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Comment by JLO64 | Hacker News Reader

> Thanks to the combined efforts of mildsunrise and chaos_princess, we discovered that ACE3 has pretty much the same register set as CD3217, only wrapped in a SPMI interface instead of addressed over I2C. Both the SPMI interface and ACE3 itself are now working in Asahi Linux, bringing USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt support to all M3 series devices.

When I got my M3 Pro MBP, I got it with the intention of eventually installing Linux on it. In hindsight I seriously underestimated the amount of effort needed for even partial Linux compatibility, which makes me all the more grateful for the work Asahi contributors have put in! I'll still be keeping macOS installed for iOS dev work(which I plan on doing soonish), but other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life.

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> other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life.

Then why bother installing a different OS?

There might be no reason while the hardware is latest and greatest, but installing a different OS can keep old hardware going for longer. My 2014 Macbook Pro is uncomfortably slow on the last supported MacOS but works perfectly fine when running the latest Fedora.

And mine is as fast as I need, with Sway as my main DE. (With Arch Linux, but I bet Fedora wouldn’t be any worse.) The only reason to switch to M{1,2,3} is battery life. So, as soon as the external Thunderbolt display is going to work, I think I’m making the switch.

This exactly sums up my long term feelings. Even now I’m annoyed by all the background bloat/tasks that are running on it, and I’d prefer being able to have more control over what runs on it for battery/performance reasons. Additionally, even though I’ve had it for years at this point, I think I’d still be more comfortable if I could use i3 with it.

Background processes almost never really use expensive resources on macOS or Linux. Certainly they can cause symptoms sometimes, but it's typically no worse than extra fan noise.

All the wasted resources on most people's machines are going to a) pixel buffers b) browser tabs c) both.

Almost never. But still sometimes

Also computers should run and not run what you choose. Apple should not be able to for e you to run "services" (for themselves) and apps you cant delete

You can't turn off random parts of a system someone else made. You don't know what they do.

https://limi.net/checkboxes

Why does MacOS "require" AppleTV (even monopolizing the folder name TV in your official Movies folder, or Stocks, or News, or FindMy, or any of the other stock apps that are protected by SIP?

Preference?

You can dual boot Asahi when the time comes.

Or why bother buying an expensive machine in the first place...

I actually didn’t buy it! It was a gift from a friend who really likes splurging at Micro Center. If it were my money, I probably would’ve gotten an Air.

Supporting the most closed option is worth it because...?

The hardware is not even that good. Sure, the CPUs are nice but nice enough to actively support the most closed up system? Not by a longshot.

you overlooked the UTM.app (also buildable from open source) on the App Store, which allows installation from an ISO of arm-native linux builds, directly run via the Apple hypervisor.framework, _not_ using Qemu emulation.

it's fast as greased lightning and fantastic. I've used it two or so years on M1, M2, M2 Max, and M5 and it's what I think you too will love.

The only reason is because M2 to M3 was a dramatic shift in how everything works, M1 and M2 were both compatible with one another, I'm not sure if after M3 its been stable, but I sure hope so, there's value in my opinion in being backwards compatible with older CPUs.

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