alt Hacker NewsI still don't understand the motivation for Asahi and other similar efforts. My impression is that Apple fully supports Linux virtualization on Apple Silicon. Why isn't that sufficient? Just asking.
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Why go outsite when we have VR? Yes, you answered this: it isn't sufficient.
Some people might want to get all the apple software off the apple hardware. For example the dossier that macOS builds on users and their family behind the scenes; currently on the front page of this website.[0]
Unfortunately it appears that Asahi has promised to not allow doing that[1] but perhaps it will enable someone else to make it possible.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403097
[1] https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/security/#apples-unspok...
Same as why so many people run Linux natively on their x86 machines. It's just part of the preferred setup because it's nicer in so many ways and there's no annoying proprietary host os in the way.
Motivation: OS/software freedom on Apple's hardware.
Because you have limited system resources with virtualization.
Because we want computers that work without macos
From the perspective if the people working on it, I imagine it's immensely satisfying when they successfully reverse engineer something and get it working. It's not on the same scale or of the same complexity, but I feel that satisfaction when I finally understand something I've been trying to reverse engineer in a retro game.
From a user's perspective, I can only speak for myself, but I'm grateful for the Asahi Linux project's work. I have less than zero interest in ever running macOS again. It's user-hostile, constraining, and not a good experience. I prefer Debian with Plasma 6. But Apple makes high quality hardware, and they are one of the few choices for a fast ARM laptop with excellent battery life. I avoided getting one for a long time until Asahi got to a point where it ran pretty well on the M1 and M2 with relatively few caveats. Then I bought an M1 Air second-hand, and have used it exclusively with Linux ever since. I'm very happy with it. My only complaint is that I have to waste a big chunk of disk space to keep a macOS install on a separate partition that I can never remove and occasionally need to boot into to get firmware updates since I can't get them through fwupdmgr like I can on most of my other systems.