[apatheticonion]

My only hope, however unlikely, is that Apple will recognise that power users, engineers and gamers would really really appreciate running Linux on Macs and they write some drivers for it.

There are literally no PC laptops with the quality or hardware offered by even the cheapest MacBook - the software, while fine for general consumers, creators, and some developer workloads, tragically holds back its potential something fierce.

[castillar76]

I doubt we'll see it, but one thing I'd really like is for them to release cleaner drivers or specs for the hardware in Intel Macs. Now that they're committed to removing Intel support from the OS, it would be really nice not to consign all of that functional, high-performing hardware to the bin.

At the moment, I have a 2018 Mac Mini with a 12-core i7 and 64GB of RAM that is more limited in OS choice and hardware support than the 2012 Mac Mini sitting next to it, because the inner workings of the T2 chipset in particular and various other components have to be reverse-engineered bit by bit.

[schnebbau]

Well, that certainly would be one way to wipe billions from their share price overnight.

The only way Linux on Mac will become a reality is if it's legislated.

[foldr]

Why would Apple writing some Linux drivers wipe billions from its share price? You can already install Linux on a Mac if you really want to. Back in the day, you used to be able to install Windows on an (Intel) Mac, and that didn’t seem to have any such effect.

[philistine]

You still can right now.

[renticulous]

Do Apple provide the necessary technical details for others to write it? I think wasn't that the complain with Asahi effort?

[foldr]

No, but I think it’s unlikely that Apple actually has this information in a format that it could easily publicly release. They aren’t going to make any special effort to make Linux on Mac easier, but they also aren’t actively blocking it.

[apatheticonion]

They decided to leave the bootloader unlocked. I guess, in today's anti-consumer tech landscape, that's nice of them.

[philistine]

Well, I was more talking about the fact that you can still install Windows 11 on an Intel Mac right now; the drivers are still there for those few Intel macs still supported.

As for Windows on ARM, I'd bet that if Microsoft had managed to figure out their own product, Apple might have been tempted to support it. I mean why go through all the trouble of developing the most advanced firmware on the planet to support a fully secure macOS next to an unsecured OS if you do nothing with it?

[alwillis]

> As for Windows on ARM, I'd bet that if Microsoft had managed to figure out their own product, Apple might have been tempted to support it.

That was totally up to Microsoft [1].

[1]: "Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'" — https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/20/craig-federighi-on-wind...

[apatheticonion]

Why would it wipe billions from their share price? Both Linux and Windows were available on Mac hardware prior to Apple Silicon.

If I play devil's advocate, the only reason I could think of is that supporting Linux signals to investors that Apple is offering a key to bypass their API moat, perhaps sacrificing a longer term vision of vendor lock-in.

By contrast, I can imagine investors would get upset if the iPhone had an unlocked bootloader and allowed Android to be installed - but that's because the App Store is a significant revenue stream for Apple. I don't think there is a parallel on MacOS that investors could point to as being upsetting.

If anything, optional support for Linux would lift the market cap for Mac hardware as it would close the only pull that other laptop vendors previously enjoyed.

In reality though, just like is historically true, 99% of people would continue to use MacOS. Only SWEs, enthusiasts, gamers and some number of Windows refugees would pick Linux.

Though I am 100% behind legislating Linux support - EU are you listening?

[miki123211]

Apple went out of its way to make Linux on Mac a reality. They did a lot to allow third-party OSes when Apple Silicon came out, it's up to the Linux community to do the rest.

There were a couple of people (the Asahi team) that made this work for M1, but as I understand it, the effort has stalled since. This just goes to show how few people truly care.

[apatheticonion]

Apple helped by not locking the bootloader. I'd don't know if I'd call that going out of their way to make Linux a reality.

If they wanted to go out of their way, they could spend a weekend writing Linux drivers - Apple have written Windows drivers in the past, so it's not unprecedented.

I believe the real hurdle is that Linux doesn't do well with modular (closed source) drivers. Unlike Windows, drivers can't practically be added to a kernel, they must be compiled into it.

Apple would not want to make their drivers open source or so they would want to distribute their drivers as binary blobs.

That would necessitate either maintaining an Apple-fork of the Linux kernel with their drivers hidden within it, or contributing shims to upstream Linux + binary blob drivers.

If they wanted to help, the bare minimum would be to publish documentation on their hardware so drivers could be written without reverse engineering from schematics and microscope photos.

[MisterTea]

> This just goes to show how few people truly care.

Most people just want to sit down and eat a nice meal. They don't want to go through all the difficult back breaking work of farming, animal husbandry or fishing/hunting to eat.

That is how I look at people writing OS drivers and core components. It's boring back breaking work no one wants to think about. People pine for it, even romanticize about it. But the fact is that it's dirty annoying work and I have never heard anyone thanking the farmer for the meal they just ate. Yet we still have farmers. Few, yet they exist.

[vablings]

This is not true. Most of the efforts as of late have been code refactoring since there was a mad rush to show "it works!!"

Just because a few people stepped away from the project doesn't mean there are plenty of other developers working hard every day on this.

https://asahilinux.org/blog/

[3form]

Why would it? Shareholders of the major stocks are generally vibes-based, and I'm sure that if Apple undertook that, they would find a way to build hype around it.

[trueno]

It would literally sell more Mac devices I'm not sure what the argument is that OP is making

[alwillis]

> It would literally sell more Mac devices

The Mac has never been more popular in its 40 year history than it is now. The recently released MacBook Neo broke all previous Mac sales records. Needing to sell more Macs isn't an issue these days.

[trueno]

i can think of absolutely zero publicly traded company boards of this size that would opt for "we're already selling enough devices, we know there's more demand we can't meet, let's not scale up we're really happy with these numbers"

[alwillis]

Due to the RAM shortages, Apple isn't able to meet demand as it is.

Apple's Mac revenue last fiscal year was $33.7 billion. I suspect the number of Linux users that might buy a Mac if it could run Linux natively is probably in rounding error territory.

Apple has been around for 50 years and has a market-cap of around $4 trillion. All without supporting Linux. I think they're okay with that.

[egorfine]

> Linux on Mac will become a reality

Linux on Mac is absolutely a reality [1], and Apple specifically supported it by deliberately leaving a documented/supported mechanism for another OS kernel to be loaded.

[1] https://asahilinux.org/about/

[apatheticonion]

I don't want to take away from the hard work put in by the Asahi project because it is amazing.

Linux on Apple Silicon is not a reality on my M5 Pro. I run Asahi on my M1 Pro, but I cannot use my USB-C dock with it and, while amazing, cannot practically use the GPU for gaming or local LLMs.

This limits my ability to practically use it for work and play.

[egorfine]

Yes absolutely Linux on Mac is not good enough. However Apple left the door open and it's just that the community is crawling too slowly.

[gjvc]

it would likely do the opposite as linux users gravitate to the best hardware for their preferred OS => more hardware sales for Apple

[schnebbau]

The value of the walled garden FAR exceeds a single digit hardware sales bump.

[trueno]

the bulk of their sales is, in fact, hardware sales. there is a strong case to be made that such developments wouldn't land people in squarely linux-as-the-only-OS-on-the-device territory either, but rather dual boot ie those users also participate in the walled garden on the mac os side. we've seen this before in the intel mac era.

[rjrjrjrj]

What do mean by the Mac walled garden?

Using the App Store is optional on the Mac.

[philistine]

Why didn’t Apples stock tank when they started offering Windows drivers, that they’ll stop offering only this fall ?

[schnebbau]

2006 was a different time, and Apple was a different company. Now, having control is more valuable. See: iOS App Store.

[egorfine]

> Apple will recognise that power users, engineers

They will not. Recognizing the value of power users and engineers looks deeply un-Apple to me.

[randomeel]

I also hope they recognize power users it’s very limited customization they offer unlike Linux and windows . The only thing holding them back is their software . If they could try make games compatible or introduce more customization options and more options other than Xcode for swift it would be the most amazing OS

[silon42]

As a power user, ThinkPad T (maybe P also) series is better for me (and it's not that close). I run Linux on it.

[trueno]

ha, i use both. i don't even need to write any platitudes on if linux came to mac, utm or parallels has linux going at near native speed actually happier than it runs on my thinkpad t. i get to enjoy all worlds on my mac and its probably the best multi-target development environment ive ever had, and the hardware is still leagues above literally anything else on the market. dont get me wrong i want more options, im still just waiting for options that deserve to be in this convo. i have zero allegiances to who made it, whoever comes forward with the best hardware gets my money. and my orgs money since i pick the teams hardware.

[xandrius]

I think it's due not being interested to things like build quality, screen, track pad, etc.

[vichle]

I also have a Thinkpad, but an X1. I'd trade it and my first-born child to get to run Linux on a modern MacBook.

No offense to Lenovo, it's a great laptop. But Apples build quality is on another level, plus if I want to run local LLMs, AFAIK there is no better option.

There's no way I'm going back to macOS though, that shit was bad 5 years ago when I switched and it sounds like it's gotten way worse.

[alex_duf]

Same here. I've had two generations of X1, my latest one (laptop, not child) is almost 5 years old and I honestly don't know which hardware to pick next in order to run Linux.

At work I have an M4Max 128G, and it's hard to beat that amount of compute, with that build quality.

[alwillis]

It's not what everyone wants but Apple supports Linux containers [1]. I've used it and it works well.

[1]: https://opensource.apple.com/projects/container/