>Asahi Lina, our GPU kernel sourceress. Lina joined the team to reverse engineer the M1 GPU kernel interface, and found herself writing the world’s first Rust Linux GPU kernel driver. When she’s not working on the Asahi DRM kernel driver, she sometimes hacks on open source VTuber tooling and infrastructure.
Asahi Linux has been upstreaming, but of course it's ongoing. The GPU driver in particular depends on some rust inside the kernel bits which aren't in the mainline kernel, yet. The 6.1 kernel has some Rust bits, 6.2 will have more, but I don't believe that will be enough for the GPU driver ... yet.
Asahi Lina is a maintainer in Asahi Linux project. She is now much known because of the achivement she earned, programming the Asahi Linux GPU driver for MacOS.
Other way around, it’s a pseudonym created to work on the project, IIRC Lina got involved early-mid 2022 while Hector Martin started the project in late 2020 / early 2021.
It’s like a full time filter where the only online identity someone presents is as an anime girl. I think it was popularized by a company called HoloLive that has Japanese girls do this as a full time job? It’s a VERY niche culture thing.
Check out the Asahi Lina channel to see what I mean.
I understood deadnaming to generally pertain to gender identity. I don't think it's far-fetched to initially consider Asahi Lina's name as a Pseudonym/Alias/Pen-Name, as many creatives (authors, artists, musicians) have been doing for hundreds of years.
If it is a gender identity decision, I still don't view it as malicious for the OP to ask. The context just isn't there in the blog post to make that clear.
Let's not head down this direction of madness please.
I've followed Japanese vtubers for some time and that is CERTAINLY not the case. Vtubers are just aliases for the real person. And each person picks and chooses how much they blend their real lives into that alias.
There are even some vtubers that will have a camera facing on themselves while they stream as a vtuber (for example stream their body, but not their face) or will alternate streams between a vtuber persona and a real live camera or vtubers who stream as a vtuber but the real person behind the vtuber is an open secret (i.e. artists who engage in vtubing but sell artwork at comic conventions attending as a real person). There's a huge range and spectrum of ways people choose to do vtubing.
(Note: A lot of the latter cases are more possible in Japan because of the general social/legal concept there that taking pictures of people without their permission is at least extremely rude and sometimes also illegal if you don't blur their face when publishing it. This is helped by the fact that it's a legal requirement that all devices capable of taking photographs must make a photographing noise when doing so. For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the device hardware.)
> This is helped by the fact that it's a legal requirement that all devices capable of taking photographs must make a photographing noise when doing so.
That's not a legal requirement, it's a carrier request.
> For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the device hardware.
That now turns off once you take them out of the country though.
Assuming it is the case I don't think it's polite to share this information. I don't know their motivation for creating a separate public image, but I think we should respect their decision to do so by not connecting them.
> It is imperative that all code contributed to the kernel be legitimately free software.
> For that reason, code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted.
> All contributors are required to “sign off” on their code, stating that the code can be distributed with the kernel under the GPL.
> Code which has not been licensed as free software by its owner, or which risks creating copyright-related problems for the kernel (such as code which derives from reverse-engineering efforts lacking proper safeguards) cannot be contributed.
I'm not sure Apple would want users to run anything but Apple operating systems on their hardware, and the other way around (fighting against hackintoshes back in the day).
I hope to be proven wrong though, as their hardware is really interesting.
> Apple should upstream their drivers.
Apple don't have linux drivers. It would be great if they wrote some, but it's never going to happen.
> Who is Asahi Lina? Is that an actual person?
The virtual persona of an actual person who has chosen to remain anonymous (hence the name which would be a crazy coincidence otherwise).
While anonymous, they did put in some personal information at 10 minutes into: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LonzMviFCNs
They are Canadian born, currently studying in Japan, so that explains some of the cultural mix.
I always thought that she was an umbrella persona for marcan and alyssa or is the backstory just for the Lina persona?
> Who is Asahi Lina? Is that an actual person?
Man... if I was a conspiracy theorist who believed Apple was genuinely evil, what if Asahi Lina is an Apple employee? ;)
Apple has pushed OS updates to help the Asahi team, though they did not publicize this, of course.
11 replies →
>Asahi Lina, our GPU kernel sourceress. Lina joined the team to reverse engineer the M1 GPU kernel interface, and found herself writing the world’s first Rust Linux GPU kernel driver. When she’s not working on the Asahi DRM kernel driver, she sometimes hacks on open source VTuber tooling and infrastructure.
Their = apple? Their = Asahi Lina's?
Asahi Linux has been upstreaming, but of course it's ongoing. The GPU driver in particular depends on some rust inside the kernel bits which aren't in the mainline kernel, yet. The 6.1 kernel has some Rust bits, 6.2 will have more, but I don't believe that will be enough for the GPU driver ... yet.
Asahi Lina is a maintainer in Asahi Linux project. She is now much known because of the achivement she earned, programming the Asahi Linux GPU driver for MacOS.
Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym? Is Asahi Linux named after her? Or is it all one big coincidence?
> Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym?
Yes
> Is Asahi Linux named after her?
Other way around, it’s a pseudonym created to work on the project, IIRC Lina got involved early-mid 2022 while Hector Martin started the project in late 2020 / early 2021.
10 replies →
> Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym?
This one.
I assume you mean Asahi Linux GPU driver for Mac M1? or does this run ontop of MacOS somehow?
Yes I meant for the M1.
I think it’s a vTuber anime persona of a very talented programmer or something?
And, sorry for continuing this thread, what is a "vTuber anime persona"?
It’s like a full time filter where the only online identity someone presents is as an anime girl. I think it was popularized by a company called HoloLive that has Japanese girls do this as a full time job? It’s a VERY niche culture thing.
Check out the Asahi Lina channel to see what I mean.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LonzMviFCNs
6 replies →
One of those threads where you comment and more questions are raised that feel almost irrelevant.
From what I have gleaned, vTuber is a virtual YouTuber. The streams use an anime model a s behaviour.
So we've no idea who it is.
And for some reason I feel creeped out now. There is something perturbing about the saccharin persona coupled with the pseudonym.
Like Pennywise (It) vibes?
8 replies →
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber
vTuber = virtual YouTuber (YouTube as genericized term for “video platform”, as in Xerox for copying)
Anime = Japanese cartoon style
> Apple should upstream their drivers.
Apple's drivers are upstreamed, in Darwin. I'm not aware of any reason to believe that Apple has any Linux drivers that they could upstream.
I understood deadnaming to generally pertain to gender identity. I don't think it's far-fetched to initially consider Asahi Lina's name as a Pseudonym/Alias/Pen-Name, as many creatives (authors, artists, musicians) have been doing for hundreds of years.
If it is a gender identity decision, I still don't view it as malicious for the OP to ask. The context just isn't there in the blog post to make that clear.
Let's not head down this direction of madness please.
I've followed Japanese vtubers for some time and that is CERTAINLY not the case. Vtubers are just aliases for the real person. And each person picks and chooses how much they blend their real lives into that alias.
There are even some vtubers that will have a camera facing on themselves while they stream as a vtuber (for example stream their body, but not their face) or will alternate streams between a vtuber persona and a real live camera or vtubers who stream as a vtuber but the real person behind the vtuber is an open secret (i.e. artists who engage in vtubing but sell artwork at comic conventions attending as a real person). There's a huge range and spectrum of ways people choose to do vtubing.
(Note: A lot of the latter cases are more possible in Japan because of the general social/legal concept there that taking pictures of people without their permission is at least extremely rude and sometimes also illegal if you don't blur their face when publishing it. This is helped by the fact that it's a legal requirement that all devices capable of taking photographs must make a photographing noise when doing so. For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the device hardware.)
> This is helped by the fact that it's a legal requirement that all devices capable of taking photographs must make a photographing noise when doing so.
That's not a legal requirement, it's a carrier request.
> For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the device hardware.
That now turns off once you take them out of the country though.
4 replies →
Assuming it is the case I don't think it's polite to share this information. I don't know their motivation for creating a separate public image, but I think we should respect their decision to do so by not connecting them.
The Linux kernel does not accept anonymous contributions due to legal reasons.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html
> It is imperative that all code contributed to the kernel be legitimately free software.
> For that reason, code from anonymous (or pseudonymous) contributors will not be accepted.
> All contributors are required to “sign off” on their code, stating that the code can be distributed with the kernel under the GPL.
> Code which has not been licensed as free software by its owner, or which risks creating copyright-related problems for the kernel (such as code which derives from reverse-engineering efforts lacking proper safeguards) cannot be contributed.
1 reply →
> Apple should upstream their drivers.
To what upstream project?
i can only assume the poster meant apple should add linux drivers of M1/m2 to mainline linux kernel
I'm not sure Apple would want users to run anything but Apple operating systems on their hardware, and the other way around (fighting against hackintoshes back in the day). I hope to be proven wrong though, as their hardware is really interesting.
12 replies →
The Linux kernel
Is Apple/macOS downstream of the Linux kernel?
1 reply →