I agree. At the very least, they should be a corporate sponsor for Marcan's Patreon. Ideally they should just hire him and provide him with internal resources to work on it. Even if Apple doesn't benefit from Linux running on bare metal, many of these efforts will benefit Linux running inside a VM as well.
I don't think hardly anything here will help Linux running in a VM FWIW. The unknowns are mainly the Apple specific IP blocks which aren't exposed to VMs.
Depends if you care about having graphics or audio in your Linux VM. Currently I think Linux VMs are just console only. Also, there is a lot of accelerated hardware which the CPU has which would be nice to get access to inside a VM.
I still would be extremely surprised if the GPU is designed to be virtualized that way. If the host OS is using those IP blocks, you can't just give them to the guest.
> It's also bonus points towards sustainability to ensure their devices have a life after obsolescence.
This is my primary interest in this project. Given Apple's support life for Macs, I don't think I will ever use it, but I'd like to have the option the same way I was able to extend the life of my G4 iMac.
I agree with you in theory; in practice Apple seems to have enough issues just getting their own in-house OS to work right on these things.
A lot of macOS internals are really a reflection of Apple's deadlines-over-everything, ship-at-all-costs attitude. Certain parts are great, because those teams seem to be great and are blockers, such as the kernel or the silicon. Other parts closer to the surface that aren't in quite as critical a path, all the way up to documentation... not quite as much.
Overall they do a decent job, and are certainly moving in a good direction security-wise (although not privacy-wise). It's just clear that many of their teams are stretched extremely thin.
My biggest wish for the Mac is to take macOS back off yearly releases. Or at least make every other yearly release minor, just to add compatibility with whatever got added to iOS.
What’s the point in having a big release every year if takes six months to sand down all the rough edges?
It's not what they got to lose, but what they got to gain for doing this? Which is almost nothing. Except they fully support linux on their laptops too
