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Comment by notpushkin | Hacker News Reader

Asahi is a thing. For headless usage it’s pretty much ready to go already.

M3 support in Asahi is still heavily WIP. I think it doesn't even have display support, Ethernet, or Wifi yet, I think it's only serial over USB . Without any GPU or ANE support, it's not very useful for AI stuff. https://asahilinux.org/docs/M3-Series-Feature-Support/

Hmm, this page links to an out-of-tree ANE module (same as on M1/M2 I believe). No GPU support is a bummer, though.

On the other hand, you can do without display support if you’re only using it as a server. And I think USB Ethernet dongles might work for the time being?

The Asahi maintainer resigned recently. What that means for the future only time will tell. I probably wouldn't want to make a big investment in it right now.

Your wording makes it sound like it was a one-man show. Asahi has a really strong contributor base, new leadership[1], and the backing of Fedora via the Asahi Fedora Remix. While Hector resigning is a loss, I don't think it's a death knell for the project.

[1]: https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/

He was the lead developer and very prominent figure. I think it probably boils down to funding the new developments.

it was pretty close to a one man show

By what grounds do you make this statement?

My understanding is there are dozens of people working on it.

e: I'm removing this comment because on reflection I think it is probably some form of doxxing and being right on the internet isn't that important.

You believe that Hector Martin is also Asahi Lina?

https://bsky.app/profile/lina.yt

https://github.com/AsahiLina

e: snip

I thought this was confirmed a couple years ago.

Regardless of whether this is true, there is a lot of other Asahi developers. This fact alone is immaterial.

You make it sound like there was only one.

It’s only a thing for the M1. Asahi is a Sisyphean effort to keep up with new hardware and the outlook is pretty grim at the moment.

Apple’s whole m.o. is to take FOSS software, repackage it and sell it. They don’t want people using it directly.

Not at all for M3 or M4. Support is for M2 and M1 currently.

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