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Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by tw1984 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:10AM (#33891889)
truly incredible, for less than two years, a group of talented engineers managed to release the world's first GPU driver in Rust by reverse engineering apple hardware known for its opacity. oh, they also happened to have the free time to port Linux to Apple hardware.

now I just have one question - when this wonderful work will be merged into the mainline kernel.

(PLEASE - no one cares who is Lina, we've been there many times, let's don't do it again here in this thread. thanks!)

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by aulin on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @05:45AM (#33892872)
> no one cares who is Lina

I couldn't care less who she is, but I'm pleased they're giving more status updates in written form.

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by bartvk on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @04:06AM (#33892242)
> when this wonderful work will be merged into the mainline kernel

Last year, they already merged part of their work: https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/09/asahi_linux_merged/

But I haven't seen anything since. It's the stated goal, though.

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by pygy_ on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @06:03AM (#33892992)
Provided Linus Torvalds has been test driving it, I'd expect Asahi to be merged in sooner than later...
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by OJFord on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @09:08AM (#33894475)
Presumably GP means the GPU driver specifically.

There's a table here that shows not only what's supported vs. not, but also which minimum kernel version or linux-asahi/asahi-edge release it's in: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by oblio on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @06:27AM (#33893174)
Who is Lina? :-)

Edit: honest question...

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by 16 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:01AM (#33895067)
I'm not sure if this is an elephant-in-the-room sort of thing of if people legitimately haven't picked up on it, but if you listen to the speech patterns and accent that Lina presents, (s)he speaks exactly like marcan. You can listen for yourself and form your own opinions, but I am firmly in the camp of "Lina is marcan".
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by jron on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:39PM (#33897397)
There are only a handful of people in the world that can do this type of work and the odds of both of them being into live streaming and Anime is exactly 0. I have no idea why marcan decided to make his reversing magic unwatchable but I hope it stops soon. That said, he doesn't try to keep it a secret: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effHrj0qmwk https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1509926572488556546
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by aulin on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @01:45PM (#33898366)
look at the date
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by jron on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:20PM (#33899688)
So you actually think marcan gave Lina his streaming API key to pull off this April fools prank? Do you also think they conspired to use the same DE, editor, and tooling from the start to fool us all?
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by aulin on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @04:59PM (#33900902)
Honestly? I don't care, you're probably right but if he wants to keep this double personality that's cool, who cares
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by jron on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @05:35PM (#33901329)
I only care because I enjoyed watching him reverse engineer in his easy to understand normal unmodified voice.
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by gjsman-1000 on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:41AM (#33895598)
Lina also lives in Tokyo, Japan; curiously just like Marcan.

What are the odds of two of the brightest kernel developers living in the exact same city? ;)

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by risho on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:13PM (#33899606)
???? what are the odds that a tech metropolis with a population of more than 10 million people has 2 people that are proficient enough to contribute to the linux kernel at a high level? i would say very high. i don't have an opinion on whether they are the same person or not, but your logic is hilarious.
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by thfuran on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @02:45PM (#33899230)
Well, it is the most populous city in the world.
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by tiahura on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @11:31AM (#33896359)
If Lina is an Apple employee or otherwise has access to Apple trade secrets, it would be a huge issue.

Merging code from an unverified source that is purportedly submitting a clean room implementation would be quite irresponsible.

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by cthalupa on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @02:55PM (#33899359)
Marcan has been explicit in that he knows who Lina is and has indicated that they have been in the same room together. This scenario is not a risk.

Others have discussed in here the speculation around Lina's identity if you care about the specifics for whatever reason. Personally, I don't think it's particularly important.

Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by tiahura on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:39PM (#33899906)
See if "Marcan said it's fine" flies with legal.
Re:Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux by cthalupa on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:49PM (#33900030)
The Linux kernel doesn't allow for anonymous or pseudonymous contributions. It does allow for organizations to contribute on behalf of people working for or through them.

If Asahi wants to submit this upstream, then they and Marcan can put their name to it. Hector Martin or another person at Asahi would be the name on the git commit, and they would almost certainly be taken at their word that there is no concern with the merge around Lina's identity.

It's not like other commits which are done from clean room re-implementations are requiring a background check on the person submitting it.