Don’t get me wrong, I care deeply about software freedom, and I don’t think that’s incompatible with an Apple laptop purchase decision, but the “it’s called GNU/Linux, GNU is the operating system, Linux being merely the kernel…” school of software freedom finds basically everything about Apple deeply offensive.

Also, saying that "lacking GPU support" is the only drawback, is minimizing the issue a bit. Here is the following components that don't currently work with Asahi Linux:

- DisplayPort

- Thunderbolt

- HDMI on the MacBooks

- Bluetooth

- GPU acceleration

- Video codec acceleration

- Neural Engine

- CPU deep idle

- Sleep mode

- Camera

- Touch Bar

I don’t want to continue running the old Catalina system.

Is there a way to install Linux on that bare metal? What’s the best approach - direct install, or use something like QEMU underneath?

You just flash the installer of your favorite distro (don't use ventoy) to a USB and install as usual.

If you need to install Asahi, you should install it as per the instructions in a dual-boot setup, then delete the macOS partition and resize afterwards.

What I’m most interested in is converting my 2012 Air to Linux for development purposes. The hardware is good! With 4GB, it’s really too small to run recent MacOS, and it will be unsupported soon, but it should be fine for i3/Linux.

- HDMI: the MacBook Air doesn't have HDMI, seems to work on the Mini or how are they getting a monitor attached. Or they use DisplayPort, what you listed as not working.

- GPU accelleration, I mentioned that. Of course you cannot expect Video accelleration without GPU support

- Neural engine: well, most other devices don't even have one.

- CPU idle certainly will come, run times are already excellent under Linux.

- Touch Bar: except for the M2 Pro, there are no devices with a touch bar left, and I expect the touch bar to go away entirely soon.

It does, because it means I cannot just install Linux on the machine. I have to have macOS installed and running first, then and only then can I install Linux. It makes the hardware dependent on macOS, even if I just wanna run Linux.

Other computers you can have literally nothing on it, and then get Windows or Linux running on it (or macOS even).

I didn't make that list myself, it's from the official Asahi website. And I'm not gonna argue against you if each item on the list has a big impact or not. I'm generally a fan of Asahi (and I donate to their efforts each month), I was just putting it out there to show that there are actually a bunch of "drawbacks" (more like missing features) than people in this comment thread is letting on.

This is absolutely not the case, of course - it’s just the pre-installed environment you use to install Windows or Linux is called “BIOS” or “UEFI” instead of “macOS”.

While that is important, it's quite superficial given that Apple does not provide documentation for the device.

Product works as advertised, news at 11.

As it happens, Apple has released development tools and documentation to write and load alternate operating systems on this hardware. The Asahi Linux team have even said Apple is providing even more support than is available in the x86 world nowadays, it's just that this is in many ways a very new architecture.

Could they do more? Sure. Are they obliged to? No. Ultimately it's a product advertised with certain capabilities, no compromises means it can do that as expected, otherwise the phrase is basically meaningless.

I'll also note that few companies advertise their PCs as "general purpose computers", if by that you mean "guaranteed to run Linux flawlessly". Even System76 / Dell developer / whatever, which ship with Linux out of the box, don't guarantee the pc will run, say, FreeBSD perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, as the GGP post puts it, I'd also like to be able to run Linux on a MacBook Pro. But since I don't want to have a wonky experience, since I understand it'll not work perfectly, I chose to put up with the wonky hardware of my HP, which works well enough.

If, however, you actually mean "a computer that runs Windows or Linux"...why not just say so? Rather than passive-aggressively pretending that all you're looking for is "general purpose", with the obvious snide implication that macOS can't provide that...

You're trying to narrow the definition of "general purpose" to mean something else entirely.

If what Amelius pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116822 is true, i.e. the documentation is junk. Then, IMHO, Apple is no longer trying to sell "a good piece of hardware"; because they're not documenting its operation.

And, in reality, I find this to be true... what Apple really sells is "an experience".

Whether it's a good or bad experience is likely in the eye of the beholder.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744#28764136

OK, tell me what it is.

Thanks for the info.

If you want a full GNU system then it’s a less attractive route.