What Is the Future of (Asahi) Linux on Apple Silicon?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43470631

by yu3zhou4 • 1 year ago

10 7 1 year ago

news.ycombinator.com

Recently, Marcan stepped down from Asahi Linux. What are current plans for the project? Are there any alternatives to run Linux on Apple Silicon? I tried to read more on Marcan's Mastodon account, but it looks like it's closed/blocked

baldr333• 1 year ago

You should read the 2 latest entry on asahi blog: https://asahilinux.org/blog/

dyingkneepad3• 1 year ago

As much as people love to have this romantic view of Open Source that it is composed of brilliant volunteers working out of their basements, the reality is that most of the Open Source work, especially the low-level systems programming (OS, drivers, base libraries, etc.) is developed by people whose full-time job is to make those things work. Companies are sponsoring the majority of the work here.

The Herculean efforts made by the Asahi community are absolutely incredible and something I thought would not be achievable without support from Apple. I am grateful for their work and their example should definitely be a case to be studied. Not only their work benefited people using their hardware, some of their advancements (e.g., their work in Rust) benefit the ecosystem as a whole.

That said, I wouldn't buy hardware whose manufacturer does not officially support Linux. Unsupported hardware is absolutely not worth the trouble for me. I'll keep using the hardware manufactured by the company that has been responsible for ~10% of the Linux Kernel development over the last 15 years. I don't have to worry about my system not working due to bugs or regressions. Heck, I never even have graphics driver issues.

Also, I've been kinda expecting these Asahi people to eventually be picked by the Big Tech companies and thus stop their work on Asahi in order to prioritize the agendas of the people putting bread on their tables.

Good luck to all the people involved!

NoahKAndrews2• 1 year ago

Who is that, System76?

dyingkneepad3• 1 year ago

I didn't want to r/hailcorporate the thread, but it's Intel.

grigio• 1 year ago

..That said, I wouldn't buy hardware whose manufacturer does not officially support Linux

Me too. Asahi Linux is a big hack, I can't consider a Macbook a real Linux Computer

What Is the Future of (Asahi) Linux on Apple Silicon?

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