Thread

Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

422 points · 290 comments · ADevWithAnIdea

porphyra · 1789508109 · focus · HN ↗
This is super great. The biggest pain point of Asahi Linux is how it doesn't have GPU acceleration on M3 and newer, especially now that M6 is out!
However, Asahi Linux has a strictly no-AI policy [1]. So this great work can't be upstreamed. I expect to see a bunch of AI-assisted forks that get things working smoothly on newer hardware to dominate as most people just care about getting stuff working, while only a handful of purists stick to the non-AI version running on ancient hardware.
[1] <a href="https://asahilinux.org/llm-policy/" rel="nofollow">https://asahilinux.org/llm-policy/
1. ADevWithAnIdea · 1789508819 · focus · HN ↗
  :) I think we have a surprise in store here. Asahi don't have a monopoly over Linux for Apple Silicon, and upstream Linux absolutely does *NOT* ban LLMs.
  1. doctorpangloss · 1789511654 · focus · HN ↗
    i install proprietary modules for nvidia all the time, i'm not going to care if i have to do it for something else that i own
    bpye · 1789515441 · focus · HN ↗
    Nvidia's kernel module is open source these days, it's the usermode stack that's still closed.
    userbinator · 1789536342 · focus · HN ↗
    Can't wait for someone to point an LLM at that and "open it up" ;-)

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