MacBook Air owner?

2018/2019 models are losing #Apple support.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/the-case-for-and-against-macos-15-sequoia-being-the-final-release-for-intel-macs/

#OptGreen with #GNU/#Linux to keep your device in use! These machines will run beautifully for many years to come.

Not only wallet friendly, #upcycling keeps CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Ca. 75% of Apple’s emissions comes from production alone (details in alt text).

Sustainable, independent #FreeSoftware: Better for users, best for the #environment.

@kde

#KDE #KDEEco #FOSS #OpenSource #MacBook

  • mox
    1•10 days ago

    OEM support for the device is needed because an alternate OS cannot provide firmware updates otherwise.

    Firmware and drivers can be made open, just as other software can be made open. It’s really just a matter of incentives. In my experience, law tends to be a pretty effective incentive.

    If the bill of materials included the legal requirements discussed here, then a component supplier would either start producing open firmware/specs, or they would lose that market to another supplier.

    Obviously, Android would not be the only project/product affected by such a legal change.

    • GrapheneOS
      1•10 days ago

      @mox

      Firmware being open or closed doesn’t make any difference to the OEM needing to provide updates since it has to be signed as part of the basic security model. Having the source code doesn’t mean you can update it.

      Having the source code and the ability to update it also doesn’t mean anyone is going to do it. See the kernel drivers which are entirely open source.

      The firmware that’s part of the Android project is open source such as Trusty OS. The firmware doesn’t come from Android.

      • GrapheneOS
        1•10 days ago

        @mox

        Open source does not solve this even if all the code could be updated. There are not people who take over maintaining all of it.

        There are alternate operating systems which mislead users about what they provide including setting an inaccurate Android security patch level. They don’t take over maintenance/development of a whole bunch of device specific components but rather hack around their lack of maintenance/development to get new OS versions running on top of abandoned code.

        • GrapheneOS
          1•10 days ago

          @mox

          Landing kernel drivers in upstream projects doesn’t magically give them any real maintenance. Upstream Linux kernel source tree is full of broken drivers which have bitrotted due to the immense churn. Most of the drivers aren’t tested as part of the development process. This is why essentially all production usage of the Linux kernel outside VMs is stuck using an LTS branch very long term with the need to do a lot of stabilization and bug fixing to move to a newer LTS branch.

          • GrapheneOS
            1•10 days ago

            @mox

            Offloading work to an imagined community of people who are going to take over maintaining firmware and drivers isn’t a solution. There are generally not people who are going to take it over. They’re only going to do the bare minimum to keep devices mostly working while telling people everything is fine and they don’t actually need those pesky security patches despite how important they are.