More About Asahi Issue

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Feb 14, 2025,
updated Feb 19, 2025

• Lilbits: New Apple hardware, Asahi Linux shakeup, Android 16 Beta 2, and Amazon makes backing up Kindle eBooks tougher, - Liliputing

  This week Apple launched an Apple TV+ app for Android, which means you can watch Severance on your Pixel phone without using a web browser. Next week the company plans to launch some new hardware – most likely a new iPhone SE, but a current-gen mid-range iPhone could be just one of several new products on the way.

  In other recent tech news from around the web, Google has released a second beta of Android 16 ahead of a Q2, 2025 release (9to5Google has a nice roundup of new user-facing features), the team working on bringing Linux to Macs with Apple M series processors is undergoing some changes, OnePlus has announced something it’s not doing this year, and Amazon is making it tougher to download Kindle eBooks to your computer.

• Asahi Linux head quits, citing kernel leadership failure

  Hector Martin, project lead of Asahi Linux, resigned from that effort early Friday, Japan Standard Time, citing developer burnout, demanding users, and Linus Torvalds's handling of the integration of Rust code into the open source kernel.

  In a lengthy post, Martin explained his decision, partly blaming a lack of support from the Linux chief. Torvalds' critique of Martin's "social brigading" during a disagreement about Rust drivers prompted Martin to quit his role as a maintainer of the upstream Linux kernel code for Apple's Arm Macs earlier this month.

  (Asahi is a Linux distribution for Apple's Arm-compatible PCs, hence Martin's involvement, up until now, in both the kernel's code for those machines as well as that distro project.)

• Asahi Linux Gets a Reboot, Still Working On M3 & M4 Mac Support

  Asahi Linux, the project bringing a native Linux desktop to Apple Silicon-based Mac computers, has hit some roadblocks with development and hardware support. The project’s founder is also retiring.

  Mac computers with M1 and newer chipsets use a custom ARM-based Apple Silicon architecture, instead of the same Intel x86 processors found in most PCs, so they can’t run a typical desktop Linux distribution. The Asahi Linux project has done a lot of work over the past few years to change that, with many drivers and low-level components written from scratch, and it even surpasses native macOS in gaming and other areas.

FOSS Force:

• Asahi Linux Adopts Collective Leadership After Lead Dev Quits - FOSS Force

  Asahi Linux, a distro which brings Linux to modern Apple machines, announced the resignation of its founder, Hector Martin, and promises to remain an active distro, with seven of the project’s developers collectively taking the lead developer role.

  Martin, who started the distro in the early 2020s with the advent of the M1 processor in Apple’s line of computers, cites a series of long-standing battles and disagreements with kernel developers in a blog post announcing his resignation.

How-To Geek:

• What Is Arch Linux, and How Is It Different From Other Versions of Linux?

  Because most Linux distributions are based on other, older distributions, they can be classed according to their ancestry. Linux Mint, for example, is based on the long term support version of Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian Linux. Mint also has a version directly based on Debian. Fedora Linux is the free member of the Red Hat family. Manjaro and EndeavourOS are based on Arch Linux. Everything is based on something, it seems.

  But backtrack up the family tree of a Linux distribution, and eventually you’ll come to its uber-ancestor. There’s only a handful of these top-tier created-from-scratch distributions. The big five are Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian, and Arch.

  Arch doesn’t have corporate backers nor commercial involvement. The only hands on the tiller belong to the developers and maintainers of the Arch project itself and the Arch user community.

Linuxiac:

• Amarok 3.2.2 Launches as the Final Qt5 Release Before Moving to Qt6

  The developers behind the popular free and open-source music player Amarok announced the immediate availability of v3.2.2, marking the second bugfix release for the 3.2 “Punkadiddle” series, released in late December.

  This update addresses various build issues on non-UNIX systems and allows running without X11 support. Moreover, after years of Qt5 porting and maintenance, this version is widely expected to be the final release supporting Qt5/KF5, setting the stage for the project’s transition to Qt6/KF6 in the upcoming Amarok 3.3 series.

  Interestingly, a 16-year-old feature request—preserving collection browser order when adding tracks to playlists—has finally been fulfilled. On top of that, the development team fixed multiple bugs, including issues with DAAP collection connections and a missing first line in lyrics retrieved via the lyrics.ovh service.

The Register:

• Open source maintainers are feeling the squeeze

  This week, the lead of the Asahi Linux project – a Linux distribution for Apple silicon – Hector Martin, abruptly quit, citing factors including developer burnout and demanding users.

  Jamie Tanna, who gave himself the title of "Tired Maintainer" put it simply: "Being an open source maintainer is really rewarding... except when it isn't."

  Tanna has been active in the open source world for several years, although it was the experience of being an oapi-codgen maintainer that he spoke about. For the uninitiated, oapi-codgen is a tool to convert OpenAPI specifications to Go code.

  "It's used by a load of companies... and a load of angry users."

Fallout from IBM employee:

• MAINTAINERS: Remove myself

  I was pondering with myself for a while if I should just make it official
  that I'm not really involved in the kernel community anymore, neither as a
  reviewer, nor as a maintainer.
  
  
  Most of the time I simply excused myself with "if something urgent comes
  up, I can chime in and help out". Lyude and Danilo are doing a wonderful
  job and I've put all my trust into them.
  
  
  However, there is one thing I can't stand and it's hurting me the most.
  I'm convinced, no, my core believe is, that inclusivity and respect,
  working with others as equals, no power plays involved, is how we should
  work together within the Free and Open Source community.
  
  
  I can understand maintainers needing to learn, being concerned on
  technical points. Everybody deserves the time to understand and learn. It
  is my true belief that most people are capable of change eventually. I
  truly believe this community can change from within, however this doesn't
  mean it's going to be a smooth process.
  
  
  The moment I made up my mind about this was reading the following words
  written by a maintainer within the kernel community:
  
  
          "we are the thin blue line"
  
  
  This isn't okay. This isn't creating an inclusive environment. This isn't
  okay with the current political situation especially in the US. A
  maintainer speaking those words can't be kept. No matter how important
  or critical or relevant they are. They need to be removed until they
  learn. Learn what those words mean for a lot of marginalized people. Learn
  about what horrors it evokes in their minds.
  
  
  I can't in good faith remain to be part of a project and its community
  where those words are tolerated. Those words are not technical, they are
  a political statement. Even if unintentionally, such words carry power,
  they carry meanings one needs to be aware of. They do cause an immense
  amount of harm.
  
  
  I wish the best of luck for everybody to continue to try to work from
  within. You got my full support and I won't hold it against anybody trying
  to improve the community, it's a thankless job, it's a lot of work. People
  will continue to burn out.
  
  
  I got burned out enough by myself caring about the bits I maintained, but
  eventually I had to realize my limits. The obligation I felt was eating me
  from inside. It stopped being fun at some point and I reached a point
  where I simply couldn't continue the work I was so motivated doing as I've
  did in the early days.
  
  
  Please respect my wishes and put this statement as is into the tree.
  Leaving anything out destroys its entire meaning.
  
  
  Respectfully
  
  
  Karol
  

And related, in video:

• Leftist Extremists Leave Linux Kernel, Demand Conservatives Be Banned

  Leftist Linux developers demand those with wrong politics "be removed".

Apple-centric site:

• Developer for Linux on Apple Silicon Macs resigns, citing ‘major failure of leadership’

  Yesterday morning, Hector Martin resigned from his position as project lead of Asahi Linux. This was a community effort that kicked off shortly after the Mac transition to Apple Silicon begun, in early 2021. After a ton of effort, the team finally released an alpha build of Asahi Linux for M1 and M2 Macs in early 2022. The project was going well.

  However, because of burnout and an uphill battle with the Linux community, including Linus Torvalds himself, Hector Martin decided to resign. The project should ideally continue on without him.

• Head of top Apple Mac Linux distro resigns, citing burnout and slamming Linus Torvalds leadership [Ed: It's called brigading and it's just self-serving ragequit]