Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • I am wondering how much the spec changes per M-chip iteration? I think that after some iterations, the spec stays the same, no?
    by TomJansen
  • Your intuition here is wrong.

    Processors, not just Apple’s, change constantly between generations. The core instruction set doesn’t change, but they get new capabilities, not just with new instruction sets.

    Remember the SoC isn’t just the CPU. It’s display engines, GPUs, storage controllers, video decoders and more.

    Even outside of Apple, you’ll see hardware vendors provide Linux patches for their latest CPUs to keep working well. There’s some baseline functionality that works out of the box but it’s never a free ride.

    by dagmx
  • Reverse-engineering Apple's custom silicon is basically the modern equivalent of repairing a spaceship while it's actively launching. Incredible work by the Asahi team!
    by Krish1577
  • Makes you wonder who's choice it was to launch a half-finished rocket. AMD and Intel's rockets sit on the launch pad with GPU/CPU drivers shipped for Linux before T-10.
    by bigyabai
  • What would be the best way to dual boot MacOS and Asahi on a Macbook M2 ?
    by simonebrunozzi
  • simply using the installer from https://asahilinux.org

    the devs strongly discourage single-booting

    by throawayonthe
  • The Asahi installer does this automatically, it guides you through sizing. You run it in a macOS terminal. By default, Asahi will be the default boot option, and to get to macOS you hold the power button on boot until it says "Loading startup options..."

    I have two M1 pro asahi macbooks, and I only use macOS for VirtualDJ or AirPlay.

    by jonesy827
  • Some big caveats but still amazing progress!
    by benoau
  • Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
    by whatever1
  • They want control on the walled garden. When was the last time apple did anything for public unless forced by FCC. Now there is no hope since they can simply donate to trump.
    by sansah
  • Darwin is open source has been for 25-26 years is it too much hard work? https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://www.puredarwin.org/
    by Danox
  • It wouldn’t even be a problem for Apple to support Linux. Linux’s desktop market share has never been a threat to Apple at all. I hope Ternus, being the engineer he is, opens this up.
    by meerita
  • So that you have to keep buying Macs every few years of course. If they gave you a way to install linux easily then you could use it far past their intended lifespan and wouldnt keep you locked into the apple ecosystem. They have proved time and time again that Apple hardware running anything but MacOS or iOS is something they will work very hard to stop you doing.
    by alt227
  • I'd imagine it's for IP protection.

    There's a lot of documentation required to write drivers for hardware; for the GPU, they'd need to share the instruction set of the GPU along with the specifications of the controller. Lots of weird things like power management too.

    If shared, that's probably enough to create copycat hardware or at least an emulator.

    Personally, I just want to run Linux on my latest MacBook Pro on day 1 with full hardware acceleration. If it was supported, MacOS would be on the device for as long as it took to install Linux.

    I think the only way that would happen is if the EU extended "the right to repair" to include software, compelling companies to release documentation sufficient to produce drivers with. I'm sure Apple would maliciously comply, like provide the ISA but not power management specs - but that would still cut the work required by the Asahi team by 80%.

    by apatheticonion
  • Aside from the "they have no incentive" answer, I imagine it's not so easy even if they wanted to. I suspect most of it won't be solely Apple's IP to share in the first place.
    by Retr0id
  • Apple's hypervisor.framework lets other OS instances run very very fast with the UTM app (open source on github, but i use the prebuilt version from the App Store). In my case i've used arm native linuxes (arch with various compositors, kde, gnome, fedora) all on M2, M2 Max, M5 and the experience is indistinguishable from native. MacOS is running too. I think hardcore graphics folks might want direct accelerator access, or there'd be curiously little reason for Asahi (other than that it's awesome work).

    I use UTM in emulation mode, NOT Qemu simulation mode, which is wasteful.

    just my $0.02.

    by jjtheblunt
  • > when they can just share a pdf.

    I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You have to work through provided code samples and then eventually get the vendor’s engineers to look into problems that couldn’t be resolved through the documentation, where they would go look into the other teams and their sources to discover the answer.

    The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny. The honest answer is that it’s not worth the huge effort investment needed to document an entire platform for public consumption.

    I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open.

    by Aurornis
  • Thanks for the effort, guys. This makes me think, shouldn't the driver layer be generic now. All the driver does is writing correct data at correct address when needed, there is no need for OS support except triggering driver when to do that.

    A true HAL, any OS can run on that HAL.

    by mrheosuper
  • That data and that address changes, and the logic changes.
    by worldsavior
  • Amazing project.

    My only blocker for installing Asahi on my Mac Studio (M1 ultra) is that llama.cpp performance is very bad when compared to using the Metal backend on the same hardware.

    by tarruda
  • I have similar issues with my ultra. Have put it on a laptop, but my desk Setup with my multiple desktop computers is usb-c video based ( kind of a poor man’s kvm) , and asahi doesn’t do usb-c video yet
    by zer0zzz
  • Right!? Linux can be configured to idle at less than 500mb of ram - by contrast, with some aggressive shenanigans, MacOS can idle at 2-3gb.

    When running inference, I would love to use all of my hardware please Apple.

    by apatheticonion
  • This is really incredible work but so frustrating that its necessary
    by jdeaton
  • Why wouldn’t bringing up an OS on new hardware be necessary? Apple has no obligation or incentive whatsoever to write Linux device drivers…

    Do you think Apple should be funding this work out of revenue? What possible justification could they provide for such a waste of money? This will not sell any more laptops.

    Even if Asahi didn’t do it, the work would still be necessary by someone inside Apple. Drivers don’t spontaneously appear from the ether.

    by sneak
  • Only because some buy Apple instead of supporting Linux OEMs.
    by pjmlp
  • While the Ashahi engineers are working super hard reverse engineering the Apple Silicon, there has been a huge surge in Omarchy circles to get it all working with AI writing all the drivers and get all kinds of hardware in M4/M5 and later M6 working as well. It sped up a lot.
    by xiphias2
  • I feel like the growing polarization in that space is pretty much going to kill any chance of collaboration (for example: https://xcancel.com/dhh/status/2091229491867594983?s=12&t=JH...). It really boils down to DHH and his conservative worldview clashing over things like the downsides of corporate funding and capitalism, building system software by just throwing more AI cycles at it, rejecting data centers over environmental concerns, and pushing back on AI-generated code due to slop and security issues. I just don't see both sides putting their differences aside to work together. DHH will probably just duplicate unaligned efforts so he can completely bypass and avoid having to deal with the human element.
    by chem83
  • Is anyone actually actively working on it in Omarchy circles? I see a lot of smoke on X and a lot of "look what I vibecoded over the weekend" shows yet another control panel for sony XMs.
    by Oreols
  • Lack of sleep and HDMI support is real roadblock for adoption. Hope they gets past soon.
    by sansah
  • No, lack of GPU acceleration. Give me a laptop with sleep and HDMI output that has no 3d acceleration and I will give you back an unusable laptop.
    by sneak