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Comment by dinom | Hacker News Reader

The article states "There is no catch"... but if I'm not mistaken I'll need to run Apple's operating system, is that right?

As much as I like the salacious hardware, that would be a reasonably sized "catch" in my book :-(

Or am I wrong; is there an official way to run GNU/Linux as the main operating system?

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At the risk of stereotyping a bit: in general people who spell it “GNU/Linux” probably have priorities incompatible with an Apple laptop purchase decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I care deeply about software freedom, and I don’t think that’s incompatible with an Apple laptop purchase decision, but the “it’s called GNU/Linux, GNU is the operating system, Linux being merely the kernel…” school of software freedom finds basically everything about Apple deeply offensive.

There is. Apple does not restrict you from booting into other operations, they actually have even slightly improved the ability to do so over time on the ARM Macs. The catch is to get another OS which supports your hardware. With Linux, it actually looks good, the Asahi Linux project (https://asahilinux.org/) is making great strides, you can install it on ARM Macs, the biggest drawback currently is, that while there is GUI support, it isn't accellerated yet. But it seems, that even the CPU rendered UIs are faster than the GPU on a Raspberry Pi. GPU support for Asahi Linux is making good progress too, so I expect something not too far into the future.

Another catch is that you cannot install Linux (at least Asahi Linux) without first booting macOS, opening up a GUI terminal there and installing Asahi via a shellscript downloaded from their website.

Also, saying that "lacking GPU support" is the only drawback, is minimizing the issue a bit. Here is the following components that don't currently work with Asahi Linux:

- DisplayPort

- Thunderbolt

- HDMI on the MacBooks

- Bluetooth

- GPU acceleration

- Video codec acceleration

- Neural Engine

- CPU deep idle

- Sleep mode

- Camera

- Touch Bar

This is incorrect as Asahi Linux can also be installed from macOS Recovery, which is the Apple UEFI equivalent.

Can I install macOS Recovery without installing full macOS? If my memory serves my well, macOS Recovery is a part of full macOS, so to get it, you need a full install. If that's true, you still need a full macOS install in order to install Asahi Linux, in comparison to normal laptop/desktop computers which can have nothing on them, but still allow you to install Windows/Linux/macOS.

Apple computers come with macOS pre-installed, so technically you don’t have to install anything. It’s not possible, as far as I know, to purchase a Mac without macOS already installed.

I’m planning on buying an M2 Air. That leaves my mid 2012 Air running Catalina (poorly).

I don’t want to continue running the old Catalina system.

Is there a way to install Linux on that bare metal? What’s the best approach - direct install, or use something like QEMU underneath?

Typing this from a MacBook Air 2013 running ArchLinux :)

You just flash the installer of your favorite distro (don't use ventoy) to a USB and install as usual.

Do you reformat / partition the drive?

If you want! I installed latest Ubuntu mate on an old imac for a kid and completely wiped out the partitions with snow leopard stuff.

I would say read the limitations first and don’t buy it as a Linux machine yet if that’s what you need right now. Wait another year or two for Linux to be ready and comfortable.

If you need to install Asahi, you should install it as per the instructions in a dual-boot setup, then delete the macOS partition and resize afterwards.

I need the M2 for business communications and software, e.g. my accounting system. I also want to stay compatible with the other family iOS systems. I might dual boot Asahi at some point.

What I’m most interested in is converting my 2012 Air to Linux for development purposes. The hardware is good! With 4GB, it’s really too small to run recent MacOS, and it will be unsupported soon, but it should be fine for i3/Linux.

From what I've understood, Apple Silicon Macs can't function at all with "nothing on them", the same flash memory is shared between the pre-boot environment and the OS and data. There's no separate firmware flash memory.

I am not sure how the method of installation plays a role and I have not said, that lacking GPU support is the only drawback, just the biggest. The rest is work im progress or already working. But to a few of your points:

- HDMI: the MacBook Air doesn't have HDMI, seems to work on the Mini or how are they getting a monitor attached. Or they use DisplayPort, what you listed as not working.

- GPU accelleration, I mentioned that. Of course you cannot expect Video accelleration without GPU support

- Neural engine: well, most other devices don't even have one.

- CPU idle certainly will come, run times are already excellent under Linux.

- Touch Bar: except for the M2 Pro, there are no devices with a touch bar left, and I expect the touch bar to go away entirely soon.

> I am not sure how the method of installation plays a role

It does, because it means I cannot just install Linux on the machine. I have to have macOS installed and running first, then and only then can I install Linux. It makes the hardware dependent on macOS, even if I just wanna run Linux.

Other computers you can have literally nothing on it, and then get Windows or Linux running on it (or macOS even).

I didn't make that list myself, it's from the official Asahi website. And I'm not gonna argue against you if each item on the list has a big impact or not. I'm generally a fan of Asahi (and I donate to their efforts each month), I was just putting it out there to show that there are actually a bunch of "drawbacks" (more like missing features) than people in this comment thread is letting on.

Other computers you can have literally nothing on it, and then get Windows or Linux running on it

This is absolutely not the case, of course - it’s just the pre-installed environment you use to install Windows or Linux is called “BIOS” or “UEFI” instead of “macOS”.

Exactly. The incapacity to understand what it means to have one company responsible for every component of a computer is incredible.

Bluetooth works now. and GPU acceleration is "close"

> Apple does not restrict you from booting into other operations

While that is important, it's quite superficial given that Apple does not provide documentation for the device.

Nor do most PC vendors. Which is why Linux on many laptops is still some kind of a challenge. The only reason it most of the times works nevertheless is, that the PC vendors often use known components and the user base is so large, that a lot of reengineering already had happened. But if Linux on Apple Silicon gains any traction, the situation could be quite good.

>"There is no catch"... but if I'm not mistaken I'll need to run Apple's operating system

Product works as advertised, news at 11.

Not if you expected to buy a general purpose computer.

What does that even mean? "General Purpose" != Linux. All software needs to be developed to run on specific hardware. Even virtualised platforms or interpreted code still depend on software that's developed to run specifically on supported platforms.

As it happens, Apple has released development tools and documentation to write and load alternate operating systems on this hardware. The Asahi Linux team have even said Apple is providing even more support than is available in the x86 world nowadays, it's just that this is in many ways a very new architecture.

Could they do more? Sure. Are they obliged to? No. Ultimately it's a product advertised with certain capabilities, no compromises means it can do that as expected, otherwise the phrase is basically meaningless.

Apple advertises the macs with macOS. So I suppose if you buy it expecting something else, that's on you, and the product still "works as advertised". They don't go out of their way to prevent you from running <not macOS>.

I'll also note that few companies advertise their PCs as "general purpose computers", if by that you mean "guaranteed to run Linux flawlessly". Even System76 / Dell developer / whatever, which ship with Linux out of the box, don't guarantee the pc will run, say, FreeBSD perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, as the GGP post puts it, I'd also like to be able to run Linux on a MacBook Pro. But since I don't want to have a wonky experience, since I understand it'll not work perfectly, I chose to put up with the wonky hardware of my HP, which works well enough.

If by "general purpose computer", you mean "runs any OS I could throw at it", then broadly speaking any Mac is more general-purpose than any non-Mac, since they can run macOS plus whatever other OSes will run on the architecture they're built for.

If, however, you actually mean "a computer that runs Windows or Linux"...why not just say so? Rather than passive-aggressively pretending that all you're looking for is "general purpose", with the obvious snide implication that macOS can't provide that...

This comment shouldn't be downvoted. People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is. We used to take much more pride and spend a lot more effort making hardware cross compatible with each other. It was never perfect, but more and more these days we seem to be given vendor locked, non-general devices.

By all accounts, a brand new m1/m2 mac is a general purpose computer. It allows arbitrary execution of code, it can be used generally for multiple purposes. This is contrast to special purpose computers, who were designed specifically for a computational task and cannot perform tasks of "general purpose." A Raspberry Pi, a Vic-20, an Apple II, the framework laptop, and yes, the current generation of Macs all qualify.

You're trying to narrow the definition of "general purpose" to mean something else entirely.

I agree. But if one doesn't define a "general purpose computer" as being a piece of hardware, then all kinds of different conclusions can be drawn.

If what Amelius pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116822 is true, i.e. the documentation is junk. Then, IMHO, Apple is no longer trying to sell "a good piece of hardware"; because they're not documenting its operation.

And, in reality, I find this to be true... what Apple really sells is "an experience".

Whether it's a good or bad experience is likely in the eye of the beholder.

The Asahi Linux team lead don't seem to agree that this is a fair assessment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744#28764136

>People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is.

OK, tell me what it is.

I had the same question because I’m interested in osdev and would ideally like to be able to boot something from machine language that I created from scratch. Currently targeting Raspberry Pi which is also ARM, but the laptop form factor would be nice.

Then check out the Asahi Linux project. From my understanding, it consists of two parts. First, kind of a boot loader, which makes it easy to boot any code on your Mac. This they use to run a Linux kernel, customized for the hardware of the Apple Silicon machines. Most of the kernel customizations are already part of the main Linux kernel or in process of being added.

How many "general purpose computers" are out there? There are a few vendors, which explicitly support Windows and Linux, but many computers are just designed for Windows, Linux might or might not run on them. Asahi Linux is making nice progress and I actually hope, that Microsoft decides to support Windows 11 on the Mac too.

All of those are "general purpose". That phrase doesn't mean "perfect official support for whatever alternative OS you like", it usually means something closer to "you are not forbidden from running your own code, even at a high privilege (kernel) level".

MacOs doesn't forbid to run your own code. Not sure what you are talking about.

Apple still allows it. But there is no documentation, so that alternative OS will be entirely based on assumptions ...

This applies to most computers sold. A lot of PC hardware has components, which might not be supported by Linux nor drivers provided. Fortunately, there are more and more manufacturers, who officially support Linux on their machines and of course a huge user base, which tries to make it work nevertheless.

Someone mentioned it'd be possible to run Asahi Linux, and this may have been in the back of my mind somewhere. But a lack of official docs would make life difficult and most likely explains my cognitive dissonance.

Thanks for the info.

I don’t pretend that this is the answer you want, but Docker for macOS these days is incredible and it gives you a native Linux experience like nothing else, at least in terms of doing command line hacking. It is extremely fast.

If you want a full GNU system then it’s a less attractive route.

My co-workers on M1 Macs constantly face issues with Docker, whether it's filesystem performanc, regressions after every other upgrade or requiring a restart because something just reaches an unrecoverable condition.

I would say docker for macOS has always fallen significantly short of "incredible" and it's even worse on M1.

It might not be the M1. I face the same issues with Docker on my MBP.

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