The bar is at the floor for "helps".
I understand this is very useful to the stability and future of the project, but we should expect more than the bare minimum from big companies in matters like this. Not being actively harmful != helping.
I understand this is very useful to the stability and future of the project, but we should expect more than the bare minimum from big companies in matters like this. Not being actively harmful != helping.
The bare minimum would have been to not do that.
https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/kmutil.8.html
I recall an Apple developer saying that no one internally believed it would get any traction, but they did it anyway.
That is an assertion with no evidence to support it, and lots to do the opposite (starting with the fact that this appeared a year after the initial M1 public avail).
> They test their hardware on Linux, if it doesn't work properly then they can potentially lose money.
That doesn't make any sense, apple does not support Linux on their machine (as demonstrated by Asahi having been working on that for more than a year now).
And even if they did "test their hardware on linux", that would have no relevance to the issue and change: Apple can build mach-o linux kernel files in whatever fashion they need, that is quite literally what Asahi did. TFA states that unambiguously and they're the Asahi project lead, they'd know.
Probably I'm too cynical (or maybe realistic?) because it's not hard to imagine situation in the future where thousands of work hours poured into project like this is easily and effortlessly decimated by corporation execs decision.
Or the defaults(1) command, or how networking config works (it's just plain BSD configs with a GUI on top).
Apple isn't against tinkering or customization, they just don't document or guarantee it.
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[0] Simon Willison has neat demos with it https://simonwillison.net/2020/May/21/dogsheep-photos/
Personally, I wouldn't consider buying a Macbook unless I knew I could run Linux on it after it EOL. My oldest laptop is 14+ years old and is still useful because I run Linux on it. A 2022 Macbook should make a very nice ssh Linux client in 2037.
Nope. The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely if they can run Linux on it is tiny. Incredibly so. Apple sells over 20 million of these things a year, they’re not looking at a few thousand people who want native asahi Linux as a product center.
Exactly. One argument that I can see it that Apple want to be able to say: When we're no longer supporting old M1 Macs, you can run Linux, or sell it to a Linux user, rather than throwing it out. Branding it as an environmental benefit.
It's a bit far fetch though.