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
How far developed is asahi now? Is every hardware working? Last time i looked into it wifi didn’t work, i think. So i thought it was not useful for me.
For M1 most things work except for USB-HDMI dongles and the fingerprint reader, I think M2 is in a similar boat now
yeah hdmi i really use often, hopefully they getting it working
saving millions of computers from landfills when Apple no longer supports them
Kindof except that their build quality tanked during the late Intel era and the motherboards will die a lot sooner now
My macbook pro, 2019, just stopped charging or responding to anything in the USB ports.
Took it to repair shop abcd they said “the logic board was fried” and it needed replacing.
It’s been a while since I dabbled with hardware (built my own pcs back in the day) but is logic board just apple for motherboard?
basically
I have traveled extensively with my m1 and gave it 2 solid drops (which left massive dents in the metal) and I feel like they are holding up. To Apple’s credit, the original os which I use for photography still feels like new after 5 years. Yes, they have a myriad of other ethical problems, but the M series have been great hardware with not bad software… So far
I had one and it died after 4 years. From what I’ve seen on the internet and what Apple’s technicians told me this isn’t an uncommon issue. Fortunately my 7-8 year old HP laptop still functions (aside from the battery which completely crapped out after 2-3 years). Also they started soldering everything to the motherboard so you have to replace almost the entire computer if it breaks.
the original os which I use for photography still feels like new after 5 years
Near the end macOS felt slow/throttled. Linux was fast though.
She’s amazing. Also fascinating life story, came out as transgender at 10, was raised Jewish but she is now a Quaker
like the oats guy?

Fun fact: Quaker Oats has no relation to Quakers at all.
but they’re both bland and tasteless and disappointed in my life choices after seeing each other.
raised Jewish but she is now a Quaker
Trading one religious tradition for another.
That’s a lateral move at best.
To be fair Quakers are like, the best people of pretty much any western organized religion
She’s the GOAT. I’ve known about her since 2024 LibrePlanet. Apple Inc. can take the L.
Reverse-engineering the M1 GPU with zero public docs is insane. Huge respect for managing to get an open-source driver working on Linux from scratch.
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.
Thank you. This is the sort of news I need in my day.
Pretty flipping sweet if you asked me.
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
Oh, i followed and admired her work since they first got the m1 to boot like back a few years.
First time seeing her face
Love that she did it, although I’m surprised they didn’t sue her for contempt of business model (i.e. Some copyright BS)
Alyssa reverse-engineered Apple’s M1 GPU with no public documentation and developed an open-source Linux driver.
Be like Alyssa.
I’d rather watch her do that than someone doing triple saltos at the olympics.
This is way more impressive. 10/10
No need to diminish Olympic athletes. They worked very hard to get there. There are plenty of influences you can diminish instead.
Fuck the Olympics. It hasn’t been anything other than a corporate entity intent on making money above all else in almost a hundred years. IOC tramples on the rights of many people every day and the entirety of the organization can burn in hell
Seriously? I’m diminishing Olympic athletes? Go get your moral outrage gatekeeping fix somewhere else please.
clearly she is on the spectrum…

So are we all.
Immense respect!
I admire people like this because even though there’s like 3 pieces of hardware I wish I could fix like this, I’ve got no clue where to start. And except for one, most are simpler devices than the M1 GPU.
Some of the basics of reverse engineering:
- Learn to use a binary editor to inspect compiled binaries
- Learn to debug without symbols
- Learn to use a decompiler
- Learn to inspect the traffic between the device and the OS
It’s kind of monumental and there’s no real finish line for learning any of them.
Depending on what you want to do you need a lot of time, dedication, tools and probably money.
Well, one is a GPU like this one that only has 2D support and it’s apparently perpetually stuck as experimental. The second one is a trackpad / numpad combo that someone else got working but because the code never got upstreamed it broke. The last one is an internal microphone that might have support in the kernel but it might be missing quirk flags or a small change in how it works.
The second two are orders of magnitude easier than the first. Out of date code usually just means it relies on some ABI that was deprecated, so it needs to be updated with the new functions. Microphone pin quirks are fairly common so there are a lot of resources available a search away.
That sounds like reading a lot of documentation and testing stuff out when no dox is available.
And probably you first need to learn about each device how they function on an os level…
Omg,apple developers must feel so useless right now
Truly doing the lords work here.
It’s people like her who make life worth living. People who solve hard problems that need solving (or sometimes don’t even need it) are the best people.
…without asking a dime. Just love for the game.
VLC springs to mind.
Yes exactly! And exactly!












