Of you look at all of the work behind Asahi, it's incredible. I'm so grateful for heroes like Alyssa who are saving millions of computers from landfills when Apple no longer supports them
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At age 20, she reverse-engineered the Apple GPU. At age 40, I got the LED to blink on my Arduino.
I mean I have decades of doing all sorts of IT work and this is way beyond my level. Absolutely amazing.
I have such immense respect for people who know how the bits are physically flowing through a machine. I took classes about it but I can't imagine doing that daily, it's so tedious.
yeah I remember not being able to get my voltron lion to run in basic when I was in junior high.
And imagine doing it without expecting a cent!
It’s the challenge of it though.
thaaaaat’s the shit, when it finally cracks and you laser focus on implementing your solution. better than drugs.
The high of cracking an intractable problem (pre-AI) was just unreal. I’d struggle to sleep, awaiting the morning so I could get back at it.
Good on a resume.
You mean you can't just get Apple's driver to work on Linux by turning it off and on again enough times?
If you can’t get the Arduino lights to blink at this point I can only applaud your persistence
Wins no matter how small are wins!
Don’t compare yourself to others, just enjoy the learning process & satisfaction it hopefully brings you for every single win, no matter the size!
Arduino is a fantastic platform for learning, I still remember a lot of my ‘firsts’ with it, I had no idea what I was doing, we all start somewhere. Have fun!
While I agree partially, want to mention that having someone to compare to is not as bad as it sounds. Its only bad if you think its unreachable and you give up doing anything. Sometimes you need a hero to look up and fight and dream about it, for the motivation. I think looking up to people like Alyssa's work is inspirational. In a similar way how I look up to those magicians who create emulators... but that is a different topic for another day.
I used a toothpick to get some apple shell unstuck from my gum.
I'm 30 and I wiped my own ass. So I'm feeling pretty accomplished.
You must be male
Name is misspelled in the title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyssa_Rosenzweig.
Also, wow, impressive.
Makes we want to buy a second-hand Apple device just to try it out.
I ran it on my M1 mini for several months a year or so back. At that stage it was probably 90% of what I needed it to be, which was bloody impressive. After I no longer needed it for work, I tried using it as my Home Assistant server, but with only 8gb RAM, ultimately it ended up being far more efficient to run HA in a virtual machine in macOS.
But yeah, if you can pick up an M1 for a good price, give it a go. It's good fun.
I've already been using Linux for ten years, it definitely puts the fun back into computing. This would actually be primarily to know how to install it on a Mac, because when offering to install Linux as a replacement for Windows in groups I am part of, there have been multiple requests for doing so on a Mac. Unfortunately always had to answer I've never done so, so couldn't promise anything.
Anyway, is €375 for an Apple MacBook Air 2020 M1, 256GB a good price?
m2 is also well-supported
Sometimes I think I'm smart then I hear stories like this and I'm humbled.
She is a hero and a legend. It just makes me think, it's so sad that we live in a world where the most altruistic, talented, and capable people make less than those that are the best at taking advantage of the system and others for their own greed.
That's what our economic system suppresses to bring the losers to the top.
Wanna bet someone else profited off her hard work in some fashion without her seeing a dime? I know AI did.
Did you know that the board game "Monopoly" was originally called The Landlord's Game, meant to showcase how property ownership breaks the capitalist system for the common man?
A capitalist came along, rebranded it "Monopoly", took all the credit and lived like a king.
Sweat of my brow indeed.
She's a contract worker for Valve. I'm sure she's doing more than okay.
Alyssa Rosenzweig. Not Resenzweig. It means Twig of Roses. Here's her website: https://alyssarosenzweig.ca/
Canada has been killing it for like 50 years, being all the things the United States thinks it is
I knew I should’ve escaped to Canada during Trump 1, they seem to be feeding and educating their kids right (except Alberta fuck Alberta ;) )
I had heard that other provinces university's apply a 2 to 3% bump in GPAs to applicants from Alberta. The Alberta reason: They respect the advanced program as being more difficult. The other provinces reason: charity for the poor students raised there with a heavily exam-based GPA.
So encouraging the bright young minds that are still being spawned. Amazing on her.
We need more people who know how to reverse engineer
We need more open hardware standards. Late-stage capitalism ruins everything.
It's so weird how Apple basically explicitly said, "yeah so you can write software for it if you want, we won't stop you. Also, we will obfuscate everything and provide no documentation." So it is a very soft fuck you that should likely prevent lawsuits.
I miss Apple, the company that gave you schematics and programming instructions for their computers. Wonder whatever happened to them.
You observe input and output across the entire API surface with every combination of discrete configuration options possible, then determine the function by which those outputs can be reproduced with the same parameters?
You can probably automate collection of the I/O data. Determining the function probably requires some extra brain juice.
Does it get more fancy than that?
I've always wondered how the fuck people do that? Absolute wizards.
Insane levels of dedication. And probably autism
Insane levels of medication. And probably flautism (fixed it for you)
Oh no, my opinion is that medication for those of us with the "dig-in 'tisms" like this actually impedes our hyper focus performance.
And beside those who survive (and provide us with great software), let us spare a thought for the ones who didn't, proof the opensource community can be an evil pit of haters: marcan and AsahiLina.
Both quit for different reasons, but both did it facing extremely unpleasant behaviours.
As a regular Asahi user (m2pro mbp), I literally felt the project slowing down when they quit.
An outcome of that crisis was the buildup of an organised directorial structure, with funding through the "Open Collective" organisation. That's good, and it's full of good people in there. Alyssa is an admin now btw.
Let us wish them all the best (and strength against all evil neckbeards).
Lina rebranded as Hoshino Lina and is working on an open source implementation of Live2D now.
opensource community can be an evil pit of haters
More like worthless shits on Kiwi Farms
As a regular Asahi user (m2pro mbp), I literally felt the project slowing down when they quit.
Me too, there's still great work being done on the project but the pace hasn't been the same since
Wasn't Asahi Lina alter ego of marcan? Or am I misremembering things
Part of the hate campaign. Anyone following both accounts at the time was quite puzzled by the hypothesis.
Their haters were going around and concern trolling that they were the same person. Anyone outside of the scene would take it as a stated fact and repeat it without knowing.
Allegedly. There was no evidence either way, and ultimately it doesn't matter anyway.
Some missing links:
- https://alyssarosenzweig.ca/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyssa_Rosenzweig
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asahi_Linux
Alyssa Rosenzweig, GPU lead. Alyssa is a Linux graphics hacker. After reverse-engineering the Arm Mali GPUs and building the free Panfrost driver for them, she did the same magic trick on the Apple GPU and built the userspace Asahi graphics drivers.
IIRC Apple were refusing to implement open standards because they were trying to force developers to use their proprietary Metal API.
I don't know if a lack of direct support is exactly the same as trying to force everyone, as they could've easily prevented her from reverse engineering this project, but that's sort of splitting hairs and they definitely know they have an open source community who would appreciate even a modicum of support that they're ignoring.
People weren't forced to use Metal as it turns out - they just didn't make games for Mac instead.
Apple tried to force people to use Metal, they just forgot that MacOS isn't the iPhone and they don't have enough weight in the desktop PC market to dictate terms like that.
Her live streams are something else
What does she do on the livestreams?
Something else
She does 10 hour reverse engeneering sessions
Where does she stream? Does she post old recordings? I'd love to try catching one.
very based
personally grateful as i daily drive asahi linux
posting this comment from an m2 macbook pro running fedora asahi
The only reason I'm not buying an M series macbook is because I thought there's no Linux support, have things changed? Is it all unofficial?
support is neither official (by apple) nor unofficial (a hack), you can install other operating systems to apple silicon macs without any jailbreaks/hacks, but linux was ported by a community team
only m1 and m2 are properly supported
m3 is WIP, m4 is very WIP, m5 and m6 idk if are even started
M1 and M2 got unofficial Linux support pretty quickly. M3 still lacks GPU support last I checked and Apple is on M6 now. The oldest devices they sell are M4 and M1 is a year away from losing all support from Apple from what I was told, so yes things have changed but not in a good way. I've heard that the Framework 13 Pro might be a decent alternative though
She's the GOAT. I've known about her since 2024 LibrePlanet. Apple Inc. can take the L.
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