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Tag: Asahi Linux

  • Asahi Linux Project Has Released GPU Drivers for M-Series Macs

    Asahi Linux Project Has Released GPU Drivers for M-Series Macs

    The Asahi Linux project has just hit a major milestone, releasing the first public GPU drivers for Apple’s M-series Macs.

    The Asahi Linux project has been working to bring Linux to the M-series Macs, but they have had to reverse engineer much of the low-level hardware support. The graphics drivers were one of the major sticking points, but the project has finally released a public version.

    “This release features work-in-progress OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support for all current Apple M-series systems,” the developers write. “That’s enough for hardware acceleration with desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE. It’s also enough for older 3D games, like Quake3 and Neverball. While there’s always room for improvement, the driver is fast enough to run all of the above at 60 frames per second at 4K.”

    The developers warn there could still be bugs since the “drivers have not yet passed the OpenGL (ES) conformance tests.” The developers also make clear that they are working on Vulcan support, and much of the work has been done with that in mind.

    Even so, the release is good news for Linux users wanting to take advantage of Apple’s revolutionary custom silicon.

  • Asahi Linux Shows the M1’s Greatest Limitation May Be macOS

    Asahi Linux Shows the M1’s Greatest Limitation May Be macOS

    An alpha of Asahi Linux has been released for Apple’s M1, and the reviews are showing the potential it has, and the problems Apple has with macOS.

    The Asahi Linux Project has been working to port Linux to the M1 chip. Asahi is based off of the Arm version of Arch Linux. The team has been working without any assistance from Apple, adding to both the challenge and reward of releasing a working Alpha.

    Most impressive of all, however, is that Asahi is already proving to be much faster than macOS on the same hardware, in some cases as much as twice as fast, according to Lifewire.

    “My initial impression of Asahi Linux with its Arch Linux Arm desktop version was that it works better than anticipated, at least on a Mac mini,” Michael Larabel, founder of computer hardware website, Phoronix, told Lifewire. “There [are] still areas where the performance is lacking, but [it’s] already much faster than, say, a Raspberry Pi 4 or other low-end Arm single-board computers running Linux.”

    Other users have experienced similarly impressive performance.

    Hugo on Asahi Linux composites all 275 pages of my website in less than half of the time (210ms) it takes the same build of Hugo within macOS on the same machine (557ms)

    Jason W. Eckert (@the_unix_guru), March 20, 2022

    In spite of the impressive performance, Asahi still has some major limitations. Unlike traditional Linux installers, Asahi’s installer must be run from macOS. There is also no GPU acceleration, although the M1’s raw performance makes up for it in everyday tasks.

    Nonetheless, Asahi is clearly showing its potential, while raising some serious questions about why macOS is so much slower on hardware its ideally optimized for.