[marcodiego]

> they literally don't do anything to prevent you from running another OS.

Like not documenting their hardware? Like making Asahi Linux becoming a multi-year reverse engineering project that may possibly never achieve perfect compatibility?

> They make it easy to run Windows

On apple silicon without virtualisation? Sorry, didn't know that.

[dangus]

The point is that Apple could have easily locked down the bootloader and made it not possible at all to install something else. In designing the M1 hardware they explicitly went out of their way to make sure other operating systems could be installed and they’ve said as much. They took their smartphone SoCs and bootloader that never allowed alternate operating systems and added that feature in actively.

Technically Asahi Linux isn’t facing a much different situation than standard Linux distributions as they relate to x86 hardware. There are thousands of PC components that don’t provide any sort of Linux driver where contributors reverse engineer those drivers.

Sure, in the PC world a lot more vendors do voluntarily provide Linux drivers, and Apple will never to that for its hardware, and that specific point is a valid criticism.

As far as assisting in running Windows, my understanding is that the company that makes Parallels and Apple have some kind of relationship. Microsoft officially endorses Parallels.

You can complain about it being virtualization but it’s perfectly fine for desktop apps or even some more intensive apps. And it’s not really a very valid complaint considering that Microsoft doesn’t distribute a general purpose ARM distribution of Windows.

[marcodiego]

> Technically Asahi Linux isn’t facing a much different situation than standard Linux distributions as they relate to x86 hardware.

Very very different.

> There are thousands of PC components that don’t provide any sort of Linux driver where contributors reverse engineer those drivers.

Increasingly more rare. Maybe that only happens thèse d'ays on extremely specialized hardware.

[dangus]

It’s only rare these days because Linux spent decades clawing its way into data centers and workstations.

You can find a somewhat similar situation on Linux, with other non-Apple ARM hardware.

[cweagans]

> Like not documenting their hardware?

They aren't actively hindering that reverse engineering effort. They aren't _helping_ either, but I didn't claim that they were helping. For as long as I can remember, Apple's stance with Mac computers has been "We sell the computers to you in the way we think is best. If you want to tinker, that's on you." and I don't think that has materially changed.