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Asahi Fedora Linux Running on Apple Silicon

The latest update from the Asahi Team, and some better understanding on why some models still aren't supported...

asahilinux.org

Progress Report: Linux 6.19 - Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org asahilinux.org

the tl;dr is that M1 & M2 support is based off of hardware support for macOS 13.5 in those machines, and the newer machines initially came with macOS 14.... makes it more difficult. They're basically re-re-reverse engineering the hardware? Again? It's almost a completely new project to take on, not just "add new hardware".
 
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With the M5 out now, I'm disappointed that they're unable to release a version that is compatible with anything above the M2
 
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maflynn said:
With the M5 out now, I'm disappointed that they're unable to release a version that is compatible with anything above the M2
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You clearly didn't read the post I just linked above. And like I said, It's almost a completely new project to take on, not just "add new hardware".
 
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FWIW, they're saying that Asahi is running about as well as it was when they first released it for the M1 in a very beta state, and I tried it at the time and it "worked", although there were still plenty of issues. The fact that they're able to get to a working state that quickly as opposed to how long it took initially with the M1?

Again, it's not just a 'flip a switch' and it works type of thing LOL.. I'm sure they'd love to have some volunteers to help
🙂
 
gank41 said:
Well, I can't read it for you, but they give you the answer to your statement. 😉
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They also say on their page of the Mac Pro support is coming so I stand by my complaint of lack of M3/M4/M5 I can't browse the main site for you 😉
1771421458317.png
 
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maflynn said:
They also say on their page of the Mac Pro support is coming so I stand by my complaint of lack of M3/M4/M5 I can't browse the main site for you 😉
View attachment 2606071
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Post something else that proves you didn't read their latest post LOL


Again, I'm sure they'd love some volunteers to help, as opposed to just pointing a finger asking why
🙂


I even "tl;dr"'ed it for you LOL
 
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gank41 said:
Post something else that proves you didn't read their latest post LOL
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I didn't need too and I have no desire. Until they move off of 2022 technology and support the current hardware I will not be spending my time reading through their site. I'd rather spend it here talking about it in a thread 🙂

I pop into their site on occasion to see if they finally embraced the M4, and when I see its not, I leave. Why spend time on a distro or reading about the distro that is incompatible?

you can tl;dr till your blue in the face, it matters not to me. I go straight to https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support and if the latest processor is a 2022 M2, then I leave ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I then post my disappointment here, because this distro came with great fanfare, and boom no further support with apple hardware.
 
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maflynn said:
I didn't need too and I have no desire. Until they move off of 2022 technology and support the current hardware I will not be spending my time reading through their site. I'd rather spend it here talking about it in a thread 🙂

I pop into their site on occasion to see if they finally embraced the M4, and when I see its not, I leave. Why spend time on a distro or reading about the distro that is incompatible?

you can tl;dr till your blue in the face, it matters not to me. I go straight to https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support and if the latest processor is a 2022 M2, then I leave ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I then post my disappointment here, because this distro came with great fanfare, and boom no further support with apple hardware.
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Seems weird to me to be so easily disappointed in a thing and to not understand why, though. Like noticing it's raining and saying Why is it raining! I mean, it's easy to read why they still haven't gotten there, yet. They're not a company like Microsoft or Apple, they're a SMALL FEW number of people relying on volunteer work to continue working on something started by someone else! But if you'd rather just surf the web blindly, not fully understanding what you're actually reading, have at thee.
 
gank41 said:
Seems weird to me to be so easily disappointed in a thing and to not understand why
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We can chalk it up to one of the great mysteries of life

gank41 said:
But if you'd rather just surf the web blindly, not fully understanding what you're actually reading, have at thee.
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I'm not reading blindly nor do I need to understand the nitty gritty details to form an opinion.

gank41 said:
they're a SMALL FEW number of people relying on volunteer work to continue working on something started by someone else!
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That's one of the big downsides to open source, far too many announcements with great fanfare and then the software just whithers on the vine, or the principle developer leaves and it dies.
 
maflynn said:
We can chalk it up to one of the great mysteries of life
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It's not much of a mystery. The world is full of people that complain about things they don't know anything about 😉


maflynn said:
I'm not reading blindly nor do I need to understand the nitty gritty details to form an opinion.
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Again, not to worry! Most folks go on living life and complaining about things they don't understand. It'd be easy to lump that opinion into the rest and just ignore that, too.

maflynn said:
That's one of the big downsides to open source, far too many announcements with great fanfare and then the software just whithers on the vine, or the principle developer leaves and it dies.
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Also one of the big upsides to open source is having Linux running on so many Apple Silicon machines that are now roughly 5 years old and will continue to see years and years more great use because of the hard work they've done. And "far too many announcements"? This is their first post of the year and first post since last fall...

Withering on a vine? Huh! Not sure where you got that fr- oh yeah, you said you weren't going to read their posts.. Got it.

Principal dev leaves and it dies? Huh! Also not sure where you- oh yeah.. You're not reading what they're posting.. Got it.

Have a great day!
 
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maflynn said:
We can chalk it up to one of the great mysteries of life


I'm not reading blindly nor do I need to understand the nitty gritty details to form an opinion.


That's one of the big downsides to open source, far too many announcements with great fanfare and then the software just whithers on the vine, or the principle developer leaves and it dies.
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I guess it just shows the theme of OSS: Don’t complain - CONTRIBUTE!

I am working on other projects right now and my coding skills are not up to contributing code, but I follow with great anticipation the deep, technical work they are doing, no complaints here!
 
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gank41 said:
The latest update from the Asahi Team, and some better understanding on why some models still aren't supported...

asahilinux.org

Progress Report: Linux 6.19 - Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org asahilinux.org

the tl;dr is that M1 & M2 support is based off of hardware support for macOS 13.5 in those machines, and the newer machines initially came with macOS 14.... makes it more difficult. They're basically re-re-reverse engineering the hardware? Again? It's almost a completely new project to take on, not just "add new hardware".
Click to expand...
Really interesting (to me) technical details of what they are doing.

Though Apple is not blocking their work, they are not assisting either.

I wish there was a way they could contact former Apple OS people and ask them a few questions, maybe they could point the Asahi team in the right direction for reverse engineering the hardware changes Apple have made in the M3- M5 chips without violating NDAs…
 
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UnknownIdaho said:
Really interesting (to me) technical details of what they are doing.

Though Apple is not blocking their work, they are not assisting either.

I wish there was a way they could contact former Apple OS people and ask them a few questions, maybe they could point the Asahi team in the right direction for reverse engineering the hardware changes Apple have made in the M3- M5 chips without violating NDAs…
Click to expand...
There's a semi-recent video presentation they did about the history of this and how it works "under the hood", and they're basically reverse engineering Apple's security measures within their chips. It's crazy.. And yeah, without any of Apple's help! Imagine if a big company like Microsoft took the initiative to work with Apple to make WoA a thing.. Maybe Microsoft (and Apple) could make a buck or two!
 
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ClaraStahlbaum said:
Is there support for M4 yet? I am on M4 Mac Mini.
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nope
They only support up to the M2, they're down 3 generations of apple silicon at this point

1772795484697.png



startergo said:
Parallels maps Linux requests directly to the physical CPU and RAM for near-native speeds.
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From what I gather, you're looking at 3-10% hit on performance. I'm sure this is task dependent, in that some things will be faster and other things will be slower.
 
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maflynn said:
From what I gather, you're looking at 3-10% hit on performance. I'm sure this is task dependent, in that some things will be faster and other things will be slower.
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Depending on how you calculate it. Since Asahi does not support anything higher than M2 Mac’s you may say you have 100% hit on the Asahi performance.
 
startergo said:
Depending on how you calculate it. Since Asahi does not support anything higher than M2 Mac’s you may say you have 100% hit on the Asahi performance.
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Oh no question, virtual allows you a wider selection of hardware, but that begs the question, what does aashi in a VM give you that you don't get with macos with its bsd bones.
 
startergo said:
"Barebone Linux" (or Bare Metal) refers to installing Linux directly on your hardware as the primary operating system
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You guys and your lingo... 🙂

Bare Metal!!???
For software, lol?
What's next? Pure Alloy? Clusters of Virtual Steel?

But, i didn't know they had a name for installing Linux, so joking aside, thank you. Was trying to think of a hardware state where barebone made sense given the context.
* Since when does simply installing an OS merit an idiom? Rhetorical of course.
 
You can’t run Asahi in the VM. Its drivers are reverse engineered against the M1 and M2 hardware. But you can’t run any Linux on Macs newer than M2 with similar performance (if not on par) to running Asahi on M1/2 Mac’s directly without Parallels. In other words there is no alternative to Parallels for these Macs. By the time the developers make it work on M3/4 Mac’s people would have moved to M5/6 Mac’s if not higher versions of those machines.
 
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