Asahi possible
| in a secure way. I believe people on the Asahi project have
| said as much.
| Teever wrote:
| They could which is ultimately why we need regulators in the EU
| to premeptively ban those kinds of anti-repair anti-ownership
| kinds of business decisions.
|
| Consumers should be allowed to install whatever software they
| want on decides they own.
| small_model wrote:
| I agree, can't see Apple doing it so should be fine. The hope
| is once M1/M2 is done its less work to get M3-M5 working
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| This is amazing work, and I certainly respect the talent of those
| involved.
|
| That said, my question to those interested is why? I've been a
| daily user of both Ubuntu since 2005 and Mac since 2012. There
| are some edge case differences but for the most part they are so
| similar that I nearly always run the same code on both without
| modification. Clearly I'm missing something important but I'm
| curious what it is. Thanks in advance.
| matthew28845 wrote:
| One reason is for continued software support after Apple drops
| macOS compatibility for your machine. Intel Macs could be
| patched to run newer, unsupported OS versions (essentially
| hackintoshing your real Mac) but from my understanding that's
| basically impossible for Apple Silicon Macs.
| smith7018 wrote:
| Apple makes some of (if not) the best hardware around. It makes
| sense that some people would want to buy a Macbook Pro for its
| hardware and run their favorite OS on it.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I wonder how this will be impacted by the Steam Frame et. al.
|
| Apple is probably the most mainstream supplier of ARM computers
| at the moment, but Valve is likely to soon have the most
| mindshare amongst ARM-shippers who actively support Linux. I
| expect that will improve ARM support in the ecosystem, which
| should be good for Asahi also.
| znnajdla wrote:
| If "long running agents" have any use, this feels like the kind
| of project where they should be put to work. You have an oracle
| implementation (macOS) and a well defined problem with lots of
| grueling trial and error.
| Lerc wrote:
| If one were to grab a second hand (is there much of an ex-lease
| market?) mac. What is the sweet spot for performance,battery
| life, and Asahi support?
| e12e wrote:
| The main thing that held me back from using Asahi on my M2
| MacBook air - was missing external display. If I read TFA
| correctly - that should now work with a custom kernel.
|
| If that's true - I'd say MacBook air M2 is probably the new
| sweetspot - depending on how cheap you could get an M1.
|
| My impression is that until now, MacBook air M1 was the
| sweetspot.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| yep it should work on M2 Macbook Air.
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