When I got my M3 Pro MBP, I got it with the intention of eventually installing Linux on it. In hindsight I seriously underestimated the amount of effort needed for even partial Linux compatibility, which makes me all the more grateful for the work Asahi contributors have put in! I'll still be keeping macOS installed for iOS dev work(which I plan on doing soonish), but other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life.
Display quality, trackpad quality, overall form factor, and very high RAM space in a laptop would be the primary reasons I'd go with Asahi Linux.
Apple's indifference to OSS does not give me much hope.
You have to appreciate the effort Apple puts into security - goes some way to understanding why they won't endorse/support installing an alternative operating system.
> Rumours circulating that Apple are actively hostile towards efforts such as Asahi, or that their security must be bypassed or jailbroken to run untrusted code are unfounded and false. In fact, Apple have expended effort and time on improving their security tooling in ways that only improve the execution of non-macOS binaries. An example of this is giving their Boot Policy configuration tool the ability to wrap raw AArch64 code in a proper Mach-O format starting with macOS 12.1. This is only ever required for enrolling a boot object that is not already a macOS kernelcache.
Intel and AMD set the standard for "tremendous effort" bringing up support for alternative OSes. Nvidia follows behind, and Apple's support is (somehow) behind Nvidia's foot-dragging.
Yes, Apple put effort into making it possible to install alternative operating systems on Macs, but that is an exception to the design because the chips are designed to be locked down. I expect Apple to remove the option at some point because nobody is using it on any of the recent hardware.
You get a jmp to some arm64 instructions of your choosing, with a bunch of CPU features locked out.