Nina KalininaMar 13
I'm tooting this from OpenBSD running XFCE on Apple Silicon. It was a bit of a learning curve, but it works better than my first Linux did. Display, keyboard, touchpad, Wi-Fi, even sound - they all work. Firefox is quite usable even without the video acceleration, but I'm not sure if I can daily-drive it if I'm not able to play videos on this machine.
Show threadNina Kalinina

This, of course, is only possible thanks to incredible work of volunteers from Asahi Linux and OpenBSD.

The installation is relatively straightforward:
1. Resize your MacOS drive to have enough space for a new OS,
2. Get Asahi Linux installer,
3. Install UEFI-only,
4. Get OpenBSD install79.img and record it on a USB stick (with dd or whatever)
5. Boot Asahi UEFI, it will pick up the stick
6. Install with default settings (skip configuring the network)
7. Mount /dev/sd0i as /boot, find FIRMWARE.TAR on the disk, unpack WiFi firmware to /etc/firmware/apple-bwfm
8. Configure network as usual, install whatever stuff you want, be it xenodm, xfce4, firefox-esr, chrome, etc etc
9. Bonus: configure GDK_SCALE=2
10. Bonus: configure touchpad through /etc/wsconsctl.conf
11. Bonus: configure firefox unveil through /etc/firefox

Mar 13 at 7:43pmWeb
Show threadNina KalininaMar 13

One scary part in this step is getting the disk partitioning right. Asahi manual and OpenBSD manual say that it is safe to use "Whole disk" setting, as it won't damage the MacOS partition required for the computer to function. The manual does not lie here.

Fdisk tool will show the full size of the SSD on the computer, but OpenBSD installer will still only use the part of the disk that is available for Asahi when "whole disk" setting is chosen.

Show threadEricMar 13
@nina_kali_nina
this is a wild path to get openbsd on it! how's power management? what generation apple silicon? I knew Asahi was working on apple silicon (of course), but didn't realise any of the bsds were too.
Show threadNina KalininaMar 13
@ejstacey it's MacBook Air M1. I don't think there is any power management beyond adjusting screen brightness, but maybe I have not figured it out yet :)
Show threadEricMar 13
@nina_kali_nina
Cool thanks for the info. I was wondering how battery life would be, but didn't know if they (the Asahi/openbsd gods) had decoded that firmware yet. Have fun!
Show threadNina KalininaMar 13

@ejstacey it looks like the full charge should last ~3 hours, which is not impressive at all. But I haven't fully measured it yet.

It won't be super cool because closing the lid won't make the laptop sleep, probably...

Show threadNina KalininaMar 13
@ejstacey actually, I stand corrected, apparently there's _some_ apm even since 2023: https://openbsdmailbox.blogspot.com/2023/04/lidaction-on-m1-macbook.html
lidaction on an M1 macbook

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