mighty-snitch VS docs

6 months in to my first pc build. had one other pc for past 2 years from letsbld.

the build is easy, but it will take a full day. it is also a bit nerve racking, but mostly that’s just inexperience. parts are all sturdy and snap together. i will be building every nvidia generation from now on.

i used to code on laptops, then game on a pc. now i have to ssds, one windows one linux. bios boot option is unborkable. it’s a great setup.

it’s nice to be able to play fortnite, compile the linux kernel[1], and do gamedev[2] all in a single session.

be aware ddr5 amd boards boot kind of slow. i’ve heard intel is faster.

if you can afford it, go god spec. otherwise spec down into your price range. letsbld and originpc have good configurators to choose parts. newegg prices will be 30% less.

check out fractal torrent cases and dh15 coolers! 4090 fe fits in the nano and 4090 pny fits in the compact.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/tree/master/kernel...

2. https://r2.nathants.workers.dev/jetpack_hand_animations.mp4

learning cloud is not necessarily using cloud for all things.

cloud adds legitimate new capabilities to every engineer.

if i’m on coffeeshop wifi with my low power laptop, and i need to do something intense like compile linux, i’m sol.

unless i know aws. then i can open a new terminal, spin up a massive spot instance for 19.27 minutes, get that done, then self destruct. [1]

being able to test lambda to s3 io, or ec2 to s3 io, with the same ease one uses grep and sed, is for great good. also it’s fun.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/blob/master/kernel...

you jest, but this is actually fine.

do this via mighty-snitch[1] on any postmarketos phone. any network request passing through the linux kernel gets filtered.

still hosed if it’s hardware level nonsense unfortunately.

the only reason i’m not daily driving postmarketos if lack of gpu acceleration for firefox. hopefully soon!

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

i just built 6.2 for arm64. what timing!

https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/releases

use a network snitch[1] on desktop and mobile. The original slogan says it all: makes the invisible visible. i’d love to use a disk snitch too, but no exist yet afaik.

it’s interesting to see firefox or any other legitimate app i’m using make many unsolicited requests to weird domains. it feels good to interactively deny those connections.

make sure that cloud[2], which includes git hosts[3], are untrusted. unencrypted data should never hit remote. keys should never leave local.

consider the tradeoffs with online interactions. engaging with other humans in public on github and hackernews is likely worth. engaging in impassioned op-ed debate with bots on engagement monetization platforms like twitter or youtube is likely not.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

2. https://cryptomator.org/

3. https://github.com/nathants/git-remote-aws

marcan of the Asahi Linux project got into a discussion on reddit about this, and says that when it comes to hardware, you just can’t know.

> I can't prove the absence of a silicon backdoor on any machine, but I can say that given everything we know about AS systems (and we know quite a bit), there is no known place a significant backdoor could hide that could completely compromise my system. And there are several such places on pretty much every x86 system

(Long) thread starts here, show hidden comments for the full discussion https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/13voeey/what_is...

I highly recommend reading this if you’re interested https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...

Depends on the box. In general if there is a hardwired HDMI port it works, if it's an alt mode it doesn't yet. The feature pages give detail by hardware, heres a direct link to the M2 page https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M2-Series-Feature-Su...

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-Series-Feature-Su...

According to this page it should work on M1 MBP, but there is also a note about a specific patch released next week.

I'm just refuting that OP's dot update problem on Sonoma was caused by the refresh rate bug. In all likelihood OP doesn't have a weird Sonoma/Ventura dual boot situation going on (or Ashai Linux for that matter, who wrote a great article about this). In all my testing (and with a large enterprise sample size) we had zero reports of the refresh bug impacting an Apple Silicon Mac running just Sonoma itself.

> They don't support variations of software at all. They support the hardware. [...] Asahi does not need to support applications at all.

From their FAQ page[1]:

> We will eventually release a remix of Arch Linux ARM, packaged for installation by end-users, as a distribution of the same name. The majority of the work resides in hardware support, drivers, and tools, and it will be upstreamed to the relevant projects. The distribution will be a convenient package for easy installation by end-users and give them access to bleeding-edge versions of the software we develop.

As distro maintainers, it is their job to make sure the applications they package work on the hardware they support. This includes submitting patches upstream when that is not the case, as application maintainers likely wouldn't want to support such a niche environment directly. So, yes, they rely on volunteers to fix issues, but they will likely have to support many applications themselves.

There is still a lot of broken software, as this list[2] is surely not exhaustive.

> Same deal for any other hardware manufacturer. [...] Really not much different to other hardware manufacturers since Linux started.

No, it's very different. First of all, the amount of Linux hackers who volunteered to reverse engineer the wide variety of hardware was orders of magnitude larger than the Asahi team. Even if they limit the amount of devices they support, modern computers are far more complex than in the early days of Linux. Regardless of how talented the Asahi team is, maintaining all the hardware of a modern computer is a sisyphean task for a project run by volunteers.

Secondly, hardware manufacturers could see the benefit of getting their hardware to run in Linux, and many eventually took over support from volunteers. Apple has shown no interest in doing so, and has historically been hostile to open source.

> Asahi devs have made it clear that Apple has chosen to avoid blocking installation of other operating systems.

The fact they allow installation of other operating systems today, doesn't mean that this decision couldn't change in the future. Services are a large part of their business, and allowing a group of hackers to use their hardware without being part of their software ecosystem may seem like a non-issue today, but if this group grows larger assuming projects like Asahi are successful, this might become a considerable loss of income which wouldn't be in their best interest.

> Apple has no issue with it.

Can you point me to an official ackgnowledgment of Asahi Linux by Apple? Or any indication that leaving this door open was a sign of good will, instead of a lack of interest in closing it? What makes you think they wouldn't eventually lock down Macbooks in the same way they do iPhones and iPads?

> ARM is a stable well supported platform for Linux

It's really not. A lot of software works, but when it doesn't, the user is SOL. As you can see on their Broken Software page[2], the major issue is precisely with AArch64 support. This should improve eventually, and Asahi is certainly a torchbearer in this scenario, but today it's yet another hurdle of using Apple hardware.

[1]: https://asahilinux.org/about/#is-this-a-linux-distribution

[2]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken-Software

More information about the macOS Sonoma ProMotion bug here.

Here’s the actual issue for anyone that cares, fully documented : https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/macOS-Sonoma-Boot-Failures