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0 pointsbri3d14d ago0 comments

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.

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kakwa_14d 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.

Danox13d 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.

kakwa_13d ago

I feel like more money would not have helped that much. Maybe it would have enabled a few of the devs to work on it full time, but I doubt it would have brought more people into the project.

I would indeed love the EU to step in but not in the way you are probably thinking.

I would rather see such effort being made unnecessary through a law forcing the manufacturers to provide enough information/specification or even code for alternative/after-market OSes to be viable on the devices they produced.

And also, if possible, mandate a degree of standardization (looking at you Android phones and ARM SBCs) enabling commonality of efforts when supporting a device class.

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