Passing the torch on Asahi Linux - Asahi Linux
Passing the torch on Asahi Linux - Asahi Linux
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As a solid outsider, this whole Rust thing seems like it keeps simmering under the surface in a way that could one day boil over and seriously damage the entire Linux project.
I don’t have a machine capable of running Asahi today, but I also don’t feel like I need it now. Reading this and reading marcan’s resignation makes me feel like I should find some way to chip in to Asahi now so that whenever Apple eventually stops supporting my hardware, Asahi will hopefully still be there and ready to keep the hardware going. I figure I probably have about 6 years of Apple support, but I’m also suspecting Apple might support the ARM hardware longer than they ever did Intel or PowerPC, so I might have even more time.
... Asahi will hopefully still be there and ready to keep the hardware going. I figure I probably have about 6 years of Apple support ...
i used to use & contribute to linux/foss projects for ppc architectured macs and it took years for them to be fully supported at the same level that intel architectured users enjoyed; chipping in now is the only way that something like asahi is ready to take over once apple inevitably leaves you out in the cold like it did its ppc (and soon intel) users.
they have excellent hardware and it would be a shame to throw it away or allow it to collect dust when you can't get 100% utility out of it simply because your options aren't developed enough at the time you need them.
You are just being silly, there is no way its going to "seriously damage the entire Linux project". There is nothing too technical about the whole R4L drama (esp. the recent one), its mostly political opposition to Rust from some C folks. We have seen this before in Linux (Wayland/X11, systemd/sysv, etc.).
The problem is that those issues have, and continue to, cause damage to the Linux project. Good maintainers have been hounded out, or simply given up, and bad blood exists where it absolutely shouldn't. You're right that much of it is political, although that usually stems from deep technical differences backed up by corporate encouragement. Political turmoil can be as damaging, if not moreso, than technical differences. At least technical differences can usually be resolved technically, politics is infinitely more nuanced.
From Marcan's description, the way certain people treated him was absolutely unacceptable, although I've no doubt they'd describe things very differently. I hope the whole kernel team, maintainers and contributers, can find a way to work through these differences and work more harmoniously before more members end up burnt out, frustrated and bitter.
Yeah the whole situation really sucks. Im a big fan of both marcan and linux so its just sad how it all ended. But Im hopeful the R4L project will be successful despite these setbacks. Some of the first rust drivers are really close to landing and I think once that happens, the dust will mostly settle as hopefully most of the things around rust would have been figured out by then. Even this situation led to some improvements like the R4L policy (and also brought the issue to greater public scrutiny). Though the drama probably won't end there, especially if rust starts making in to the core kernel (thus start being required for building the kernel). That is probably going to be the final obstacle; if rust makes it to the core kernel code, I think the R4L project will have succeeded.
Make sure you never buy apple hardware again.
Really?
According to Hector Martin (Asahi Linux developer) making things easier for Linux developers is the only known reason Apple would have added this.
That's really, really out of character for Apple.
But then, so was releasing seriously powerful computers.
The G4 had a hardware bit rotate function, and a 128 bit bus, meaning it could do 4 32-bit bit rotates per clock cycle. the Intel Pentium 4 needed to emulate that one instruction over 4 CPU cycles, and had a 32-bit bus. This made the G4 orders of magnitude faster than the top Intel chip at the time at certain tasks, like cracking rc5 on distributed.net, where G4 clusters absolutely dominated the top ranks.
Our peak rate of 270,147,024 kkeys/sec is equivalent to 32,504 800MHz Apple PowerBook G4 laptops or 45,998 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines - https://blogs.distributed.net/2002/09/25/00/00/bovine/
Apple has been known to release powerful hardware.
The asahi project shouldn’t even exit with Apples purse, this is their job as far as I care. To be honest I would never use asahi for that reason.
Linux is what keeps my Macs alive 🤭
But this is good thinking
Think like jqubed
Donate in your future
See far
Peace
I agree. For everyone’s sake they should rip Rust out and put all that effort into RedoxOS. There is way too much misalignment for this to be constructive.