The Asahi developers have also stated that Apple tends to keep hardware peripheral interfaces stable across generations (they speculate that this is to keep things easy for their own OS dev teams), and that this has so far proven to be true for M2 (and several iPhone generations before that), and thus once support is available , it should stay relevant for some time.
Given this, it seems like MacBooks could easily end up becoming the laptop of choice for Linux developers in the years to come.
There was a time where Apple laptops came with very good Linux support. It was the time were every bit of hardware support was present in Darwin (a 12" iBook G3 was working flawlessly with Linux for example). I think that at each generation, support gets worse because the hardware is closing down. This translates to far more time between release and having something usable with Linux.
- There were numerous laptops with near-full Linux support, the Apple hardware wasn't categorically better when it came to that.
- The power usage of x86 CPUs was atrocious at the time compared to PPC. Now history is repeating with Apple's M[12] line. Therefore people put up with a lot to get 2-3x longer battery life. As I recall I got 3-4 hours of active use out of my iBook, but (going to conferences) it felt like people's x86s almost always had to be plugged in.
- The Linux support for software suspend/hibernation was really flaky at the time, but it worked perfectly on Apple hardware, because all Linux had to do was to tell the hardware "do the suspend thing now" (IIRC by tweaking a file in /proc). The hardware did a slow "heartbeat" with a front LED hidden behind the plastic frame when suspended (a nice effect). When running Linux it would do the the exact same, as it was all done in hardware.
- There were still edge cases in hardware support, just as with any other laptop vendor, it all came down to what individual components happened to have Linux drivers. Some of this was better on Apple's hardware, some of it was worse.
Eg. I remember getting Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen early on in the cycle (I've also got 5th and 8th gen in the house, and X1 Yoga 6th gen which sucks with that metal finish), and the with the removal of "regular" S3 sleep, you close your laptop and it keeps running and potentially burning in your bag. It took Lenovo a year or so to add a "Linux sleep support" BIOS option, though it took community less than that to provide DSDT patches to re-enable S3 sleep.
All I am saying is that Lenovo machines, esp Thinkpad line, are usually a great choice, but you can hit early-adopter hurdles just like with any other laptop. The good thing about them is that community is huge and great, and that they are the best laptops around as far as usability on the go goes (as in, actually typing on them and seeing what you type).
This is true for what we nerds call a "lenovo laptop" (so mostly T series). Install, everything works.
Lenovo also sells a bunch of cheapish plasticky laptops that look like some random noname chinese OEM manufactured and lenovo just put a sticker on... well, linux support there is a bit hit and miss.
Never worked flawlessly in my experience.
There have always been plenty of laptops with very good Linux support.
Of the 3 laptops that I had during the last 15 years (before those I had used an Apple laptop, but then I have switched to Linux), on the first (a HP Compaq) and on the third (a Dell Precision), when I have installed Linux it just worked, while on the second (a Lenovo), I had to spend a couple of days until making everything work, mainly because it used NVIDIA Optimus, which required some workarounds, but after that it worked flawlessly. During these years I have also used Linux on various company laptops, always without problems.
At least some months might have to pass until a MacBook will be able to work under Asahi Linux as well as most laptops with Intel/AMD CPUs work already in the day when they are bought.
Because I've got nothing better to do with my time than diagnose issues due to running a setup only 50 other people in the world use.
If you want manufacturer support, you need to use macOS or Windows or one of the very limited selection of laptops which feature Linux as an option. Most people who use Linux probably already use Linux on a computer without manufacturer support. If that's not for you though, that's totally fine.
Modern laptops are not materially different from SoCs, everything is soldered to the board and the CPU does basically everything memory related.
I guess you think that Intel designs are an open standard?
At the very least they’re extremely patent incumbered; with AMD and Intel having a sort of patent truce between them.
Having used MacBook Pro 14" with an M1 Max for ~6 months, I'd really wonder which developer submits themselves to such a glare-emitting screen and crappy keyboard (and potentially imprinting their palms/wrists on the sharp front edge), if you can get a Thinkpad X1 Carbon for much less?
Sure, performance was slightly better than the latest X1 Carbon, and battery life was significantly better, but if I am undocked for a prolonged period, that screen and keyboard make it very unpleasant to use. If I needed more performance, I'd go for a desktop or a workstation-type Thinkpad laptop, though I'd lose on the portability (though MacBook Pros — including 14" — are heavy as well).
But as I only use it on a docking station, all good.
I’m wondering the same. It’s probably just a few?
Not to mention laptops designed specifically to target Linux like the Framework laptop.
It's not amd64, it's especially not Intel. It's not fugly or fnoisy. The bar is really so low.
I got an Linux AMD laptop for work this year, much better on the battery and still very fast. Its been great.
People are writing about Thinkpads below, but the real comparison should be to laptops that are sold with Linux on them, like the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, the HP Dev One, or the many laptops sold by System76 which even feature 'instant on' since they run open-source UEFI implementations.
The Apple Silicon laptops have gained Linux support faster than most Apple hardware in recent memory, including the Intel MacBooks from 2016 on. But Linux support has long been especially late on Apple machines because the hardware is custom and quirky and volunteer interest in reverse-engineering it has been relatively low.
And let's be real— a computer without GPU acceleration is virtually unusable. You need that these days for everything from actually getting to use basic features of your window manager to videe playback.
That said, Intel and Microsoft have hampered Linux support recently with crap like S0ix and Pluton, so if the GPU support ever becomes stable enough to support most Linux window managers, the Apple Silicon laptops might seem attractive by comparison to laptops that aren't built for Linux. I would consider one at that point. But it's hard to be optimistic when Apple has no material reason not to pull the rug out from under Asahi at any time (not necessarily out of malice).
That is, if they want to subsidize with their own wallets the dominance of consumer-hostile computing that open source was created to avert.
Except for development such as this here, which aims at liberating users from a closed platform, I would have a philosophical problem to buy such hardware purely for my convenience.
Let's not fool ourselves, when proprietary hardware from platform giants like Amazon and Apple becomes dominant killing open ecosystems, the end of road can only lead to consumer coercion, regardless if a negligible fraction of users would be able to still run Linux on such hardware.
Compare that to what's going on in the non-Mac world, with Pluton and SecureBoot stuff, where hardware is being cryptographically locked down. Or compare it to nvidia, who is intentionally making it impossible to make a good FOSS driver. Yet people have no problems buying thinkpads from Lenovo or nvidia cards from System76.
I'll take "undocumented hardware which needs to be reverse engineered, but once that's done we have a great driver and stuff just works" over "undocumented hardware which refuses to run unsigned software and the user can't install their own signing key" any day.
This seems like obvious but really is not.
As long MacBooks keep being the insane machines they now are, they will soon become (and keep being) the best Linux machines available.
Just because people will make sure of that.
Apparently, this is an area where if I'm not in the actual minority, I'm certainly in the quieter faction.
As for the fixed function accelerator blocks, vendors who cooperate will have more robust driver implementations derived from their work to support customers who rely on it operationally.
For developers, macs are just really nice hardware and there are not a whole lot of similarly nice, Linux friendly laptops out there. Most of them seem to be compromises between being noisy, not having great screens, keyboards, and touchpads, mediocre performance, etc.
Typing this on a Samsung Galaxy Book with a meh screen, meh touch pad, alright keyboard, and unimpressive performance. It runs Manjaro. I do miss having a nice screen and input options. I'm actually using a wireless mouse for the first time in a decade plus. Never needed one with a mac.
eh, not quite. for me the OS is the most important part, with great hardware being icing on the cake. I’m not knocking linux, but it’s not for everyone.
And while other comments here have pointed out that not all hardware is supported yet (a valid criticism), I feel it's also important to note that the current user experience of Asahi on Apple Silicon is stellar (as has been since it was released in Alpha).
I've been using Asahi for over 3 months now as my daily driver to do real development work (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/asahi-linux/), and everything I need is there, and fast. Consequently, I'm not surprised Linus is doing the same.
It's crazy what happens when hardware designers collaborate with software developers. The current de-facto standard of working in silos with no regard for how the other party gets their part done is what's led us to the current global status quo.
What's the situation with traditional USB and HDMI ports? Dongles are easy to forget and easy to break, and lots of us have traditional USB devices lying around and 10-year-old TVs.
Sounds like a failure for free software and open source, and the quest for progressing for open systems in general.
No GPU support is a big miss though. ARM also means that you can't make every binary made for x86 out there work, even if initiatives like Box86 and Box64 help bridge the gap.
You mean aside from system76 or of any of the other Linux first hardware sellers?
> The Asahi developers have also stated that Apple tends to keep hardware peripheral interfaces stable across generations
The Asahi team has made an assumption about apples implementation of mobile chipsets that hasn't had a Linux competitor working to exploit it.
Nothing is stopping apple from rug pulling the project next cycle.
Nobody should be relying on this.
Why would they do that? As others have pointed outed, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, etc. are indeed pulling the rug out on the other side (in the name of security). Locking the Mac down 100% would have zero benefit to Apple and just generate negativity.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AsahiLinux/status/155396839473481...
https://mobile.twitter.com/AsahiLinux/status/155086604218397...
Didn't know it was fully usable right now, amazing work!
I think one of the few last things missing is the gpu module, which is being developed with a help of a VTuber, she puts up full live coding session on YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/AsahiLina
I'm not sure whether to read this as a joke, or if there's really no semantic difference between x & y version numbers for the Linux kernel?
[Edit: that was a sincere question, not 'what a joke', I didn't mean anything against it.]
If I hadn't seen that I'd have been very cautious, a bit worried even, about upgrading to :shocked-face: six point oh, scoured for news & changelogs (yes yes as I should anyway.. actually what I do is assume patch will be fine, and check /r/archlinux for minor bumps - that is, I thought they were 'minor' and 'patch' rather than arbitrary) etc.
Check the release post for 5.0: https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/3/3/236
Ref SemVer: https://semver.org/
> (*) I'll likely call it 6.0 since I'm starting to worry about getting confused by big numbers again.
It seems that he ran out of fingers and toes again.
That doesn't feel very controversial, someone wanting to work the way they want to and not some other way.
PS: Im on a p1 gen4 thinkapd very happy with it, BUT it is sometimes really noisy..
Localized versions can be different, the French for example has some symbols in very different places.
Also, the ALT (Option, key to the right of the left CTRL) and Super (Command, key to the left of the space bar) are reversed, but you can tell Linux to swap them.
I use `options hid_apple fnmode=2 swap_opt_cmd=1` to have function keys register as Fx without the FN and to have the ALT key next to the space bar.
+ Windows has the Windows key (which Linux called "super")
+ Windows also has the context menu key, which I think it pretty useless to be honest but others might get value from that
+ The Mac keyboard layout is US-like, even on European models. Which means a bunch of keys are in different places from their European IBM counterparts (like @ and "). The # and / keys I find particularly hard to locate on Macs. I often end up redefining my Mac keyboard to be an IBM keyboard even though it differs from the key caps. It's a nightmare for anyone using my Mac but much easier for me who's had ~40 years of muscle memory.
Not the keyboard hardware (so somewhat out of scope for this context) but it's also worth noting that there's some macOS keyboard shortcuts that differ in really confusing ways too. Like
+ Ctrl+C vs Cmd+C
+ Text area navigation on a Mac is totally different too. Home and End buttons behave differently. Ctrl+Arrow keys don't work. Shift+Arrow keys don't select. etc
Every time I spend a few months in Linux and then switch to a Mac (or visa versa) I inevitably have a few days of pain relearning short cut keys.
Ubuntu's not a daily driver, there's a bit of initial effort in switching between macOS + Linux keyboards, but it's usable.
Some comments seems not on this. It seems to a mac arm notebook he tried to use not in a big way. But will be for travelling.
For the release itself tbh I am confused his last merge window (*) comment. Is it 6.1 or not I am not sure? ( should it be odd number if it replaces 5.x9?or it 6.0 as it is after 5.x9)
<edit>Wikipedia agrees with my memory.</>
> It's the third time I'm using Apple hardware for Linux development
No mention of ARM64 there.
Although Apple branded hardware is not apple developed hardware, so I read that in a different way. But now I realize that PowerPC was not an Apple Development, too, so he means Apple branding. So in my head, this is his first time of using Apple hardware (CPU, not keyboard, casing, etc.) for kernel compilation.
Thanks Apple for insisting that "this is the first Apple hardware" for clamshell laptops in your PR statements.
