I agree with some of that, but none of it is worth sacrificing user freedom. Using an Apple product is being forced to use computers in exactly the way Apple designed them, with very little room for customization of the experience. This might be fine if your preferences align with Apple's, or if you just don't care, but for tinkerers and tech enthusiasts it's an oppressive and limited environment. And at the end of the day, it still has its own share of issues, like any device, so it's always a tradeoff.
I'd trade lower build quality and performance per watt for software freedom any day of the week. No, Asahi Linux is not a serious option.
Why is Asahi not a serious option? Linus Torvalds himself uses Asahi on an Apple Silicon Mac, that is a pretty solid endorsement of it being a serious option.
How did you reach that conclusion? On the contrary, my reasons are purely practical. The fact Linus uses Asahi is far from an endorsement for regular users. He obviously has a much deeper knowledge of Linux compared to a regular user, with the skills to troubleshoot and fix most issues.
My reasons for not considering it:
- As skilled as the Asahi team is, they're a small team going against one of the world's largest corporations. Not only does it take immense effort to reverse engineer every single hardware component, the project will always be at the mercy of Apple, who may break the support at any time with a software or hardware update, whether willing or unwillingly.
- The Linux software ecosystem is sufficiently unstable on its own, but also running it on ARM, _and_ an alien hardware environment, presents even more challenges. As much as the Asahi team has made progress here, expecting them to support all variations of software in this landscape is unreasonable. I definitely don't want to have additional issues to troubleshoot, which I'm tired of doing with Linux to begin with. Cue the replies claiming how Asahi works flawlessly...
That's a whole lot of shaky ground to base my computing on, and I wouldn't consider it even for personal, let alone professional, use. Maybe if Apple started opening up and officially supporting Linux on their hardware, I _might_ consider a project like Asahi, but until then, it's a non-starter for me.
> expecting them to support all variations of software in this landscape is unreasonable.
They don't support variations of software at all. They support the hardware. If the drivers work then the software just works. Software is built on APIs. Asahi does not need to support applications.
> always be at the mercy of Apple, who may break the support at any time
Same deal for any other hardware manufacturer. The x86 PC manufacturers are still using proprietary undocumented hardware components to this day, even the ones who you believe are "officially" supporting Linux. It only works because devs are reverse engineering devices without support from the manufacturers.
> but also running it on ARM, _and_ an alien hardware environment, presents even more challenges
ARM is a stable well supported platform for Linux, so the CPU is less of an issue for Asahi devs. Graphics hardware is somewhat "Alien" but is also stable now on Asahi.
> They don't support variations of software at all. They support the hardware. [...] Asahi does not need to support applications at all.
From their FAQ page[1]:
> We will eventually release a remix of Arch Linux ARM, packaged for installation by end-users, as a distribution of the same name. The majority of the work resides in hardware support, drivers, and tools, and it will be upstreamed to the relevant projects. The distribution will be a convenient package for easy installation by end-users and give them access to bleeding-edge versions of the software we develop.
As distro maintainers, it is their job to make sure the applications they package work on the hardware they support. This includes submitting patches upstream when that is not the case, as application maintainers likely wouldn't want to support such a niche environment directly. So, yes, they rely on volunteers to fix issues, but they will likely have to support many applications themselves.
There is still a lot of broken software, as this list[2] is surely not exhaustive.
Regardless, all this amounts to less choice of software for the user. The Asahi team has already decided to stop supporting Xorg, and say what you will about Xorg, there will be many applications they realistically can't or won't support for whatever reason.
> Same deal for any other hardware manufacturer. [...] Really not much different to other hardware manufacturers since Linux started.
No, it's very different. First of all, the amount of Linux hackers who volunteered to reverse engineer the wide variety of hardware was orders of magnitude larger than the Asahi team. Even if they limit the amount of devices they support, modern computers are far more complex than in the early days of Linux. Regardless of how talented the Asahi team is, maintaining all the hardware of a modern computer is a sisyphean task for a small group of volunteers.
Secondly, hardware manufacturers could see the benefit of getting their hardware to run in Linux, and many eventually took over support from volunteers. Apple has shown no interest in doing so, and has historically been hostile to open source.
> Asahi devs have made it clear that Apple has chosen to avoid blocking installation of other operating systems.
The fact they allow installation of other operating systems today, doesn't mean that this decision couldn't change in the future. Services are a large part of their business, and allowing a group of hackers to use their hardware without being part of their software ecosystem may seem like a non-issue today, but if this group grows larger assuming projects like Asahi are successful, this might become a considerable loss of income which wouldn't be in their best interest.
> Apple has no issue with it.
Can you point me to an official ackgnowledgment of Asahi Linux by Apple? Or any indication that leaving this door open was a sign of good will, instead of a lack of interest in closing it? What makes you think they wouldn't eventually lock down Macs in the same way they do iPhones and iPads?
> ARM is a stable well supported platform for Linux
It's really not. A lot of software works, but when it doesn't, the user is SOL. As you can see on their Broken Software page[2], the major issue is precisely with AArch64 support. This should improve eventually, and Asahi is certainly a torchbearer in this scenario, but today it's yet another hurdle of using Apple hardware.
"Does Apple allow this? Don’t you need a jailbreak?
Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn’t a hack or an omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though they probably won’t help with the development)."
> A lot of software works, but when it doesn't, the user is SOL.
Talking about the Kernel (Linux itself). Applications are another story.
You are looking at it all from a very conservative enterprise perspective. Worried about long term support etc for a mission critical system. Asahi is not pretending to be an enterprise solution.
For someone just using it on their laptop, none of this is much of an issue.
If Asahi works today on your M1 Pro, and its good enough for your daily work, then it's fine. If support disappears in a few years, then simply switch to another device at that time. At least you will have had a few years of use out of a decent machine. Life is too short to worry too much about these things as an individual just using their laptop as a workstation or for personal use. Worst case in five years just buy another laptop that works for you, and move on.
Yes, I saw that quote, but it doesn't fill me with confidence. For one, I think developing a custom bootloader[1] qualifies as a hack. It certainly doesn't feel like an "actual feature". Is it documented anywhere?
Also, how do they know that "Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs"? Again, I would like to see some official confirmation from Apple.
> Worried about long term support etc for a mission critical system. Asahi is not pretending to be an enterprise solution.
No, I'm looking at it from the perspective of a single user for personal, and potentially professional, use. I _really_ don't want to go back to the user experience of Linux in the 90s, when barely anything worked, and the user had to spend hours tinkering to get basic features working, if they were supported at all. If that sounds fun for you, go ahead and enjoy the Apple hardware, but I'd like my machines to work. I'm annoyed by mainstream Linux enough as it is; I really don't need more reasons to dislike it.
> If Asahi works today on your M1 Pro, and its good enough for your daily work, then it's fine.
Buying a $2k machine to realize it doesn't support my workflow seems like a risky investment. As well as being at the mercy of a small group of volunteers and a trillion dollar corporation that it will continue to work for at least a few years.
> Also, how do they know that "Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs"
They don't. And it really doesn't matter to some people. The current hardware is not locked down, therefore it can always run Linux. Future devices are not guaranteed to work, but those do not exist today.
> Buying a $2k machine to realize it doesn't support my workflow
You're simply not the target user. The people who are enthusiastically using Asahi know what to expect and are happy with it as it runs the software they need to use today. Of course it is not a mainstream option that every Linux user can use.
> that it will continue to work for at least a few years.
Once the hardware in your device is reverse engineered and drivers developed for it, that is done and will continue to work for a long time. The risk is future devices (Apple M6, M7, etc).
I'd trade lower build quality and performance per watt for software freedom any day of the week. No, Asahi Linux is not a serious option.