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Linus Torvalds is using ARM Macs and running Linux!
- Thread starter exoticSpice
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It's under heavy development at the moment so not surprised he is testing it.
Just because he wrote linux doesn't mean he isn't a fan of good hardware.
Just because he wrote linux doesn't mean he isn't a fan of good hardware.
Linus is currently using the MacBook as an expensive Chromebook.
I thought Asahi Linux was the Linux kernel modified to run inside Apple's Silicon based hardware, wasn't it?
The thread title implies that it was using an environment suitable for end users with full GUI etc.
The phrasing of the tweet suggests otherwise.
I’m not commenting on the advances made for Linux or the achievement. Merely the misleading/ambiguous title of the thread
Except if the title were edited (is that possible on MR forums) it definitely wasn't implying all that.
What makes you think there isn't a full GUI? It's not GPU accelerated yet, but is supposedly quite usable anyways, thanks to how fast M series CPUs are.
Is it suitable for end users yet? Probably not, but Linus Torvalds and Jens Axboe (another Linux kernel dev who hopped on the M1 train several months ago) are not average Linux end users. They're used to dealing with a few rough edges.
I just looked up some of Axboe's tweets about it; he says it's been quite stable and the biggest issue he has is lack of support for suspend/resume.
He knows what the best platforms are. It doesn't surprise me.
Blog - Asahi Linux
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Hardware and software docs / wiki. Contribute to AsahiLinux/docs development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Yeah, it’s a Linux distribution, gui and all. Drivers are in development for hardware acceleration and other bits. I guess you’ve never reverse engineered something. Or dealt with any Linux gui. Like I said, nonsense.
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I think both you and altaic has missed the situation.
Linus is using the Asahi Kernel but not the reference distribution provided by Asahi Linux. It is Fedora (Linus' favorite) with Asahi Kernel. So yes, it is a Linux OS with GUI and working userspace, but no GPU acceleration and some power management features not working because the drivers are not complete yet.
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I didn’t miss anything. The Asahi team submits upstream kernel patches and there’s no resistance. To call it not Linux is disingenuous. It is in development and not for consumers, but totally reasonable for Linus to rock. He’s dogfooding it, which is great.
It's a Linux distro for sure, don't forget they do everything upstream as to the Linux Kernel itself so yes it is indeed Linux.
I have tried it and runs pretty well! Can't wait for a few more versions down the line and I'll definitely set it up as dual boot on my M1 MacBook Air.
Apple ARM Chips + Linux OS is the perfect combination in my view, having the option between macOS and a Asahi would be really good for everyone.
Plus, don't forget this means pushing ARM x64 even further in the world of Linux.
I have tried it and runs pretty well! Can't wait for a few more versions down the line and I'll definitely set it up as dual boot on my M1 MacBook Air.
Apple ARM Chips + Linux OS is the perfect combination in my view, having the option between macOS and a Asahi would be really good for everyone.
Plus, don't forget this means pushing ARM x64 even further in the world of Linux.
The amount of diehard Linux fanboys I've seen getting M1 Macbook Airs has been amazing. They've fallen in love with the laptops so much, some even dipping their toes into macOS
Well most people I know who are hardcore Linux users in both (personal and work) life's have been using ARM Apple Silicon Macs since they came out.. Myself being one of them, can't just compete in terms of hardware and battery life.
You can just have a Your Favorite Distro VM on Parallels or Asahi Linux these days...
In fact, I’d go as far to say that Asahi Linux is a project to get high-quality drivers for Apple Silicon hardware upstreamed into the Linux kernel, and that the “Asahi Linux” distribution itself is just a way of letting people test out new drivers and features before they’re submitted for review.
In a lot of ways that makes Apple Silicon Macs more of a first-class Linux citizen than things like the Raspberry Pi, where a lot of the hardware drivers haven’t been upstreamed which leaves users often stuck on old kernels. It’s really nice to see a “port Linux to X hardware” project that is trying to do things the *right* way with proper code review and documentation instead of just hacking on things in a fork until they sort of work and calling it a day (looking at you, Corellium).
I agree, it's a reverse engineering project at it's core to make Apple Silicon usable in a distro.
Honestly I'm really about this, I use at work Linux like 99% of the time. Rest of the time I'm just interacting with my macOS GUI.
Heck my VMs are all either Arch, Kabuntu, Fedora... And we use Red Hat and SUSE at work, only have Windows VM for mandatory software in production, dev/qa we use wine/proton compatibility layer.
I loveeeee Apple Silicon battery life it's just amazing.
What I would do to get SteamOS on an Apple Silicon Mac. Valve hurry up and get the desktop version ready.
You probably already get this, but for anybody who doesn't - even without virtualisation, MacOS is UNIX* - if you're a Linux fan, most of the powerful command/scripting shells, tools and programming languages are there natively, most of the popular open-source Linux/Unix packages have already been patched for MacOS and can be installed via Homebrew and MacPorts if they're not available as standalone applications. There are even Mac X11 implementations for running Linux/Unix GUI applications where nobody has provided a Mac GUI version (although I can't imagine that many people choose Linux for the wonderful GUI).
So, ever since Mac OS X, Macs have been these really neat UNIX systems with a much slicker GUI (but able to run X11 if necessary) that also have native versions of key Windows packages like MS Office and Adobe CS (love 'em or hate 'em, you're very lucky if you can ignore 'em). The UNIX/Linux world has always been more focussed on source-code compatibility and portability than being tied to any particular processor architecture so while PPC vs. x86 vs ARM isn't totally irrelevant, it's much less of a big deal, and most of the standard "userspace" stuff and popular packages in Linux are already ARM64 compatible.
While I think Asahi is a great project, I'm perfectly happy with MacOS's own UNIX features combined with "headless" VMs (for which QEMU/UTM does the trick) for testing server-side stuff that's targetted on specific Linux systems... although I could see Asahi being invaluable in a couple of years time when you could use it to breathe life into surplus/second-hand M1 systems (...I ran a G4 Mac Mini with Yellow Dog linux as my home file/email server for years...)
...of course, Linus Torvalds has a slight interest in Linux Kernel development , so actually being able to boot the kernel on Apple Silicon hardware is kinda critical for him.
(*and, technically, Linux isn't UNIX, but that's just down to branding/licensing/certification issues...)
Completely in sync with you on this @theluggage, I have been using macOS/Linux as my main OS for more than 8 years now, I only have Windows in my desktop machine for some Multiplayer games however 99% of the single player games I play using Proton on a Linux distro.
I usually tend to say the macOS is one of the 'best looking' Unix distro out there but in a controlled environment. In every fresh macOS install I do, the first thing I install is Homebrew, Pip and git.
I spend 90% of my day using the macOS Terminal connecting via SSH to my SUSE and Red Hat systems while using my VPN. I love the Apple Terminal it's really good and iTerms is another great alternative.
For me macOS right now has better programs support in Microsoft Teams, Spotify, AnyConnect VPN and etc..I'm perfectly able to do my job on my Mac while rocking 8-10h battery life on my M1 Pro without an hitch, the same can't be said about any other laptop out there in the Windows/Linux world.
However, being able to run Ubuntu/Arch and whatever distro out there in a VM like Parallels allows me to test things out as in real environments.. And with ARM becoming more and more a reality in the Data Center as well (Look up Graviton in AWS or HiSilicon for Huawei Cloud for Asian Markets) this will become more and more relevant.
Each and every one has their own workloads and job positions but I'm just glad we keep allowing more and more people to have better battery life and performance especially in a Mac that is basically a controlled environment Linux.
Honestly I'm glad we have a comercial OS like macOS out in the wild, because I can't really deal with Windows.. It's already enough the issues that the Windows Server pops up once in a while for those 'must applications' that will have to run there
So how's the latest Parallels doing with running recent linux distros on Apple Silicon? I've been using it for years for both Windows and Linux, but I think my licensed copy is going to stay put on my old Intel iMac for running x86 Windows & that I can survive without Windows on my new Mac. Is it compellingly good at Linux c.f. UTM/QEMU - which seems fine for server stuff, but marginal at running GUI?
The current VMWare preview gets a fail for still not being able to boot Ubuntu 22.04.
It runs very well and very low usage of CPU/Memory! Been using Ubuntu, Fedora KDE and a couple more without any issues! I love the suspension on Parallels to save battery on the Mac is a neat feature.