Asahi is great on earlier models but it will certainly not support the M5 before its already multiple models behind.
Sure, I don't disagree. I feel like I was pretty explicit about what I was claiming though:
> it doesn't seem that crazy to imagine they'll end up closing the gap even further to the point where you could probably assume a similar level of hardware support from Asahi for a year-old Macbook as you would for a year-old non-Apple laptop
Is it? I have my old M1 Air and I am very curious but don't want to go through the trouble of fiddling about with linux for a few days just to leave it rotting after. I would be inclined to maintain a dual boot situation as well and SSD space is at a premium.
That's only because they are focusing on upstreaming all of their work into the kernel first. A handful of them spent a small amount of time building some device trees for M3 and it didn't take them long to get to the point M1's were at at the first release of Asahi.
I imagine once a lot of the cleanup and maintenance is done on what they have, they'll be in a better spot to accelerate support for other SoCs, and it probably won't be half a decade before the M6 or whatever is supported.
All said, Apple could just spend a tiny tiny amount of their warchest and just ship some goddamn drivers for Linux a la Boot Camp and save the Asahi team the time divining it from the tea leaves.