macOS 27 Beta Boots Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon (theregister.com) 74
The Asahi Linux team is warning Apple Silicon users not to upgrade to the macOS 27 beta because Apple's changes to the boot picker and Startup Disk app make Asahi partitions invisible, preventing Linux from booting. The Register reports: The team added: "If you insist on trying out macOS 27 as soon as possible, please ensure you install a secondary copy of macOS 26 first, or install macOS 27 itself on a secondary volume." They've also updated the installer to prevent installs from running on macOS 27 for now. For anyone who ignored all of the above, "we will not support users who have installed the macOS 27 beta without ensuring at least one stable version of macOS is installed."
Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware. The Asahi team said it has filed bug report. The good news for anyone who pulled the trigger on installing the macOS 27 beta is that although the partition might not be visible, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Asahi team wrote: "If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that your Asahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partition is still there, and you have not lost any data."
Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware. The Asahi team said it has filed bug report. The good news for anyone who pulled the trigger on installing the macOS 27 beta is that although the partition might not be visible, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Asahi team wrote: "If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that your Asahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partition is still there, and you have not lost any data."
unfortunately (Score:1, Informative)
The sweet spot was on Intel & PPC Macs (Score:4, Interesting)
On PPC and x86_64 macs, one could use something like Clover or REfit. I do think REfit is working on ARM Mac support, but it's not there yet and apple has seemly gone backwards as far as making booting alternative operating systems a thing. To their thinking, this is strange and perplexing why anyone would want to leave MacOS.
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To their thinking, this is strange and perplexing why anyone would want to leave MacOS.
I have a 2012 27" Intel iMac on which I installed Ubuntu, but that was entirely because I couldn't upgrade MacOS beyond whatever the last version was. Otherwise, I'd have been perpetually happy with MacOS. It's a fine machine, in all other respects.
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Perhaps you like to look into this: https://dortania.github.io/Ope... [github.io]
It basically patches modern Mac OS during boot time, to run on older hardware.
PowerPC and Intel Macs officially ran other OSs (Score:2)
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I bought a Mac specifically because it runs MacOS. If I wanted Linux then I would buy a NUC or similar style device.
Re:unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)
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Great. That's some definition of "run"
I prefer bare metal for what I do. Plus I have had my fill of wrestling with macOS's weirdness around keyboard layouts, when I can fix it on Linux with a simple text file change.
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Great. That's some definition of "run"
On a Mac mini M4, running on the macOS desktop via Parallels, ARM based Debian runs better than Intel based Debian natively booting on my Intel i7 gen14 (Raptor Lake Refresh).
ARM based Debian can be run fullscreen on the M4 for a comparable experience to native boot. Or it can be run in a window on the Mac desktop to give simultaneous access to commercial software. Best of both worlds. It's the user's choice.
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That implies to know which text file to change in which way - which I for example do not know.
However if you need a special layout on a Mac a simple google had you lead to: https://software.sil.org/ukele... [sil.org]
I for example have a "programmers keyboard" which is basically a German keyboard where the Umlauts are replaced with [ ] and { } and a few minour changes, like "/", "?" and " ' "etc. mapped to the American key position.
Original Umlauts I get with alt-[ etc. Or I switch to the German keyboard.
For odd situa
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That is good to know, but which ARM/linux software can not be compiled to run directly on Macs?
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That is good to know, but which ARM/linux software can not be compiled to run directly on Macs?
A lot of it is really written for POSIX not Linux, so it does tend to just work. And most big FOSS apps tend to have prebuilt Mac downloads. But since a NUC was mentioned for running Linux, I thought I would mention Parallels. Asahi is not the only path to Linux for people who have a Mac. FWIW, ARM Debian on a Mac mini M4 runs faster than Intel Debian on an i7 Gen 14 tower. Prior to this i7 I was using a i5 gen 12 NUC. Both dual boot Win11 and Debian.
Also, if one is a developer and Linux is a target, you
OK? (Score:3, Informative)
These guys want to run Linux, so your opinion is not relevant to them.
As for why I know this, and why I care about external booting, I want to run different versions of macOS because the XCode versions are tied to the macOS version and the iOS versions supported by any specific version of XCode are limited as well. So to write code for my iPod Touch (which is for an embedded purpose) I need to use a specific version of MacOS which is not the current version and in practical terms that means having a stack o
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Run the older OSes on VMs.
Also there is something wrong with you and your parent. XCode is not tied to a certain Mac OS version. You easy can run older XCodes on a modern OS.
Correct is that the most recent XCode usually requires a very recent OS.
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Your use case should definitely override everyone else's use case. I mean, that's just logic!
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Runs great, but macos updates has broken dual-boot on more than one occasion. Boot loader and closed hardware are the weakest links of using Linux on a Mac as a daily driver. It can be done, but Framework laptop is my preference for Linux if non-AI workloads are desired. Easier to install, easier to fix, and easier to upgrade. And 10 years from now it will still be working and worth a damn.
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Precisely! In fact now, people who want Linux should buy something from Fyde or System 76 or companies that specifically make Linuxstations. Or if you have to convert something, convert a Wintel PC. Even the Arm based PCs are hard to convert to Linux: in fact, for those, resurrecting the Hackintosh project could be more useful
I do get that given that the M-series runs rings around everything else - Snapdragon Elite, Ryzens and Intel Cores, Linux fans who want the fastest Linux devices are headed that
Except for Neo, it is not iPhone design or parts (Score:2)
On the inside the modern Macs are basically an iPhone that happens to support AppKit
Only the Mac Neo to a degree. For other Macs, absolutely not. The Neo is a fantastic machine for its intended market, K-12 school district purchasers. And it will do a good job for K-12 users. But it is intentionally nerf'd to make it less capable and less attractive to traditional Mac buyers. The nerfing is accomplished to a large degree by using iPhone components, rather than the regular Mac components. For example the slow usb-c port.
so just like you can't boot an iPhone off an external SSD it is really hard to boot a Mac off an external SSD.
You are contradicting yourself by acknowledging macOS can boot off of U
Booting off USB is a setting in macOS (Score:2)
It is really, really hard to boot off of external hard drives with MacOS ...
Booting off USB is a setting in macOS, off by default.
Might be intentional (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Might be intentional (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's not cutting into margins and it's a small number, it's way more likely that they just don't care. The more mild form of Hanlon's razor. [wikipedia.org]
Asahi people are buying the hardware and wouldn't make sense to cut them off because of App Store profits. Not like these people will be making App Store purchases on non-Apple hardware. And almost assuredly significant amount are dual booting anyways and so there's not even a really a threat to the apps and services market.
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They haven't blocked installing other OS on their _computers_ since Intel systems came out, they won't do it now either because they'd come face to face with EU.
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As for the EU, yes it might threaten their pl
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So I wouldn't be so sure they're not going to lock down the bootloader and the operating system so you have no choice but to run their OS on their hardware.
What would they gain from that?
Like even if they were forced to support other OSes they could burn a diode in the CPU so it irrevocably only runs Linux from that point
That would gain them something: a lawsuit from every Mac owner who can not boot Mac OS anymore.
Are you a retard?
That's something some other phone makers have done when the bootloader is unl
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No, somebody capable of observing what Apple are and their predilection with shutting out 3rd parties. And many phone makers burn an efuse when the bootloader is unlocked. This is common knowledge. But if you're so fucking childish, clueless and immature to call somebody a retard instead of even considering the point or doing a simple google then that's the end of the discussion.
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They did not block it before Intel either.
I had a Unix for my upgraded Mac SE II.
Some friends ran the early Linux 68k. One ran Minix.
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If it's not cutting into margins and it's a small number, it's way more likely that they just don't care.
Your pithy analysis completely ignores human nature... more specifically, the nature of power/control. I do not think your conclusion necessarily follows.
Its just inherent misalignment of strategies (Score:2)
I don't trust apple enough to rule out that this is intentional.
Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac? Any exploit Asahi uses might also be a vector for malware too.
Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anythi
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Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anything wrong.
I guess that depends on your definition of "wrong". IMO, you just provided a perfect description of something wrong, then said neither is doing any thing wrong.
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Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anything wrong.
I guess that depends on your definition of "wrong". IMO, you just provided a perfect description of something wrong, then said neither is doing any thing wrong.
That's a perfectly understandable opinion for someone in the camp of one of these parties. I'm not in either's camp. I used Apple stuff since the 1980s, I've used Linux since the 1990s. However I never bought the religious-like beliefs that plague both camps. I like both, different tools for different problems. I see nothing wrong with a security model that completely locks down the operating system software. An Apple Silicon Mac was never sold with a dual booting feature, unlike the Intel Macs that were. A
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That's a perfectly understandable opinion for someone in the camp of one of these parties. I'm not in either's camp.
This may be getting a big pedantic, but you had just said:
It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
Why associate negative with GPL? You could have just as easily said it's a negative side effect of their own licensing choices, or more fairly said it was a licensing conflict between the two. I also don't see how that has anything to do with this problem, or how Microsoft's situation is somehow special/different.
It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
AFAIK, an arm based Mac can't boot directly to Windows either.
If Apple and Microsoft had made a special agreement so that Apple's hardware
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It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
Why associate negative with GPL?
Because it is? Even if Asahi was personally willing to sign an NDA it is specifically the GPL that prevents this. The GPL requires the source code to be shared. Why can't the license at the heart of the problem be named? Many decisions have pros and cons, we often pick a solution where the pros outweigh the cons. How is it unfair to mention one of the cons?
AFAIK, an arm based Mac can't boot directly to Windows either.
I believe Microsoft had an exclusive agreement with Qualcomm to only use their CPUs. I'm guessing with the upcoming ARM based Windows machines using Nvid
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It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
Why associate negative with GPL?
Because it is? Even if Asahi was personally willing to sign an NDA it is specifically the GPL that prevents this. The GPL requires the source code to be shared. Why can't the license at the heart of the problem be named? Many decisions have pros and cons, we often pick a solution where the pros outweigh the cons. How is it unfair to mention one of the cons?
What is the "it" that the GPL prevents? What source would need shared, and who is preventing that?
For one, I have no idea what you are even referring to. What's it take to boot Linux on Apple silicone? It was working before.
For two, whose license is the problem? You're claiming the license at the heart of the problem is the GPL. I'd claim there is no license problem, but if there was, why wouldn't the problem be the proprietary license that prevents the code from being shared (IE: Apple's license). You say
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It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
Why associate negative with GPL?
Because it is? Even if Asahi was personally willing to sign an NDA it is specifically the GPL that prevents this. The GPL requires the source code to be shared. Why can't the license at the heart of the problem be named? Many decisions have pros and cons, we often pick a solution where the pros outweigh the cons. How is it unfair to mention one of the cons?
What is the "it" that the GPL prevents?
Keeping source code implementing trade secrets private. Publishing the source code is disclosure, disclosure terminates any protection a trade secret has.
What's it take to boot Linux on Apple silicone? It was working before.
Compliance with the Apple Secure Boot environment, which is something under continuous development and improvement.
You're claiming the license at the heart of the problem is the GPL.
I'm saying Apple would want its partner to keep some code a proprietary trade secret, and the GPL does not allow that. Again, pros and cons, tradeoffs. And this is a scenario where the cons create problems.
why wouldn't the problem be the proprietary license that prevents the code from being shared
Because that's what the author of tha
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What is the "it" that the GPL prevents?
Keeping source code implementing trade secrets private. Publishing the source code is disclosure, disclosure terminates any protection a trade secret has.
That's the act, not the "it". What source would need to be exchanged for Apple to be able to boot Asahi (or for Asahi to boot on Apple's hardware, if you prefer that phrasing)?
I don't believe there is any such thing.
What's it take to boot Linux on Apple silicone? It was working before.
Compliance with the Apple Secure Boot environment, which is something under continuous development and improvement.
More hand waiving, great. What other OS's are supported for booting on Apple's arm hardware? It's just macOS. That's nothing to do with compliance with a standard.
I'm saying Apple would want its partner to keep some code a proprietary trade secret, and the GPL does not allow that. Again, pros and cons, tradeoffs. And this is a scenario where the cons create problems.
Again, you're putting the "con" on the GPL side, but it's easy to view the proprietary / trade secret side as the problem.
There's als
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What is the "it" that the GPL prevents?
Keeping source code implementing trade secrets private. Publishing the source code is disclosure, disclosure terminates any protection a trade secret has.
That's the act, not the "it". What source would need to be exchanged for Apple to be able to boot Asahi (or for Asahi to boot on Apple's hardware, if you prefer that phrasing)? I don't believe there is any such thing.
What part of "source code implementing trade secrets" confused you?
What's it take to boot Linux on Apple silicone? It was working before.
Compliance with the Apple Secure Boot environment, which is something under continuous development and improvement.
More hand waiving, great.
Nope. Just you being unaware of Secure Boot on Apple Silicon based Macs.
What other OS's are supported for booting on Apple's arm hardware? It's just macOS. That's nothing to do with compliance with a standard.
It's not about macOS. It's about known authorized startup code. Right now that's just macOS. It doesn't need to be, if you can sign an NDA,
I'm saying Apple would want its partner to keep some code a proprietary trade secret, and the GPL does not allow that. Again, pros and cons, tradeoffs. And this is a scenario where the cons create problems.
Again, you're putting the "con" on the GPL side, but it's easy to view the proprietary / trade secret side as the problem.
It's certainly a con in this scenario.
If you had said it's a license incompatibility issue and neither side is at fault, I could understand that. But you said, "I'm not in either's camp," and then you dump on the GPL and present Apple as blameless in this.
As I said, it's Apple's choice as the author of the system. If an outsider want get involved they need to respect the choices of the author. As I said, it's the author's choice that is important,
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What is the "it" that the GPL prevents?
Keeping source code implementing trade secrets private. Publishing the source code is disclosure, disclosure terminates any protection a trade secret has.
That's the act, not the "it". What source would need to be exchanged for Apple to be able to boot Asahi (or for Asahi to boot on Apple's hardware, if you prefer that phrasing)?
I don't believe there is any such thing.
What part of "source code implementing trade secrets" confused you?
The part where you can't name a trade secret that would need to be implemented in order to boot an OS.
What's it take to boot Linux on Apple silicone? It was working before.
Compliance with the Apple Secure Boot environment, which is something under continuous development and improvement.
More hand waiving, great.
Nope. Just you being unaware of Secure Boot on Apple Silicon based Macs.
In the same reply, I brought up Secure Boot. You must be completely unaware of how Secure Boot works, because no trade secrets need be shared. You must be aware that Asahi was already booting on macOS prior to version 27 - that's right in TFS. Are you also aware that Secure Boot support in Linux significantly predates use of Secure Boot in macOS?
What other OS's are supported for booting on Apple's arm hardware? It's just macOS. That's nothing to do with compliance with a standard.
It's not about macOS. It's about known authorized startup code. Right now that's just macOS. It doesn't need to be, if you can sign an NDA,
It also doesn't need to be, regardless of an NDA. How do you t
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The part where you can't name a trade secret that would need to be implemented in order to boot an OS.
\Ask Asahi what their roadblocks are.
Just you being unaware of Secure Boot on Apple Silicon based Macs.
I brought up Secure Boot.
Note "on Apple Silicon based Macs". You brought it up wrt iPhone saying macOS didn't have it.
You must be aware that Asahi was already booting on macOS prior to version 27
As I explained previously, Apple engineers have told me "here is the only supported way to do what you need, if you find some other way to do it we will consider it an exploit, a bug in macOS, and patch it". It could be as simple a Asahi used.a non-public API call. Or it could be as simple as Apple's continuous security improvements to macOS. Note Asahi is doing something that in
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Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac?
The devices don't have a locked bootloader, you might be thinking of iOS devices that need to be jail-broken.
Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
Windows for ARM doesn't run on current Apple Silicon. Boot Camp support ended 6 years ago [apple.com] with the end of Intel hardware. Which with Intel hardware had support by most of the main distros.
It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
The license really isn't the issue. Apple just doesn't have much incentive to release documentation to it's silicon when it wants to sell the vertically integrated platform. But if they really cared, they wouldn't l
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Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac?
The devices don't have a locked bootloader, you might be thinking of iOS devices that need to be jail-broken.
Actually Apple Silicon Macs do.
"When a Mac with Apple silicon is turned on, it performs a boot process much like that of iPad and iPhone."
https://support.apple.com/guid... [apple.com]
Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
Windows for ARM doesn't run on current Apple Silicon.
Microsoft had an exclusive arrangement with Qualcomm, perhaps it is expired now that ARM based windows systems are coming out using Nvidia CPUs. Perhaps Microsoft is now free to sign another NDA with Apple and collaborate again for an ARM Boot. Camp.
Also Windows for ARM runs extremely well on Apple Silicon via Parallels. Windows is s
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much like that of iPad and iPhone.
Uh, huh. That means it's a little different...
they never promised dual boot
This isn't what's been talked about though. No of course they didn't promise dual boot. An unsupported community project is making that happen. And of course Apple can change their process and break Asahi, because that's exactly what happened...
And you're still off in la la la about GPL stuff. Completely ignoring history like Yellow Dog Linux [wikipedia.org] where Terra Soft was allowed to sell Macs with Linux and GPL software on them...
All this to say that Apple has allowed it
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The devices don't have a locked bootloader
much like that of iPad and iPhone.
Uh, huh. That means it's a little different...
Go read the provided link to learn how you are mistaken wrt "don't have a locked bootloader".
Windows for ARM doesn't run on current Apple Silicon. Boot Camp support ended 6 years ago [apple.com] with the end of Intel hardware.
they never promised dual boot
This isn't what's been talked about though.
The comparison to the Intel era suggests otherwise.
And you're still off in la la la about GPL stuff. Completely ignoring history like Yellow Dog Linux [wikipedia.org] where Terra Soft was allowed to sell Macs with Linux and GPL software on them...
That's PowerPC Macs. They had far less in the way of proprietary trade secrets than Apple Silicon based Macs.
Apple also had released its own Linux distro for PowerPC Macs, MkLinux. This was in the MacOS 7 era, long before MacOS X.
PowerPC era, they felt there was nothing worth protecting.
Intel era, they felt they did have something to protect and required an NDA
Well, duh (Score:2)
Ya think?
Probably an accident (we shall see) (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has a security model ... (Score:4, Informative)
The short version is they have a security model and they don't want to punch holes in it for you nor do they want to allow holes you discover to persist.
Whoever put other meaning of Boot in that headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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Should be booted off Slashdot.
Agreed! I absolutely misread this headline 4 times before I understood.
Re:Whoever put other meaning of Boot in that headl (Score:4, Informative)
100% I read that as, "While running macOS 27 beta, it is capable of booting directly into Asahi Linux."
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Wordplay (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yea, it's typical of a Register headline. Remember when "The Register" was cool and hadn't yet sold out. Any real criticism of corporate interests gets moderated into invisibility. Stuck in the mod queue for days.
That's great news! (Score:3)
Oddly misleading headline (Score:3)
"macOS 27 Beta Boots Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon "
I initially thought the above headline meant "MacOS capable of running Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon"... where as it appears the article is instead about almost the opposite, an incompatibility with a recent Apple change hampering its ability to run Asahi linux.
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I think 90% of people read it that way. And it wasn't even obvious in the comment thread because so many people took it the way you and I did. Absolute trash article thanks to the botched headline that seems to immediately conflict with the first sentence of the article.
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A better headline would have been "macOS 27 Beta Kicks Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon".
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Yeah, headlines usually have stupid puns - the problem is that they don't usually make the meaning become opposite.
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But that was for Windows. Also, it can't even support Windows 11 in old Intel MBPs.
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Boot Camp wasn't really needed on later macs for the booting part of EFI Windows. It was mostly just to create a compatibility layer for proper driver support.
Least of Asahi's problems (Score:5, Informative)
Asahi Linux doesn't really support Apple Silicon in the first place. They have prototype-level quality support for the M1 and M2, and no support at all for the M3/M4/M5/A18. If you want to run Linux on a mac today, virtualization is the only realistic option.
Apple Silicon (Score:2)
Overrated and overpriced.
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Overrated and overpriced using subpar parts.
Double standards (Score:2)
It's interesting to see the general tone of the comments here, mostly "Well, it's a beta, so...", "Why would you want Linux when you've got MacOS" and "Asahi isn't that good on Apple silicon anyway".
I'm sure the comments would be equally forgiving if a Windows beta prevented dual-booting of a Linux distro.
On the other hand, I'm old enough to remember when a beta of a sits-on-top-of-DOS Windows version threw a "not supported on DR-DOS" message, and the torches-and-pitchforks crowd got the federal government
macOS 27 update cuts off all Intel Macs !!! (Score:2)
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Asahi Linux doesn't run on Intel Macs either.
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Re: macOS 27 update cuts off all Intel Macs !!! (Score:2)
Their announcement specifically calls out Apple silicon users. You even quoted it yourself. I'm not sure what you think they said.
Apple pulling a MICROS~1 (Score:2)
AARD Code (DR-DOS Sabotage):
BeOS Bootloader Suppresion:
DESQview Memory Conflicts:
Java JVM Pollution:
Lotus 1-2-3 Interoperability Breaks:
OpenGL Hardware Throttling:
Registry Tying & Desktop Lockdowns:
WordPerfect API De-documentation: