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Sorry to hijack, but since the topic is related: is the development of Asahi Linux still actively ongoing, or has slowed down a lot? The progress for M1 and M2

Sorry to hijack, but since the topic is related: is the development of Asahi Linux still actively ongoing, or has slowed down a lot? The progress for M1 and M2 was steady and now almost everything is done, but the M3+ work still seems to not have started. And with major contributors leaving the project I'm kind of worried for the future of Asahi (on newer Apple hardware).

Tiberium 1y ago
Found out from some Reddit discussions that the developers aim to first upstream everything for M1/M2 to the kernel, and as of https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/: > With Linux 6.16, we also hit a pretty cool milestone. In our first progress report, we mentioned that we were carrying over 1200 patches downstream. After doing a little housekeeping on our branch and upstreaming what we have so far, that number is now below 1000 for the first time in many years, meaning we have managed to upstream a little over 20% of our entire patch set in just under five months. If we discount the DCP and GPU/Rust patches from both figures, that proportion jumps to just under half! So if the discussions are true, it can take years for the developers to finish M1/M2 upstreaming with all the Linux kernel bureaucracy. That is, unless they decide to start working on M3 before finishing the upstreaming
- laweijfmvo 1y ago
  i hope some day a used M1/M2 macbook air will be the greatest linux laptop around
  - rc00 1y ago
    I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Forget the hostile nature Apple has proven to possess when consumers dare treat their hardware as if paying for it makes it their own. Qualcomm has been beating the marketing drum on this instead of delivering. Ampere has delivered excellent hardware but does not seem interested in the desktop segment. The "greatest Linux laptop around" can not be some unmaintained relic from a hostile hardware company.
    - finaard 1y ago
      As somebody that has worked in a company that did Qualcomm devices in the past - Qualcomm just cares about money grabbing, and is not any less hostile to developers than Apple. If you want to do a device, and your only chip option is Qualcomm I'd recommend not doing a device at all.
      - zozbot234 1y ago
        FLOSS stacks for Qualcomm-based devices are actually a lot more feature complete than some other brands like MediaTek or Exynos. Still nowhere near any kind of "daily driver" status but at least getting somewhere, whilst others have yet to even get started.
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      > I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Can you see any other machine coming close to a Mac in terms of hardware quality and performance? Obviously the cost is silly, but while I agree with your sentiment, it seems optimistic to hope.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    Networking is going to be another major issue. Even on the Intel MacBook Pro this is still a problem. The instructions for getting it to work are so bizarre that I ended up with a network dongle with a supported chipset instead.
    - neobrain 1y ago
      Good news for you: Networking (ethernet/wifi/bluetooth) on M1/M2 have been working perfectly fine for a while and don't require any special tinkering.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        Oh that is good news. I'm almost tempted to try that out.
        neobrain 1y ago
        I can recommend it! I've been daily driving M1 for a few months now, it's working really well. Parent poster is raving about a potential "greatest linux laptop", but depending on your use case it's already there. IME the Asahi support page is spot-on: There are a couple of yet-unsupported features (DP-alt mode being a big one), but any feature listed as supported will just work without hidden gotchas. I find this a big contrast to other devices, which will often "work" but have annoying little quirks here and there that are workable but can feel like a downgrade compared to Windows.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        How is battery life?
        neobrain 1y ago
        On macOS, I never worried about battery life when leaving the house even when doing compute-heavy work. On Asahi, that is equally much true. I couldn't tell you how many hours it lasts because I never have to carry a charger unless I'm out for more than a regular workday. There's some room for improvement, but that is purely relative to macOS. Asahi still solidly beats other x86 devices (other than the low end ones you wouldn't do development work on). One issue is that idle battery consumption is higher than on macOS (an active area of improvement though [1]), which you'll notice by an M1 laptop discharging by about 12% overnight when macos would've eaten maybe 2-3%. Not a big issue normally, but can be inconvenient if the device shuts down due to empty battery overnight. During more passive uses at daytime (e.g. playing music), the display tends to be the biggest power hog. Not really Linux-specific, but I actively turn off the screen when not needed hence (KDE lets you configure the power button to do so). [1] https://social.treehouse.systems/@chaos_princess/114984338655355750 https://social.treehouse.systems/@chaos_princess/11498433865...
- zozbot234 1y ago
  Makes sense, every patch they upstream is less maintenance and forward-porting work that they have to do. Keeping a downstream kernel up to date is very painful, even one that's "near mainline" as with Asahi's.
zozbot234 1y ago
The M3+ GPU is also very different. So while it may be true that the driver development for M1/M2 is now more or less complete as OP says, future work along the same lines will very much be needed.
- hanikesn 1y ago
  >The M3+ GPU is also very different. Any sources for that? I'd be quite surprised if Apple had radically altered the architecture.
  - ykl 1y ago
    This is a pretty well known thing; the M3/A17 generation GPU was a ground-up redesign that added things like dynamic caching and hardware ray tracing [1] which are highly nontrivial to simply extend an existing architecture to support. Unfortunately I can’t find where I read this, but IIRC at the time M2 came out there were expectations that M2 would have a new GPU architecture with hardware ray tracing but this wound up being delayed to M3 because it took longer than expected to do a ground-up redesign of the GPU. [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111375/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111375/
Keyframe 1y ago
I'd pay easily let's say $100-200 a year to have linux running on modern apple laptops with full features. I'm sure I'm not alone. Their hardware, "our" OS would be perfect. Well, except notch and lack of OLED - but, reportedly that's in the works too.
- internetter 1y ago
  https://opencollective.com/asahilinux https://opencollective.com/asahilinux the great thing is, you can!
  - umbra07 1y ago
    "with full features"
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  the macbook pro uses MiniLed, in term of contrast, it's quite good, much better than ips. Macbook pro display is one of the best laptop display.
  - ozgrakkurt 1y ago
    It is not even close. Pretty much any OLED is so much better
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    And somehow it has way less blooming than other mini-led displays I have used. Not clear how they pull that feat off exactly
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      Most likely, they have more mini-leds and/or more ability to independently control them. Of course the localized "blooming" of mini-leds is a lot easier on the eyes regardless than the all-around bloom of a backlit display. (Better for the battery too, if you can keep most of the screen dark.)
GeekyBear 1y ago
The new leadership team set a short term goal of getting their existing work upstreamed, which seems to be going well. > Our priority is kernel upstreaming. Our downstream Linux tree contains over 1000 patches required for Apple Silicon that are not yet in upstream Linux. The upstream kernel moves fast, requiring us to constantly rebase our changes on top of upstream while battling merge conflicts and regressions. Janne, Neal, and marcan have rebased our tree for years, but it is laborious with so many patches. Before adding more, we need to reduce our patch stack to remain sustainable long-term. https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/ > With Linux 6.16, we also hit a pretty cool milestone. In our first progress report, we mentioned that we were carrying over 1200 patches downstream. After doing a little housekeeping on our branch and upstreaming what we have so far, that number is now below 1000 for the first time in many years, meaning we have managed to upstream a little over 20% of our entire patch set in just under five months. If we discount the DCP and GPU/Rust patches from both figures, that proportion jumps to just under half! While we still have quite a way to go, this progress has already made rebases significantly less hassle and given us some room to breathe. https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/

Tiberium 1y ago

Found out from some Reddit discussions that the developers aim to first upstream everything for M1/M2 to the kernel, and as of https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/: > With Linux 6.16, we also hit a pretty cool milestone. In our first progress report, we mentioned that we were carrying over 1200 patches downstream. After doing a little housekeeping on our branch and upstreaming what we have so far, that number is now below 1000 for the first time in many years, meaning we have managed to upstream a little over 20% of our entire patch set in just under five months. If we discount the DCP and GPU/Rust patches from both figures, that proportion jumps to just under half! So if the discussions are true, it can take years for the developers to finish M1/M2 upstreaming with all the Linux kernel bureaucracy. That is, unless they decide to start working on M3 before finishing the upstreaming

laweijfmvo 1y ago
i hope some day a used M1/M2 macbook air will be the greatest linux laptop around
- rc00 1y ago
  I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Forget the hostile nature Apple has proven to possess when consumers dare treat their hardware as if paying for it makes it their own. Qualcomm has been beating the marketing drum on this instead of delivering. Ampere has delivered excellent hardware but does not seem interested in the desktop segment. The "greatest Linux laptop around" can not be some unmaintained relic from a hostile hardware company.
  - finaard 1y ago
    As somebody that has worked in a company that did Qualcomm devices in the past - Qualcomm just cares about money grabbing, and is not any less hostile to developers than Apple. If you want to do a device, and your only chip option is Qualcomm I'd recommend not doing a device at all.
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      FLOSS stacks for Qualcomm-based devices are actually a lot more feature complete than some other brands like MediaTek or Exynos. Still nowhere near any kind of "daily driver" status but at least getting somewhere, whilst others have yet to even get started.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    > I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Can you see any other machine coming close to a Mac in terms of hardware quality and performance? Obviously the cost is silly, but while I agree with your sentiment, it seems optimistic to hope.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  Networking is going to be another major issue. Even on the Intel MacBook Pro this is still a problem. The instructions for getting it to work are so bizarre that I ended up with a network dongle with a supported chipset instead.
  - neobrain 1y ago
    Good news for you: Networking (ethernet/wifi/bluetooth) on M1/M2 have been working perfectly fine for a while and don't require any special tinkering.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      Oh that is good news. I'm almost tempted to try that out.
      - neobrain 1y ago
        I can recommend it! I've been daily driving M1 for a few months now, it's working really well. Parent poster is raving about a potential "greatest linux laptop", but depending on your use case it's already there. IME the Asahi support page is spot-on: There are a couple of yet-unsupported features (DP-alt mode being a big one), but any feature listed as supported will just work without hidden gotchas. I find this a big contrast to other devices, which will often "work" but have annoying little quirks here and there that are workable but can feel like a downgrade compared to Windows.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        How is battery life?
        neobrain 1y ago
        On macOS, I never worried about battery life when leaving the house even when doing compute-heavy work. On Asahi, that is equally much true. I couldn't tell you how many hours it lasts because I never have to carry a charger unless I'm out for more than a regular workday. There's some room for improvement, but that is purely relative to macOS. Asahi still solidly beats other x86 devices (other than the low end ones you wouldn't do development work on). One issue is that idle battery consumption is higher than on macOS (an active area of improvement though [1]), which you'll notice by an M1 laptop discharging by about 12% overnight when macos would've eaten maybe 2-3%. Not a big issue normally, but can be inconvenient if the device shuts down due to empty battery overnight. During more passive uses at daytime (e.g. playing music), the display tends to be the biggest power hog. Not really Linux-specific, but I actively turn off the screen when not needed hence (KDE lets you configure the power button to do so). [1] https://social.treehouse.systems/@chaos_princess/114984338655355750 https://social.treehouse.systems/@chaos_princess/11498433865...
zozbot234 1y ago
Makes sense, every patch they upstream is less maintenance and forward-porting work that they have to do. Keeping a downstream kernel up to date is very painful, even one that's "near mainline" as with Asahi's.

zozbot234 1y ago

The M3+ GPU is also very different. So while it may be true that the driver development for M1/M2 is now more or less complete as OP says, future work along the same lines will very much be needed.

hanikesn 1y ago
>The M3+ GPU is also very different. Any sources for that? I'd be quite surprised if Apple had radically altered the architecture.
- ykl 1y ago
  This is a pretty well known thing; the M3/A17 generation GPU was a ground-up redesign that added things like dynamic caching and hardware ray tracing [1] which are highly nontrivial to simply extend an existing architecture to support. Unfortunately I can’t find where I read this, but IIRC at the time M2 came out there were expectations that M2 would have a new GPU architecture with hardware ray tracing but this wound up being delayed to M3 because it took longer than expected to do a ground-up redesign of the GPU. [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111375/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111375/

Keyframe 1y ago

I'd pay easily let's say $100-200 a year to have linux running on modern apple laptops with full features. I'm sure I'm not alone. Their hardware, "our" OS would be perfect. Well, except notch and lack of OLED - but, reportedly that's in the works too.

internetter 1y ago
https://opencollective.com/asahilinux https://opencollective.com/asahilinux the great thing is, you can!
- umbra07 1y ago
  "with full features"
mrheosuper 1y ago
the macbook pro uses MiniLed, in term of contrast, it's quite good, much better than ips. Macbook pro display is one of the best laptop display.
- ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  It is not even close. Pretty much any OLED is so much better
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  And somehow it has way less blooming than other mini-led displays I have used. Not clear how they pull that feat off exactly
  - zozbot234 1y ago
    Most likely, they have more mini-leds and/or more ability to independently control them. Of course the localized "blooming" of mini-leds is a lot easier on the eyes regardless than the all-around bloom of a backlit display. (Better for the battery too, if you can keep most of the screen dark.)

GeekyBear 1y ago

The new leadership team set a short term goal of getting their existing work upstreamed, which seems to be going well. > Our priority is kernel upstreaming. Our downstream Linux tree contains over 1000 patches required for Apple Silicon that are not yet in upstream Linux. The upstream kernel moves fast, requiring us to constantly rebase our changes on top of upstream while battling merge conflicts and regressions. Janne, Neal, and marcan have rebased our tree for years, but it is laborious with so many patches. Before adding more, we need to reduce our patch stack to remain sustainable long-term. https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/ > With Linux 6.16, we also hit a pretty cool milestone. In our first progress report, we mentioned that we were carrying over 1200 patches downstream. After doing a little housekeeping on our branch and upstreaming what we have so far, that number is now below 1000 for the first time in many years, meaning we have managed to upstream a little over 20% of our entire patch set in just under five months. If we discount the DCP and GPU/Rust patches from both figures, that proportion jumps to just under half! While we still have quite a way to go, this progress has already made rebases significantly less hassle and given us some room to breathe. https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/