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It is inevitable. I guarantee you there will be people who run Linux on their silicon Macs. I don’t know how you could possibly hold a stance that no one ever will.

Apple is very hostile to it. It won’t stop everyone though. It’ll continue to be niche but it’s happening.



It's not inevitable. It's fragile. Go boot up your old iPad; that should be well-studied, right? We ought to know how to boot into Linux on an ARM machine that old, it's only fair.

Except, you can't. The bootloader is the same iBoot process that your Apple Silicon machine uses, with mitigations to prevent unsigned OSes or persistent coldboot. All the Cydia exploits in the world won't put Linux back on the menu for iPhone or iPad users. And the same thing could happen to your Mac with an OTA update.

It is entirely possible for Apple to lock down the devices further. There's no guarantee they won't.


> with mitigations to prevent unsigned OSes

There is literally an apple-developed way to boot securely into alternative OSs. How would asahi work otherwise?

Also, if only apple is hostile, where is my Xbox/ps/switch/any random Android tablet/million other device's running Linux?


> There is literally an apple-developed way to boot securely into alternative OSs

This is not a good thing! You do not want a proprietary bootloader as your only way to launch Linux, it's not a safe or permanent solution. Apple Silicon could have implemented UEFI like the previous Macs did, but Apple chose to lock users into a bootloader they controlled. This is markedly different from most ARM device bootloaders which aren't changed by an OTA update in another OS partition.

> if only apple is hostile

I did not say that at any point in my comment. Forgeties original claim was that Apple Silicon would eventually have support comparable to Intel Macbooks on Linux. I am telling them point-blank that it is impossible, because Apple and Intel have fundamentally different attitudes towards Linux.

> where is my Xbox/ps/switch/any random Android tablet/million other device's running Linux?

Your Switch and Android tablet is already running the Linux kernel. The past 2 generations of Xbox and PS chipsets have upstream support from AMD in the Linux kernel, so you really only need a working bootloader to get everything working.

Ironically, this does mean that the Nintendo Switch has more comprehensive Linux support than Apple Silicon does.


Sure, the kernel. But you surely know that android abstracts away the drivers, so without the proprietary drivers you are back to square zero - it's not "GNU/Linux".


But you didn't say GNU/Linux, which surely you know is an arbitrarily high bar for any hardware to attain.

My point still stands, Apple does not trust their customers.


Sigh.

Apple cannot lockdown the Mac. You can’t have a development machine that is incapable of running arbitrary code. Back when they still did WWDC live they said that software development was the biggest professional bloc of Mac users. I’m certain that these days development is the biggest driver of the expensive Macs. No one has ever made a decent argument as to why Apple would lock down the Mac that would also explain why they haven’t done it yet.

Passivity isn’t hostility. There isn’t any evidence that Apple is considering locking down the Mac. They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon but they didn’t despite the endless conspiracy theories.


Apple can lockdown the Mac. You might not think it is likely, but without UEFI there is no path of recourse if Apple decides to update iBoot. How do you launch Asahi if Apple quits reading the EFI from the secure partition?

> They could have easily done that with the transition to their own silicon

They already did, that's what my last comment just outlined. Macs do not ship with UEFI anymore, you are wholly at the mercy of a proprietary bootloader that can be changed at any time.


Again, why haven't they done it yet? It's because you cannot lock down a development platform. Yes, they could do it but it doesn't make any sense. You haven't articulated why they would do it only that they could.

Why people continue to think Apple will treat the Mac like the iPhone I have no idea. Will Microsoft take the same approach with Windows as they did with Xbox? Different product, different strategy.


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They made significant changes to the bootloader with the explicit goal of allowing boot of third-party operating systems.


Unless you can find a way to implement U-Boot on Apple Silicon, they can make more significant changes with no easy opt-out.




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