> Gravity Linux and Asahi Linux are two independent projects working towards the shared goal of a strong, open OS ecosystem on Apple Silicon devices. Gravity Linux was initially forked from Asahi Linux over differences in policy, namely regarding LLM use. We have tremendous respect for the Asahi Linux project and emphasize our shared goal of running Linux on Apple Silicon.
OP is the same poster from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717638 who was noted as having been banned from Asahi Linux over hiding use of LLMs (doesn't seem to be any disagreement about this) and accusations of having Apple proprietary knowledge (challenged by OP).
I disagree with this also, but the latter was so obviously wrong that I figured I should leave a reply. We are separate projects and what Asahi does is their business, our interactions will be in upstream projects and follow upstream guidelines.
It's kinda sad that this cool project is mired in controversy. On one hand it is kinda radioactive for a former Apple engineer to work on this, even if you worked on something else entirely while at Apple. On the other hand I really, really want proper Linux support with full GPU support on modern Macs and I feel like AI is an incredibly useful tool towards that effort.
Oh well, if this doesn't pan out, hopefully someone else will vibe code for a week and get it working in the near future.
From a brief look, it seems separate from Asahi, although it builds on some of Asahi's existing work. I'm still not clear why it needed to be a separate project rather than contributing M4 support upstream. Could be a good reason, but it does look a bit duplicative at first glance.
Asahi’s approach avoids any use of AI coding agents, etc at all (even for debugging, testing, and so forth). The amount of work/effort the Asahi team did for M1/M2/M3 is near superhuman, and M4 is gonna take all that effort again, since Apple likes to change things, a lot, and doesn’t really document their hardware device interfaces in detail.
Gravity approaches this with an attitude that using an LLM is indeed allowed (per upstream Linux contribute requirements), particularly for analysis, debugging and testing. The goal is to get M4 support contributed back to to the upstream kernel. (And eventually M5, M6, A18…)
Ideally, the documentation about hardware interfaces from this project could be used for other people who want to write kernel drivers for Linux or even for other operating systems. It’s mostly a matter of documenting what the device interface actually is.
None of this would be possible without Asahi’s foundational work and techniques to make clean room reverse engineering possible. Despite differences on opinions about AI, I can’t stress the quality of their work or the effort they’ve put in enough.
Is this related to Asahi Linux in any way? Or is it a completely separate project for some reason?
https://gravitylinux.org/about/
> Gravity Linux vs Asahi Linux
> Gravity Linux and Asahi Linux are two independent projects working towards the shared goal of a strong, open OS ecosystem on Apple Silicon devices. Gravity Linux was initially forked from Asahi Linux over differences in policy, namely regarding LLM use. We have tremendous respect for the Asahi Linux project and emphasize our shared goal of running Linux on Apple Silicon.
OP is the same poster from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717638 who was noted as having been banned from Asahi Linux over hiding use of LLMs (doesn't seem to be any disagreement about this) and accusations of having Apple proprietary knowledge (challenged by OP).
> hiding use of LLMs
I disagree with this also, but the latter was so obviously wrong that I figured I should leave a reply. We are separate projects and what Asahi does is their business, our interactions will be in upstream projects and follow upstream guidelines.
It's kinda sad that this cool project is mired in controversy. On one hand it is kinda radioactive for a former Apple engineer to work on this, even if you worked on something else entirely while at Apple. On the other hand I really, really want proper Linux support with full GPU support on modern Macs and I feel like AI is an incredibly useful tool towards that effort.
Oh well, if this doesn't pan out, hopefully someone else will vibe code for a week and get it working in the near future.
From a brief look, it seems separate from Asahi, although it builds on some of Asahi's existing work. I'm still not clear why it needed to be a separate project rather than contributing M4 support upstream. Could be a good reason, but it does look a bit duplicative at first glance.
It’s a different approach to adding M4 support.
Asahi’s approach avoids any use of AI coding agents, etc at all (even for debugging, testing, and so forth). The amount of work/effort the Asahi team did for M1/M2/M3 is near superhuman, and M4 is gonna take all that effort again, since Apple likes to change things, a lot, and doesn’t really document their hardware device interfaces in detail.
Gravity approaches this with an attitude that using an LLM is indeed allowed (per upstream Linux contribute requirements), particularly for analysis, debugging and testing. The goal is to get M4 support contributed back to to the upstream kernel. (And eventually M5, M6, A18…)
Ideally, the documentation about hardware interfaces from this project could be used for other people who want to write kernel drivers for Linux or even for other operating systems. It’s mostly a matter of documenting what the device interface actually is.
None of this would be possible without Asahi’s foundational work and techniques to make clean room reverse engineering possible. Despite differences on opinions about AI, I can’t stress the quality of their work or the effort they’ve put in enough.
Asahi is aiphobic
Seems to be 100% entirely different, as Asahi uses Arch, this is on Fedora.
This is intended to eventually be distribution agnostic; Asahi uses Fedora and this is following in those footsteps to be a fairly similar experience.
Asahi is available in a variety of distros, too.
Asahi is on Fedora now (and has been for a couple of years)