It's absolutely mental that a reverse-engineered hardware stack, with a bespoke gpu driver in Rust, achieved this kind of performance, in this amount of time. God tier skills, between all the engineers involved in the project
I liked how each of the sections ended with a different game that she's gotten running so far. It makes the article feel like a progressively bigger flex, which, of course, it is. Awesome to see this work progressing!
While Linux can’t mix page sizes between processes, it can virtualize another Arm Linux kernel with a different page size. So we run games inside a tiny virtual machine using muvm, passing through devices like the GPU and game controllers. The hardware is happy because the system is 16K, the game is happy because the virtual machine is 4K
Insane work, holy shit
Maybe I'm too entrenched in FOSS political vision, but why devote these tremendous efforts to improve products of a company like Apple. I don't understand the motivation behind Asahi linux, except "just because it can be done" ie academic purpose
Absolutely nothing comes close to the thinness and lightness, combined with battery and performance of my M2 Air. And that's not to mention that Apple's touchpads are still so far ahead of everyone else that I'd like to laugh about it, but it's too embarrassing for that. It's not like I'm not aware of the linux/windows alternatives, it's that there simply are no alternatives...I'd rather deal with Apple's shit software instead of everyone else's subpar hardware, because software is changeable.
Also, since the Asahi team actually knows what they're doing, it turns out that their linux support on Apple Silicon is often better in a lot of ways than most windows-centric laptops. They take a long time to support certain hardware capabilities, but once they do you can be sure that it works flawlessly. Can't say the same about any other laptop I owned before (although Framework, System 76 and Tuxedo laptops are probably good in that regard).
Also, while the keyboard on my Dell XPS broke a whopping 5 times in the last few years, the Macbook Air has yet to show any signs of wear. The reason I got a Macbook is because I need to get work done and need a reliable machine for that. And what can I say, my god has it ever been reliable.
Thank you for detailing this. I'm no fan of OSX or Apple the company but the quality of their laptop hardware is undeniable. They're really good at it.
It saves ewaste. In 6 years, will macOS still be supported on these machines? Maybe. Will an open source distro be supported? If it's still thriving, yeah.
In my field of work, I'm stuck with the Apple ecosystem anyway. So having the chance to run linux on my M1 for all my personnal project is awesome. Also, as much as I hate Apple, those computers are just absolute beast in term of processing power, battery and design.
And longevity. I have a 2011 MBP thats now running Debian and is still a tank. I’ve had two MacBooks since I got it but the damn thing refuses to die.
My daily laptop is an M2 Air which is ridiculously powerful for my needs, so when Apple drop OS support for it I’ll put Asahi on it and keep it trucking until the wheels fall off.
And that 2011 will still be going.
I hate macOS therefor it’s useful cause I like to tinker. And make things do things.
This is absolutely insane. Yesterday i went to github to look what they are cooking and what they have done the last few months is on another level. Props to anyone involved.
Hopefully we get DP over USBC soon on the m2 Mac studios
Yoo those overpriced macs can game
