{"id":36650,"date":"2022-08-02T16:55:29","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T20:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=36650"},"modified":"2022-08-04T16:10:33","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T20:10:33","slug":"dogfooding-linux-5-19-on-apple-silicon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/02\/dogfooding-linux-5-19-on-apple-silicon\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogfooding Linux 5.19 on Apple Silicon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linus Torvalds<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the\nrelease (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve\nbeen waiting for for a loong<\/em> time, and it’s finally reality, thanks\nto the Asahi team. We’ve had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a\nlong time, but none of it has really been usable as a development\nplatform until now.<\/p>

It’s the third time I’m using Apple hardware for Linux development - I\ndid it many years ago for powerpc development on a ppc970 machine.\nAnd then a decade+ ago when the Macbook Air was the only real\nthin-and-lite around. And now as an arm64 platform.<\/p>

Not that I’ve used it for any real work, I literally have only been\ndoing test builds and boots and now the actual release tagging. But\nI’m trying to make sure that the next time I travel, I can travel with\nthis as a laptop and finally dogfooding the arm64 side too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Andrew Cunningham<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In November 2020, Torvalds wrote<\/a> that the then-new M1 version of the Air “would be almost perfect” as an Arm Linux laptop but said, “I don’t have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that don’t want to help.”<\/p>

At a certain level, this news is just mildly interesting trivia—it doesn’t matter to most Linux users what computer Torvalds is currently using, and Asahi Linux is still in a rough, early state where lots of things are half-functional or non-functional. But as Asahi contributor Hector Martin notes<\/a>, having “real people… using Linux on a real, modern ARM64 platform” with a modern version of the Arm instruction set and a “near-upstream kernel” has knock-on effects that benefit the rest of the ecosystem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n