I think there is also the added challenge that ARM macs are a moving target, and Apple has less than no desire to provide any kind of stability or support for Asahi Linux. Unlike the PC space where laptop manufacturers have to maintain broad compatibility over time, Apple will make future changes that are really awkward for Asahi and will not care one bit because they can do the compat work on their own software.

▲ xoa 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>I think there is also the added challenge that ARM macs are a moving target

Yes, but also no? Because I think a reasonable argument can be made that ARM Macs are like game consoles with a more rapid generation: yes there are changes between each generation, but then you've got millions of units which are good for a very long time that are all near identical. Apple definitely is not changing everything between gens at all, work they've done for M1 has been plenty useful since. And support stretches awhile. The final M3 generation chip only came out about a year ago (the M3 Ultra for the Mac Studio was March 2025).

So sure there's ongoing effort needed for newer systems, and that may require ongoing RE more then typical. I don't want to brush aside the effort there at all. But at the same time there doesn't seem to be the same long tail of hardware variations and dozens to hundreds of players doing their own little tweaks either. Aside from memory and storage, every single Mac of a given SoC is the same so each time one gets covered they all get covered and are a stable experience. It's definitely a different thing then developing for PCs, and I definitely wish there was and support serious legal backing for no rug pulls being allowed, ever. Hardware owners should always have access to the root of trust if they want it. But that aside, I don't think their efforts are wrong or somehow wasted just because each new generation might need some new work. That doesn't appear from the outside to be intractable, and fact is the pace of hardware change for computers has slowed and continues to slow. A system from many years ago can still be very good for most tasks... so long as the OS can still be updated and work. Apple themselves seem more then limiting factor there, whereas Linux shines in long term support.

▲ unfitted2545 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From an end user perspective, I think the best thing the Asahi team could have done was solely focus on getting the M1 Air/Pro working 100% before moving onto other devices.

But that would probably result in burn out from the crazily talented dev team :P

	▲	walterbell 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Asahi focusing on M1 would also encourage secondary market sales of M1 laptops, which are already a primary competitor (see Apple marketing) to current Apple laptops. If Apple wanted to encourage Asahi Linux users to move from M1 or Qualcomm to M5/M6 Apple devices, they could improve device firmware compatibility with Linux, or contribute directly to mainline Linux.
	▲	rowanG077 6 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Considering that M1 and M2 are almost the same architecturally isn't that exactly what they are doing? M3 are two new contributors who decided they wanted that.

▲ walterbell 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How does Ubuntu Linux on recent Qualcomm (ex-Apple Nuvia) Arm laptops compare to Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon?

▲ jauntywundrkind 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Pretty rude to call this ex Apple Nuvia. I don't think any of those lawsuits by Apple or ARM have been won. Qualcomm declares this to be a new chip. But yes it has talent from those places. Still, let's not try to tip the scales of perception quite so indelicately?

I am curious what the boot situation is. It seems like Qualcomm actually has pretty good support for their cores. But since these PC systems sort of lack a bios, each one needing a hand built DeviceTree: it makes supporting them kind of a nightmare. Even a raspberry pi has a much more advanced and accommodating boot environment than these frustrating Qualcomm laptops. Alas. I don't know but I expect Asahi has to do similar hand tailoring. I am curious to know what the boot chain looks like! How much the system willingly helps vs how much hard to be bespoke hand coded system config! (Wish it wasn't like this, it's so bad)

▲ walterbell an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Circular talent economy, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/legendary-qu...

  Just several months after leaving Qualcomm, distinguished CPU and system architects Gerard Williams, John Bruno, and Ram Srinivasan, who are celebrated for their high-performance processors developed at Apple, Nuvia, and, more recently, Qualcomm, established a new CPU startup — Nuvacore — that promises no less than to 'rewrite the rules of silicon.'

▲ appplication 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Without stirring the pot too much, I’m a bit out of the loop on what the above poster implied and you took slight to. Could you share a little more about this and why you feel what they said was rude?

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wtallis 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There's nothing rude about it; the Nuvia CPU core is pretty much the entire selling point of the Snapdragon X Elite product family. Everything else on those chips is underwhelming. But the provenance of the CPU core is really irrelevant to the question of Linux support, which is gated by driver support for the rest of the SoC, which didn't come from Nuvia. So focusing on the Nuvia aspect is a bit of a red herring.

	▲	walterbell 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> bit of a red herring It offers an A/B test of "similar" SoC performance and battery life (which users now expect from laptops), without a vertically integrated operating system that was also created by the company who designed the SoC.

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saagarjha 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple and ARM have sued Qualcomm over the Nuvia talent.