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0 pointskakwa_1mo ago0 comments

Well, after a while, the effort of maintaining and improving M-series kernel support should be directly be done by kernel maintainers, not within a fork with periodic merges (maybe some Asahi folks should become kernel maintainers).

Doing so would enabled mainstream distributions to provide maintainable M-series builds, with all that entails in terms of stability, enabling choice, maintenance or security fixes.

The whole fork + dedicated distribution made sense at the start of the project since it provided a playground for quickly iterating and experimenting (which is a no-no to do directly in the mainline kernel or in a major distribution).

But Asahi is still the only Linux on Silicon option after all these years, which is a bit worrisome. Asahi should have been a cool but temporary initiative.

At some point, the project will lose momentum and for its accomplishments to last, it should be merged into the general effort, i.e. drivers maintained directly in the Linux kernel, and the userland stuff made to be easily packaged and shipped by mainstream distributions.

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bri3d1mo ago

This is... literally exactly what they are doing?

Of all of the reverse engineering related Linux efforts (and most corporate Linux efforts), Asahi have been the most methodical and relentless about upstreaming changes into the kernel and all of their upstream intermediaries (freedesktop/Mesa etc.), specifically so it's maintained, even at the detriment of the project velocity and contributor health.

Asahi is explicitly not supposed to be a fork + dedicated distribution long term and over time, the delta between Fedora Asahi Remix and Fedora has grown smaller and smaller.

> Asahi is still the only Linux on Silicon option

What do you mean? There are non-Fedora Remix distributions which incorporate the "edge" Asahi changes, like https://ubuntuasahi.org . And again, as more and more gets mainlined, it becomes increasingly plausible that many distributions will be able to support Apple Silicon "out of the box" without much special consideration.

kakwa_OP1mo ago

I would have been happy if all that happened like 3 years ago.

Now, it's 5 years in, the Asahi effort is losing momentum. Core developers are going on to do other things, significant chunks (3922 commits) are still not merged upstream and no major distribution has an official build.

Sorry, but in my opinion, the project is at risk of becoming a dead and unmaintained branch.

Don't get me wrong, the Asahi team did an incredible job on this bloody difficult endeavor, but now is time to properly merge it and not let it go to waste.

Danox29d ago

It is a dying quail effort doomed from the start if those three ex Apple engineers could get a license from Arm to design chips it is still baffling why no one else across the whole wide world didn’t follow in their footsteps. There is a Linux market.

I’m just shocked that it has not happened. With all the money flying around for AI data-centers you would think that this would be a more worthwhile effort?

Where is the European effort in this area? I would think it would be a natural for something to come out of the EU in this area.

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