Asahi Linux's Apple M1/M2 Gallium3D Driver Now OpenGL ES 3.1 Conformant

[smitty3268]

Hah, don't get me wrong, it *is* impressive. But just like jailbreaking tablets, games consoles, etc, it will fizzle out. Getting i.e Linux running on the first Xbox was also impressive but ultimately, it *is* a hack and the vendor will soon undermine their work.

Those are some pretty big accusations.

What's your definition of a "hack," considering they are using software paths Apple explicitly designed for 3rd party vendor support? Just anything reverse engineered?

And what makes you think the vendor will soon undermine their work?

Don't get me wrong, I have some questions about the long-term viability of the project, mostly because it seems heavily dependent on a couple of people, and they could choose to move on at any point (or get run over by a bus, or whatever). But I haven't seen any indications they will outright fail or that Apple has any intentions of blocking them yet.

[jeisom]

I only own 4 Macs, 2 iLamps (G4 iMacs) and 2 G5 iMacs and i was not aware that they stopped working over a decade ago.

Thank you, I'm one of these delusional people that bought these for a few bucks at a garage sale years ago and still use them from time to time so I was under the erroneous idea that they could still be used even if there were no more updates.

After reading your post I realize I have to throw them away along with my Pentium 3 powered Dell laptop from 20+ years ago that runs Win 2k, my Sony laptop from 15 years ago that is running an old 32-bit build of Slackware.

Further, your stance strongly implies that people should buy an M2 powered Mac today and install a less capable OS today, just so in 8 years or so from now that Apple stops updating the current version of Mac OS, they will in theory be in good shape, running a still less capable OS than what the Macs with today.

Impeccable reasoning.

you obviously misread/misunderstood this. I am refering to the people that think porting linux to these machines is a waste of time. It is not. then again maybe you are saying that as you seem to want to run the OS of the time on those systems from your comment. These are very performant machines and probably work better than most, if not all other arm systems on linux released in the last 2 years and that is also sad. ARM really could use to get their hardware upstream supported.

[jeisom]

genuinely curious: what can you actually do with the G4 and the G5, especially with the PPC version of Mac OS X today?

They can't even run most applications or software today since they are all built for x64 and ARM64.

You know, there are a lot of open source projects out there.

[sophisticles]

genuinely curious: what can you actually do with the G4 and the G5, especially with the PPC version of Mac OS X today?

They can't even run most applications or software today since they are all built for x64 and ARM64.

The same question applies to the old P3 Dell laptop, or any old computer reallyl basically I bought them and use them once in a while for nostalgia, the iLamps I sometimes watch DVD's on, those things are still great for that.

Honestly, they are so slow, that even if someone were to create the most modern Linux distro imaginable that could run on them, they would still be too slow to do anything meaningful with them, at least by today's standards.

I will say that the iMacs have some of the nicest displays I have ever seen, and their speakers are top notch. Even after all these years the systems are in great shape.

Really wish someone would make a system like those iLamps again.

The thing is that the guy saying that Asahi Linux will be needed in 8 years or so because Apple will stop updating the software, fails to realize that as crazy as it sounds the M1 in 8 years will be considered slow and people will be asking why anyone would want to run that.

All one has to do is look at the Intel Meteor Lake with the onboard AI accelerator to see where we are headed, Win 11 already supports AI features in Windows Studio Effects, I'm predicting right now that we are less than a decade away from Star Trek style AI powered voice controlled personal computers.

We already have much of the technology in place, we need the AI accelerators to handle some of the processing, I strongly suspect either the next version of Windows or the one after that will feature voice controlled OS interfaces, where you will simply say "Computer, show me phoronix.com" and it will take you there.

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[Dukenukemx]

A lot of people on this forum think it is a great idea to send these devices to land fills once apple stops updating them in 8ish years.

Isn't that more Apple's fault?

This is great work they have done, even finding instructions that even apple’s drivers don’t use. This kind of reverse engineering is experience that we need more people able to do for the future, not just apple or nvidia products. I fear for a future where this is forgotten knowledge.

I think the Asahi devs need to be more critical of Apple so it doesn't take 8 years to have a perfect working Linux distro on Apple silicon. Saying that Apple supports other OS's because they allow it is delusional at best. Can you put a custom Linux distro on iOS based device? I can on most Android devices. Apple can decide at any point to prevent users from installing Asahi Linux. Maybe to not have to deal with technical support or losing out on revenue from people visiting their app store. As much as you think reverse engineering is a lost art, I would rather have Asahi devs take a shortcut with Apple supplying them documentation on how their hardware works. Would bring that 8 years to one year of a perfect working Linux distro.

[citral]

The same question applies to the old P3 Dell laptop, or any old computer reallyl basically I bought them and use them once in a while for nostalgia, the iLamps I sometimes watch DVD's on, those things are still great for that.

Honestly, they are so slow, that even if someone were to create the most modern Linux distro imaginable that could run on them, they would still be too slow to do anything meaningful with them, at least by today's standards.

I will say that the iMacs have some of the nicest displays I have ever seen, and their speakers are top notch. Even after all these years the systems are in great shape.

Really wish someone would make a system like those iLamps again.

The thing is that the guy saying that Asahi Linux will be needed in 8 years or so because Apple will stop updating the software, fails to realize that as crazy as it sounds the M1 in 8 years will be considered slow and people will be asking why anyone would want to run that.

All one has to do is look at the Intel Meteor Lake with the onboard AI accelerator to see where we are headed, Win 11 already supports AI features in Windows Studio Effects, I'm predicting right now that we are less than a decade away from Star Trek style AI powered voice controlled personal computers.

We already have much of the technology in place, we need the AI accelerators to handle some of the processing, I strongly suspect either the next version of Windows or the one after that will feature voice controlled OS interfaces, where you will simply say "Computer, show me phoronix.com" and it will take you there.

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You don't seem to be doing anything that unix users typically do, that's probably why it seems useless to you.

I don't want to speak to my computer, and could only find a real use to my first laptop (a powerpc ibook clamshell) once I slapped debian on it and could use bash, screen, irssi, console music player, write a bot in perl etc.

Maybe you should consider migrating to tom's hardware where you'd probably find a better audience in the forums than here tbh.

[hyperchaotic]

OpenGL ES 3.1 should be sufficient to run most desktop environments with hardware acceleration.
I think it would be better to shift focus and resources to Vulkan instead because of DXVK, VKD3D and of course Zink.
Combined with Box64 or Fex and I would actually get a Macbook for work and some casual gaming on Linux

It's not a question of focus, different people are working on their area of experience. You can see the Vulkan progress on below link. Linas's GPU driver was already written supporting both OGL and Vulkan.

[Alexmitter]

running a still less capable OS than what the Macs with today.

Something like this could only come from someone who has never used the layer of hell known as OSX. Asahi could have zero GPU acceleration and crash every few minutes and it would still be a better OS to actually use.

[hyperchaotic]

I remember some 20 years ago where projects like this, talented enthusiasts writing drivers for proprietary hardware for Linux, were always met with positive vibes. These kinds of projects have always been at the heart of what Linux was/is all about. Not only have it allowed the rest of us to use whatever hardware we wanted but it has been essential to the success of Linux.

I don't have a Mac but I applaud this project and I thank them for the many fixes they've already submitted to components from the kernel to QT/KDE and many others both on AArch64 in general and even some applying to x86/AMD64. Because not only have the Asahi folks uncovered many bugs in existing components, they frequently submit fixes along with the bug reports.

And of course with the Rust GPU driver they've definitively proven not only that Rust is viable for drivers but that it allows for very stable and performant drivers to be developed very quickly.

[Yalok]

We already have much of the technology in place, we need the AI accelerators to handle some of the processing, I strongly suspect either the next version of Windows or the one after that will feature voice controlled OS interfaces, where you will simply say "Computer, show me phoronix.com" and it will take you there.

I'm pretty sure Windows and Mac OS could do this already for years since they introduced Cortana and Siri respectively.

There are also open source voice assistants available for Linux, but not yet integrated into any of the mainstream DEs.