In a major technical breakthrough, the open-source community has successfully booted a graphical Linux desktop on Apple's M3 silicon. This deep dive explores how developers reverse-engineered the proprietary chip in record time, the implications for the developer workstation market, and what this means for the future of ARM-based computing.

In a major technical breakthrough, the open-source community has successfully booted a graphical Linux desktop on Apple’s M3 silicon. This deep dive explores how developers reverse-engineered the proprietary chip in record time, the implications for the developer workstation market, and what this means for the future of ARM-based computing.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    0·
    12 days ago

    For all the breathless enthusiasm from the author, I feel like he’s overselling a lot of the impacts:

    For Chief Technology Officers and IT procurement managers, the viability of Linux on Apple Silicon introduces a complex variable. Historically, engineering teams demanding Linux were relegated to Dell XPS or Lenovo ThinkPad units, which, while capable, often trail Apple in battery efficiency and thermal management. If the M3 becomes a first-class citizen in the Linux ecosystem, organizations may face increased pressure to support Apple hardware for backend engineers and DevOps professionals who require native Linux environments rather than virtualization.

    Corporate purchases typically purchase new products either direct from the manufacturer or from the authorized resale channel. The M3 was introduced over two years ago and the only products I see Apple still selling with the M3 architecture are the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) and iPad Air (M3). So any IT manager looking to procure a MacBook for an employee would need to find new old stock still in resale channel inventory or purchase a second-hand device, all for something that the article admits is still in an alpha stage of usefulness.

    The progress the Asahi project is making on Apple Silicon is fantastic and important, but I think it will primarily benefit private individuals, not businesses. Perhaps in the future as the developers become more adept at reverse engineering hardware and if Apple makes fewer changes between generations then Linux could start supporting active Apple products, but it’s not there yet.

    With Apple putting M-series chips in iPads and Linux gaining support for those chips, I’ll be very curious to see if we start seeing more Linux tablet support for iPads.