[cassianoleal]

> apple not doing much to help in providing support for it (M1)

marcan (lead dev of Asahi Linux) seems to disagree:

    Looks like Apple changed the requirements for Mach-O kernel files in 12.1, breaking our existing installation process... and they *also* added a raw image mode that will never break again and doesn't require Mach-Os.

    And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994

[smoldesu]

It's funny how people come out to celebrate in droves when Apple does the bare minimum to not break their own tooling. Another equally likely scenario is that their changes broke internal tooling, and so they added the raw image mode to give Mac engineers a more reliable entry point for prototyping and testing on the new devices.

Regardless, when my mail carrier changes their route to get to my house 30 minutes faster I don't take it as some sort of sign that the UPS cares about me more than the others. It seems more likely to me that Apple saw the logistical value in not breaking their own kernel requirements with every release, and that happens to be serendipitous with the greater development community as a whole. If Apple wanted to help the Linux community, we would know because they'd be releasing UNIX kernel blobs so people wouldn't be forced to spend years re-writing code that already exists. But of course, that's not how their industry works. If Torvalds gave Nvidia just one middle finger for their treatment of Linux, it's hard to imagine how many he'd like to give Apple these days.

[cassianoleal]

> Another equally likely scenario is that their changes broke internal tooling, and so they added the raw image mode to give Mac engineers a more reliable entry point

The second tweet in the thread reads:

    Seriously, I can't think of a single reason why they'd add that for themselves. They build real Mach-Os with their own process. They have no use for raw images. 

    They are saying "hey, use this, it's easier and we won't break it in the future". This is for Asahi.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799767068188672

[smoldesu]

MacOS has no use for it, I'll buy that much. But what about the automated calibration tools or QA software for displays and peripherals? I have a hard time believing that Apple doesn't have some level of internal testing firmware, because it certainly doesn't show up in MacOS. Much smaller companies do this regularly to test batches of production units for defects, it's part of the reason why custom firmware is possible to load on the Nintendo Switch. And Nintendo certainly didn't say "hey, use this", so I really, really have a hard time believing Apple did.

[messe]

I think a lot of people are seriously overestimating the amount of work non-apple hardware manufacturers put into linux support, and have also become far too accustomed to 30+ years of IBM PC backwards compatibility.

[wtallis]

Also, people are underestimating how much Microsoft and Intel keep doing to break core features of their platforms. They've shipped some truly awful breakage in storage interfaces and power management in recent years: poorly thought-out incompatible changes with little or no public documentation, shipped by OEMs in a state that doesn't even work well enough with Windows to justify all the trouble.