Fedora Asahi Remix Coming For Fedora Linux On Apple Silicon Hardware

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Asahi Remix Coming For Fedora Linux On Apple Silicon Hardware

Asahi Linux is great for those wanting to run the best Linux experience on Apple Silicon hardware while using this Arch Linux based distribution. But for those preferring Fedora Linux over Arch, a Fedora Asahi Remix is coming and was announced today at the Flock To Fedora conference...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Asahi-Remix-Coming

[mirmirmir]

Time better spent for the devs not dealing with custom distro.

Wonder why no one from arch step up to help asahi devs.

[X_m7]

I tried going to the Asahi blog post myself, and this is what I see:
image.png
Made me go looking through my browser data wondering if I'd even visited Hacker News with this system, turns out that whatever the Dark Reader extension does with its static and dynamic theme generation modes makes that thing appear as a side effect lol.

[galad]

Ehm guys, before starting your rants about how soon the project will fail, at least take 10 seconds to check what's working or not. They already implemented OpenGL up to 3.1. So GPU acceleration is already working, could be better? Yes, but it already runs a lot of things.

[dragon321]

Whether the Asahi people want to admit it or not, their project is doomed to fail.

First we had that Hector guy basically admitting that they have no idea when, or even if, they will have hardware gpu acceleration and now we have this where they are basically giving up on their code base and instead building on Fedora's ARM work.

It doesn't matter, they will never get full gpu acceleration on Apple's ARM based processors, they will never get Apple's neural accelerator working and they will never get full acceleration with Apple's media engine.

On top of that, users still need to dual boot Asahi with Mac OS because updating the firmware on Apple systems is only possible from within Mac OS.

If anyone doubts what I say, just look at the sorry state of nouveau.

I think this step by the Asahu people is their attempt to avoid the lawsuit and C&D that I am sure is heading their way from Apple, by aligning themselves indirectly with Red Hat / IBM through Fedora.

But it's not going to work, I give this until the end of this year before Michael has an article that Asahi is no more.

You don't have any idea about things you said do you?

First of all they already have working GPU acceleration. Currently limited to OpenGL 3.1 I believe but work is still ongoing to get newer OpenGL and Vulkan. This takes time because implementing OpenGL and Vulkan from scratch on hardware without documentation or vendor support is not easy task and requires tons of work.

Second - they don't build anything on Fedora ARM. Asahi Project is about implementing support for certain things downstream and then pushing it upstream. They used to offer Arch with their patches to let users quickly setup this on their machines (because installing distro is easier than recompiling many components with custom patches), now they also offer Fedora with their patches. So how they could give up their code base? Fedora ARM don't have any support for Apple Silicon, all stuff comes from Asahi Linux developers.

Third - poor state of Nouveau is not caused by lack of developer work but by the fact Nvidia locked crucial features in their GPUs and they are not accessible without signed firmware which Nvidia is not providing. Poor state of Nouveau drivers is caused by Nvidia policy, not lack of work from developers. This may change in near future as GSP firmware finally can handle all those things and there is already work to integrate it in Nouveau.

Also what is wrong with the fact that it needs dual boot? Why would I buy Macbook if I don't want to use macOS?

[sophisticles]

Ehm guys, before starting your rants about how soon the project will fail, at least take 10 seconds to check what's working or not. They already implemented OpenGL up to 3.1. So GPU acceleration is already working, could be better? Yes, but it already runs a lot of things.

OGL 3.1 was released in 2009, we are up to 4.6 from 2017; this means that they currently support 3d software from 14 years ago.

I don't think too many people are eager to spend thousands of dollars to run software from a decade and a half ago.

As i said, I give them until the end of this year.

[sophisticles]

Third - poor state of Nouveau is not caused by lack of developer work but by the fact Nvidia locked crucial features in their GPUs and they are not accessible without signed firmware which Nvidia is not providing. Poor state of Nouveau drivers is caused by Nvidia policy, not lack of work from developers. This may change in near future as GSP firmware finally can handle all those things and there is already work to integrate it in Nouveau.

Also what is wrong with the fact that it needs dual boot? Why would I buy Macbook if I don't want to use macOS?

Reread the underlined part that you posted, this is my point, in the same way Nvidia has locked portions of their GPUs, Apple has locked even larger portions of their ARM based processors. Nvidia is more open than Apple, if Nouveau is in such horrible state what makes you think that Asahi will ever be better?

If you want to use Mac OS, then what's the point of installing a barely functioning Linux distro?

[dragon321]

Reread the underlined part that you posted, this is my point, in the same way Nvidia has locked portions of their GPUs, Apple has locked even larger portions of their ARM based processors. Nvidia is more open than Apple, if Nouveau is in such horrible state what makes you think that Asahi will ever be better?

If you want to use Mac OS, then what's the point of installing a barely functioning Linux distro?

Again you don't have any idea what are you talking about. Apple hardware is not locked. If it would be then you wouldn't even boot Linux on it, not mentioning running custom drivers like on iOS devices. Apple Silicon don't require signed firmware to do its work so Asahi Linux developers are not blocked like Nouveau developers. Why do you keep comparing these two things if they are not the same? Nouveau is blocked by Nvidia. Apple Silicon support is not blocked, it just require tons of work that is not yet finished. In fact Apple is fine with dual boot. They explicitly permitted users of their computers to boot custom OS. They even made it easier with some macOS update. Nvidia is more open you say? Then why they refused to provide all needed firmware to Nouveau developers for years? Why they refused to implement proper support for Wayland?

Because I need both macOS and Linux and in future I will be able to run both on same hardware without virtualization. When current Apple Silicon hardware will lose support then it might be still usable for some things with Linux.

If you believe you can do better work than Asahi Linux developers then why not help them?

[joncr]

If IBM/RedHat thought Apple would seriously entertain a lawsuit over Asahi this remix would not be happening. One Linux remix targeting Apple hardware is not a financial threat to Apple.

The real issue with Linux-on-Macs is the same as it's always been: There's no assurance any Linux that runs on today's Mac hardware will run on tomorrow's Mac hardware. Or, on today's Mac hardware after a firmware change.

[hyperchaotic]

they will never get Apple's neural accelerator working