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Comment by todd3834 | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like they were doing more than just not being actively harmful. They were actively helpful but we can only speculate on their motive.

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The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers. Perhaps this help is profitable to capture the Linux crowd?

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.

It's also one of the best high-performance ARM machines you can currently buy (unless you go for insanely expensive exotic servers). I consider buying one just to have a low power server.

Actually running server Linux on Mac Mini for some workloads might be very useful and economical thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised to find out many companies buying those babies for their internal needs. It's like HP Microserver.

> The Asahi Linux project is basically free labor that makes the M1 Macs more appealing to consumers.

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.

> The number of people who would buy an M1 Mac solely if they can run Linux on it is tiny.

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.

Pretty sure Apple's answer to environmental issues is recycling, which to be fair they're good at. (...And also to be fair, which is quite possibly strictly inferior to keeping the same hardware going indefinitely)

Apple won't say that though, Apple instead will tell you all about their new recycling robots and incentivize trading in older devices for newer ones.

Even if it's tiny, it's still thounsands of people in the world. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars of margins. Capitalists would hang for less.

I agree about the "consumers" angle, but I don't think it's entirely crazy to think that unlocking Linux on Apple Silicon will eventually have a non-negligible impact on Apple's bottom line. Think Linux on PS3.

To validate the point if I'll ever buy something Apple it would be a Mac to run Linux on, but I don't see why I should pay an Apple premium and throw away many of the reasons to pay for it. The Mn processor of the future should be so much faster than anything else (say x10) to leave me no choice. I doubt it will ever happen.

Asahi Linux is really interesting to me. A distro that only has to care about a very small number of hardware configurations could be great. I could see it becoming the number one desktop Linux very quickly if they succeed.

Engineering goodwill is probably limited by legal / marketing departments. To do more or provide documentation would probably amount to a potential liability with little added benefit to the bottom line.

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