[ForHackernews]

This is incredibly impressive and also quite sad. Six years later, we have a very-nearly-right kernel for the M1.

Apple is launching the M5. It seems like the future is going to be a world of closed systems and custom silicon, with any free software lagging far behind.

[zozbot234]

M1 and M2 hardware isn't going anywhere. They're still great machines. And progress will be faster once the project finishes getting their code merged into the existing Linux kernel and distros. They have a first alpha of M3 ready, they're just refraining from releasing it in that state because they're so busy with everything else they're doing - a key difference compared to when they first came out with alpha support for the M1.

[freeAgent]

I’m sad because the WiFi on my M1 MBA is dying/dead and there’s no way to replace it without swapping the whole “logic board.” Apple also doesn’t support any USB WiFi adapters in recent versions of MacOS, so it’s now tethered to a wired network connection. I’m just waiting for the M5 refresh to hit at this point. Anyway, all that’s to say that at least some M1 hardware is going to to the trash heap soon :(

[zozbot234]

USB is a standard protocol, so Asahi should support USB WiFi adapters just fine. Is Bluetooth also impacted?

[hu3]

How many USB ports does a MBA M1 have?

Now you have to walk around with a USB hub, for a subpar battery life.

[pyreko]

I mean the person they're replying to is saying their current choice is they're stuck to a wired connection...

[ctolsen]

To add to that, they'll continue to be great machines running Linux even after Apple has bloated MacOS to death. Tahoe has made my M1 MBP feel significantly less snappy for no good reason.

[joleyj]

Most of my software development career was spent working at a small company that sold a product that emulated the operating system developed and sold by a much, much larger company. The work was interesting and when you had a breakthrough or a small victory, it sure felt good. The challenge of keeping up was exhilarating and kept folks motivated to keep pressing forward.

But eventually it wears you down. It's nearly impossible to keep up in the long-term. Normal product evolution, the sheer size of the behemoth and sometimes even malice on their part to thwart the little guy make it really tough to stay current.

Think of Wine vis-a-vis Windows. They will never catch up.

[hu3]

In my experience half the things I ran in Wine ran better in it than Windows.

So depending on what you want to run, not only did Wine catch up bit also surpassed.

[qdotme]

Except they did with Wine, in a way. They got to the point where sufficient number of third party software developers target the common base between Wine and Windows (Steam/Proton), electing to have broader compatibility rather than catching all the newest Windows-only APIs.

I wonder how much similar behavior influence other buying choices. I’ve been eyeing an upgrade from M1 for a while - so far punting on it, mostly because of Asahi.

[joleyj]

I guess I wasn't aware that Wine pivoted from trying to be a general purpose, drop-in replacement for Windows to being a platform for games that only supports a subset of Windows functionality.

It's much more difficult to keep current and support the full functionality of a much larger competitor's offering when you have to support everything. In my experience it was an all or nothing proposition. Either you emulated it 100% or you had nothing. I think Asahi is more in this realm maybe than Wine. It really needs to support all the hardware, 100%, or it's value is greatly diminished.

[lonjil]

> I guess I wasn't aware that Wine pivoted from trying to be a general purpose, drop-in replacement for Windows to being a platform for games that only supports a subset of Windows functionality.

It didn't.

[qdotme]

Or „just enough” for the subset of users that is „enough” to ensure product viability. The absolutism of „all or nothing” is rooted in the strictly-better mentality for replacing something.

For Wine/Proton, the core demographic is essentially gamers, who tend to overlap heavily with engineering population later on, and thus core population for Microsoft to capture and retain. Once Steam removed that vendor lock-in, the corporate discussion became more flexible.

For Asahi (proud Asahi user for 4y now), the added value of „most powerful Linux/Arm64 laptop on the market” outweighs the few things that don’t work on Asahi (HDMI out is probably the only one that occasionally matters for me, but screencasting works well enough). Yes, there are gaps, but they are smaller than things from Linux that are missing on OSX or Windows for me.

[freeAgent]

They never got Office or any Adobe (or similar) apps working, which is a huge miss.

[pyreko]

There was a PR for Adobe products a few weeks ago (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/wine/pull/310), though it seems like they're redirecting it to the main Wine repo now since it makes more sense there

[madduci]

But we have still the power of choice: moving consumers away from such closed platforms would affect their business.

[NetMageSCW]

First you have to convince consumers to give up on systems that work with support to development kits that are build it yourself with (lots of) caveats, which is why the year of the Linux desktop still hasn’t arrived.

[madduci]

Not really true. There are platforms and systems that are stable and open.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

What do you expect when you nerds keep buying their closed systems?

[ForHackernews]

I've never bought any Mac, but I've been issued several at jobs. At one company, I scandalized the Apple fans by wiping OSX and installing Linux on a 10th gen Macbook Pro.

[_ph_]

The problem is, many "nerds" have little other options in hardware. Which ARM laptop would be the alternative? Even if you allow x86, which ones are as nice as the Macbooks? Then, there is the problem, that not everyone wants to be Linux-only in their setup. I definitely prefer macOS to W11.

[logicprog]

So all of the nerds that care about open platforms stop buying their systems. Everyone else is going to keep doing it and they number us massively.

And then there's the fact that it's still a dark ending if the best hardware out there — even if we all refuse to buy it because we're on a moral high ground — is a closed platform that we have to refuse to buy.

[ErneX]

Apple launched the M5 in October, they sell 2 devices already with it:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...

[lm28469]

At least Apple usually supports their hardware for ~7 years so that's plenty of time to get Asahi working on newer Ms. I don't care too much about getting instant support but I definitely care about having the option to use my hardware more than 7 years

[ErneX]

Pretty much this.

[jsheard]

And that's with Apple deliberately leaving the bootloader open on Macs. If they had locked it down like they do on every other product then it would be even more of a struggle, and there's always the looming possibility that they'll just change their mind with future models.

[imiric]

This is my main concern. I applaud the effort that the Asahi team is doing, but there's no way that I would rely on a small team of inarguably passionate and talented hackers to maintain a system that uses reverse engineered software running on hardware manufactured by a company historically opposed to everything they're doing, even if they left this small door open for that.

It would be like going back to the days of early Linux and all the Windows-specific hardware we had to deal with, but extrapolated to the entire system. As impressive as all of their work is, it's not worth the IMO minor UX benefits of Apple's hardware.

Mainline Linux on ARM is solid these days; new x86 chips from Intel perform very well and are reasonably power efficient; and battery life of most professional laptops in Linux is quite good. For example, I get a good ~12 hours of work done on an X1 Carbon Gen 13 from a single charge. This may not be as impressive as Macbooks, and the packaging certainly isn't as sleek, but it's good enough for me. The tradeoff for a solid software experience, modulo the usual Linux shenanigans, is worth it to me.

[torben-friis]

Thankfully, hardware progress is relatively slow in a way that makes the m1 still a perfectly capable machine. Maybe we’ll have a future of “flagship community devices” where only one of every X is chosen as the supported option.

[AtlasBarfed]

Well that's the thing, if you're buying an Apple, you are supporting these closed hardware and software systems.

At least PCs are open to a greater degree, despite Microsoft's attempts otherwise.

[psychoslave]

Will the gap remain just as big once earlier architectures are fully covered? I would expect some inertia bringing positive feedback in the development loop.