Hacker News Reader

Comment by sixothree | Hacker News Reader

And their direction in your opinion is moving towards openness or away from it?

Looks like moving towards openness to me, because as far as I remember, there has not been such a high-functioning Linux distro on a Mac until Asahi. And implemented in such a short period of time, on top of that. Of course I wouldn't attribute it solely to that, the Asahi team seems to be doing a phenomenal job as well.

Also, I haven't seen Linus Torvalds use a Macbook (an M2 Air running Asahi Linux) until recently either.[0]

0. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

>Also, I haven't seen Linus Torvalds use a Macbook (an M2 Air running Asahi Linux) until recently either.

You're about a decade late: https://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvald...

Huh, Ubuntu works perfectly on my 2010 Macbook pro. Including fringey stuff like keyboard backlight control and the ambient light sensor. Also sleep etc.

I didn't even have to mess with anything, it just worked right after the install. How much more high-functioning can you get?

100% towards openness. Before the move to ARM, Macs' security standing was an all or nothing affair. Either all the OSes that ran on the Mac had a secure boot sequence, or none of them did.

With Apple Silicon, you can keep a complete chain of trust with macOS and install an insecure Linux distro. It's great security compartmentalization, and no x64 chip can offer this granular control.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com