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Asahi Linux Still Working on Apple M3 Support, M1n1 Bootloader Going Rust

313 points by LorenDB 1y ago

einsteinx2 1y ago
I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple’s yearly release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean task. Though in the plus side, even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come.
- throw728349 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    I should have been ready for the HN pedantry... When I said base model M1, I meant the CPU as opposed to the M1 Pro or Max, not the base model machine. The M1 CPU is fast enough to be "capable for years to come." Also Asahi currently has decent support for up to the M2 Max, which is available in significantly higher configs and very much will be "capable for years to come". Yes they still have soldered SSDs, but I have a feeling the 4TB SSD in my personal M2 Max machine will in fact last for many years. Not to mention that it's possible to solder on different NAND chips if the existing ones fail, though of course that requires a shop with sufficient skill and tools. My point was only to say that keeping up with each years model may in fact be impossible, but the M1 and M2 line of chips are so capable that even if they stopped there, it would be a useful operating system for many years.
    - throw728349 1y ago
      With M1 memory is part of chip, no?
      - einsteinx2 1y ago
        RAM memory is on chip, SSD storage is on the motherboard. The potential issue you brought up was related to the SSD, which can be replaced by a competent technician as they’re separate chips on the motherboard. DRAM also doesn’t wear out from use the way that NAND flash does.
  - mort96 1y ago
    Since they didn't mention a computer line but rather a CPU, I assume they used "base M1" to mean the CPU called "M1" as opposed to the "M1 Pro" or "M1 Max" or "M1 Ultra". I don't think they were referring to "base M1 MacBook Pro" or "base M1 MacBook Air" or "base M1 Mac Mini". And they're right, the "base M1" (as in not the Pro, Max or Ultra) is a very capable chip.
    - einsteinx2 1y ago
      > I assume they used "base M1" to mean the CPU called "M1" as opposed to the "M1 Pro" or "M1 Max" or "M1 Ultra". Yep, that is exactly what I meant.
    - prmph 1y ago
      Even the base model M1 is still a very capable machine for a lot of tasks. The HN bubble strikes again
  - achandlerwhite 1y ago
    do you have a link or anything that supports this claim? As I recall it was an error in the reporting utility not the drives themselves.
    - lagniappe 1y ago
      It's best not to respond to unruly green names.
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  We're witnessing the end of the IBM PC-compatible era, and maybe more ominously of general-purpose personal computing. The future looks like custom chipsets with signed bootloaders that only run signed OEM applications. You will not have root on any of the devices you nominally own.
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    The tide does seem to be turning that way, though I do think it will be possible to buy general purpose computers for the foreseeable future. Also as a minor counter point, the only reason Asahi is even possible is that Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips. They certainly could have locked them down just like they did the iPhone and iPad, but they didn't. That was a conscious choice according to the Asahi folks. So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing.
    - transpute 1y ago
      > Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips Thank Xeno, who has since been creating open-source training on low-level firmware security at https://p.ost2.fyi https://p.ost2.fyi, a new iteration of open training material published ~15 years ago at https://opensecuritytraining.info https://opensecuritytraining.info before joining Apple. https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/ his final project was leading the M1 SecureBoot architecture - being directly responsible for designing a system that could provide iOS-level security, while still allowing customer choice to trust arbitrary non-Apple code such as Linux bootloaders.
    - Rohansi 1y ago
      > Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option for Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC. > So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing. Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on new hardware.
- bluedino 1y ago
  > even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come. My M1 Air is 4 years old and it's by far the most capable 4 year old Mac I've owned.
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    Yeah when I got the first gen base model M1 Air, I put it to the test against my maxed out i9 MacBook Pro (basically the last Intel model they released, so it was the “best of the best” they had to offer on the Intel side). I tried out using Handbrake to CPU encode the same video on both devices. Amazingly the M1 Air was slightly faster than the i9, while comparatively sipping power, and staying relatively cool without even having a fan. The i9 on the other hand drained its battery super fast, sounded like a jet plane taking off, and was too hot to sit on my lap. That’s when I knew it was really a massive leap forward.
- DannyBee 1y ago
  "I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple’s yearly release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean task." This is more true on the gpu side than the cpu/soc side for sure. Speaking as someone who worked on this (i did a bunch of the m3 work here, and some wifi work) - it's not anywhere near as bad as embedded work i used to do many eons ago. Apple doesn't like to spend tons of time/energy either, and since they make most of their own hardware interfaces (or force others to their specs), most of the time the driver->hardware interfaces are just being extended/improved year over year. Sometimes things move from one bus kind to another, and there's different hookup to do, or you have to get around to some functionality you never did, etc. But it's not like you need a brand new driver every year for the usb controller, for example. Power management is probably one of the worst changing areas, along with NPU/GPU obviously. Put another way - outside of NPU/GPU, you can slowly build up enough of the driver base that it can be maintained and kept up to date by a small number of people with not huge amounts of time. It's not there yet, but it's possible to get there. This is because Apple doesn't get a lot from changing this stuff either.
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    Thanks for the insight!
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  As others have noted, Linux is fine on older hardware, always. In fact, laptops I would have otherwise thrown away were given totally new life by Linux alone. Windows is too bloated the last few years. It is really ridiculous how much Windows bloat there is, no amount of breaking the OS with unstable tweaks ever did it any better either. With Linux you can go as lean and minimal as you want and need, without breaking the OS.
jasoneckert 1y ago
I was an early adopter of Asahi Linux on my M1 Mac Mini (and later M1 Mac Studio). As a result, I benefited from the most amount of support for the platform at the beginning of the project (laptop-specific hardware support was provided after desktops) and have been using Asahi ever since (now Fedora Asahi Remix). It's nice to see that M3 and later is coming, but as a Linux person, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a bit behind the latest hardware. After all, many of us still use ancient Thinkpads running Linux, and prefer to buy used hardware for a better cost (M1/M2 hardware can be had much cheaper now).
- xbar 1y ago
  Well said. There is a large number of inexpensive, long-batteried, powerful devices with lovely designs, good keyboards and trackpads that Asahi Linux has enabled to run Linux on beautifully. There are a 1st gen M1 Air wedge and M1 Macbook Pro 14 in my home that belong to other family members. I look forward to running Asahi on them when the users eventually upgrade.
mort96 1y ago
I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro. It's getting a bit old, so it would be nice to replace it with a new MacBook Pro in not too long. But honestly, losing Linux support would be pretty devastating. Docker and virtualization just isn't the same. There's lots of interesting stuff you can do with your hardware in Linux, there's for example Linux-specific software which puts the WiFi card in promiscuous mode and does useful stuff with that. That sort of software doesn't work virtualized. And I have all sorts of issues with loopback devices in Docker in macOS; 'losetup --partscan' doesn't seem to work at all, even in a privileged container. For these sorts of things, having a genuine bare-metal Linux install I can reboot into is invaluable. I wish things had turned out otherwise, and we didn't have to choose between buying a Mac without Linux support and buying a 3-5 year old Mac with Linux support. And I expect that as time goes on, Asahi will just fall further and further behind. I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe this MacBook Pro was just a one-off, and I have to go back to buying Windows laptops and putting Linux on them. But they just aren't as nice.
- bestouff 1y ago
  I used to have the same one, with Asahi. There were some problems which were never fixed (battery drain in sleep mode, no working Thunderbolt ...). Now job will give me a brand new one (I guess M4 or M5), I don't know how I'll do to run Linux on this. Either it'll be a VM or I'll use my own thinkpad. So sad.
  - mort96 1y ago
    The battery drain in sleep mode is why Linux is relegated to a dual-boot option for use when necessary for me, rather than my daily driver. Battery drain when in use or idle seems perfectly acceptable, but I can't use a laptop which discharges itself overnight while the lid is closed. I'm sad that Asahi never implemented a proper sleep mode.
    - intrasight 1y ago
      Honest question: why would you care about battery in your daily driver? aren't you sitting or standing at a desk?
nicce 1y ago
How is the project actually doing? Feels like most original core developers have quit.
- dagmx 1y ago
  The project is currently focusing primarily on reducing the number of patches against the Linux kernel which has somewhat slowed their rapid development rate. It’s a massive task keeping the large number of patches going, while simultaneously trying to land them in the mainline kernel.
- ndiddy 1y ago
  The project is currently mainly focused on upstreaming as many of their patches as possible, and maintaining the existing code. M3/4/5 have a completely different GPU instruction set from M1/2, so they would need a large amount of new reverse engineering to get the GPU support where it is on M1/2. I don't believe there's anyone working on GPU support for those newer platforms.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
They're still working on M1 support. Still no thunderbolt or display port alt mode. Its painful to watch people choose Apple over a user respecting company that supports Linux well
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  There really aren't that many companies that respect users and support Linux well that need this sort of work done on them. Then again, the hardware that those companies release isn't quite as good as Apple Silicon, IMHO.
  - superkuh 1y ago
    It's not so much that other companies support Linux. It is that they support industry standards and protocols. Apple is totally vertically integrated and they always cut corners on hardware implementation to save money. This means their hardware does not work how it should and requires custom work arounds and patches if you want to run a normal OS. This is very different from PC hardware. It doesn't need to support linux. It just needs to not cut corners.
- DannyBee 1y ago
  i mean, i did a bunch of the m3 support that m1n1 has, and i did it because it was fun. The reason you get blinking cursor and not linux is because hacking on the linux kernel is decidely less fun (I did a bunch of wifi work).
  - transpute 1y ago
    Is it theoretically feasible for Apple Silicon M3 (with nested hypervisor support) to run pKVM as bare-metal hypervisor?
  - donaldihunter 1y ago
    Oh, that's interesting. Linux kernel hacking is the area where I have the best chance of contributing something. If I can get my m3 max bootstrapped to a blinking cursor then I'd be very happy to participate in kernel work.
orliesaurus 1y ago
I appreciate the focus on older hardware and virtualization challenges in this thread, but I'm also interested in the broader implications of the Asahi work beyond just running Linux on used Macs. Getting a bespoke SoC supported in the mainline kernel and rewriting low‑level firmware in Rust could set a precedent for other ARM64 platforms with opaque boot chains. It might also encourage more laptop makers to ship machines with first‑class Linux support so people aren't forced to pick between hardware they like and the OS they want. And for folks who don't need a Mac specifically, the growing ecosystem of non‑Apple ARM laptops could offer a smoother path than shoe‑horning Linux onto proprietary silicon.
- nightski 1y ago
  I mean sure, but ARM SoC in Linux has been a thing for quite some time in the embedded space. This is hardly new.
  - LtdJorge 1y ago
    That’s true, but the Apple chips are not built on the base Arm designs and don’t use Adreno, they also use more proprietary IP in the SoC.
    - monocasa 1y ago
      Adreno is proprietary IP; it's an exclusively Qualcomm thing.
      - LtdJorge 1y ago
        True, meant Mali, mb
achairapart 1y ago
Twenty years ago people went to great lenghts to run the best OS available at that time on cheap commodity x86 hardware with hackintoshes. Fast forward to today, similar efforts are made to run linux on the best hardware available. It's funny how things turn around.
- fluoridation 1y ago
  To clarify, people then and now have in common trying to run the software they prefer on the hardware they prefer. There's no objective "best"; it depends on what you need.
  - wyager 1y ago
    For the vast majority of customers' utility functions, Apple has the best hardware (both in absolute and per dollar terms) on the market right now. It's not "objectively best", but it certainly meets the most stringent definition of "best" that's still useful in conversation.
    - fluoridation 1y ago
      If that was the case, the vast majority of the world would be using Apple hardware and/or software, and yet that's not the case.
      - rowanG077 1y ago
        Not really, price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best product. Taken to the extreme, Imagine a laptop a thousand times faster then the best there is now, with an extremely bright HDR screen with perfect blacks and a 1000hz refresh rate. It has a battery life of years, It's made of an unscratchable metal alloy and is fanless. It runs windows, linux and macos flawlessly. It's CPU can natively executable all major instruction sets. It's extremely light. Yet it costs 50 million USD. Sure there will be some super rich who may buy it. But never will the majority of the world use it.
coconut08 1y ago
when this project was first announced I was incredibly skeptical it would ever become something useful. then sometime last year they actually put out something that worked way better than i ever imagined and i became incredibly optimistic and hopeful. then hector, lina and alyssa all left and this project appears to be on life support.
- hanikesn 1y ago
  >this project appears to be on life support Why do you think that? The upstreaming efforts are more fruitful than ever.
  - jazzyjackson 1y ago
    Symptomatic of "if it's not growing it's dead" investor/programmer outlook
  - thiagobbt 1y ago
    While upstreaming is incredibly important for long-term support it isn't nearly as exciting as the reverse engineering work the people mentioned were responsible for
lenerdenator 1y ago
Honestly, I almost wish there was a push to get Apple to be more open on their OS code instead of trying to get Linux to support Apple Silicon. MacOS is a BSD of sorts, after all. While it'd be nice to be able to run Linux on my M2 MBP someday when Apple stops supporting it, ultimately, the reason many (but not all) power users buy Macs is because they want the UNIX/UNIX-like work done for them and for it to run on fast hardware. If I want something more customizable, I'm barking up the wrong hardware tree. Does that solve the question of "what do I do with this Mac that no longer gets updates?"? No, but most people either list theirs for sale to someone who isn't as bothered by that, or trade it in at an Apple Store for credit towards the new shiny.
- FallCheeta7373 1y ago
  Not happening—at least not under the current leadership— apple is not in it from the tech side, they're a design company, they make appliances not computers. Your macbook is like a fridge with certain restricted interfaces. The mindset and tradition is different from purely unix hacking, despite the userbase having an overlap. If you can convince your fridge manufacturer to be more open with their code in a competitive market, then maybe you can convince apple with similar sort of reasoning, probably involving some benefit in terms of profit.
bjackman 1y ago
The actual update: https://asahilinux.org/2025/10/progress-report-6-17/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/10/progress-report-6-17/
- icar 1y ago
  Thanks, this should replace the current URL.
jcalvinowens 1y ago
I don't understand the obsession with the new apple hardware. How is it worth this much trouble? My XPS13 works perfectly with Linux straight out of the box for half the price... and never in my entire life have I needed more than the eight hours of battery life it reliably delivers for me. I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's the disconnect? But seriously, there are few things in the world that matter less to me than how fast my laptop is. I did some real work a few weeks ago on a ten-year-old Celeron POS and it didn't bother me at all.
- pankalog 1y ago
  > I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's the disconnect? Yeah, I believe that's where the disconnect is. I moved from a Thinkpad to the 16in Macbook Pro with the M3 Pro chip, and I am able to reliably build and write code that runs locally on 5 different Docker containers, for at least 10 hours. I once did a 48hr hackathon with this laptop and I only had to charge it I think 4 or 5 times. I need to be very mobile as I'm going to different locations to attend meetings or write code, and it's able to do everything reliably for a (very extended) workday. I would have to move from wall socket to wall socket on my old Thinkpad, but something to note is that I was using Windows 10 at the time. The Macbook's best-in-class (in performance-per-watt and per-kg) hardware combined with the software was something that became unbeatable for my workflow. That being said, my next laptop will be a reliable, non-Apple, but Apple-like performance, ARM64 laptop, and I'll be using some Linux distribution on it.
  - jcalvinowens 1y ago
    It's not that I actually write code over SSH (I usually work with wifi disabled), more that I just push things to big machines for building and testing them, rather than doing that locally. My pair of 32-thread Ryzen machines are worth their weight in gold for the amount they juice my productivity. No laptop can ever touch that, for obvious physics reasons. I can do everything you're describing with my XPS13. I regularly go days without plugging it in.
- morshu9001 1y ago
jjtheblunt 1y ago
i was using Asahi on my M1 laptop, it was great, but have since switched to UTM.app (from the app store, but available outside it too), and configured to use Apple Silicon Hypervisor rather than QEMU, and it's been excellent, on M2 series processors at least. UTM warns its wrapping of the Apple Silicon hypervisor is not perfectly tested, but it's perfectly great. (When configuring a new hypervisor-ed OS, i use a Fedora ISO for arm64 (or aarch64 (?)) and in the UTM.app gui choose Linux, which reveals the option to use native Apple Silicon hypervisor over QEMU.) just my $0.02
- qudat 1y ago
  If I was stuck on Mac and wanted Linux for my dev machine, I would go the VM route. I did that over a decade ago and it was great. Asahi, while a heroic project, was always going to struggle long term and I wonder what kind of battery hit you take using it. I’d rather keep the vertical integration in the Mac ecosystem and just log into a vm that I full screen. Best of both worlds
- tkel 1y ago
  Thanks, I'm going to do the same. I run asahi but several firefox tabs eats through my 16gb RAM so quickly I often get memory crashes. Even with zswap optimized. I assume it's bugs with the new 16k page size?
ai-christianson 1y ago
I'm mainly a Linux user, but recently switched to a M4 mbp for video editing (davinci resolve) and local LLMs. Is Asahi able to run mlx with the full Apple hw optimizations? I'm guessing it's a long shot for Resolve to run there, let alone with hardware optimizations.
shortformblog 1y ago
They mention Hollow Knight in their update, but I should note that Silksong also works on my M1 Air flawlessly. Games with more 3D graphics also work to some degree. I tried Bakeru on it and got decent results though the texture load time was significant. Asahi has been fun to watch, and I’m happy it’s still moving along, even with the messiness of the past twelve months. I rarely boot into MacOS on the machine these days, and while I’m mostly using a PC these days, I am debating getting a used M1 Pro or Max for the battery life benefits (and access to Mac graphics programs on the rare occasions I need them). The fact that M3 is technically possible, even if likely a while off, is promising.
- porphyra 1y ago
  I remember my mind was blown when Alyssa Rosenzweig demoed Cyberpunk running on Asahi Linux a year ago. https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html
rootnod3 1y ago
I am still waiting for OpenBSD to add support. They do use Asahi to get the install going. But unless I am mistaken, only up to M2 is supported now.
cchance 1y ago
I honestly dont get why apple isn't more open with their drivers and stuff to get linux working on macbooks, they don't charge for macos, most of their profit comes from hardware it feels like opening up macbooks to be used by people that are linux diehards would just open up more sales
- smith7018 1y ago
  Most of their profits come from software or ecosystem lock ins. So while they do profit off of each Mac sold, if those sales don't translate to more iCloud subscriptions, app purchases, or iPhones then it really doesn't make financial sense for them. Even if they only had 3 people and a PM dedicated to Linux support, that's still roughly a million dollars a year for a nebulous promise of "slightly more hardware sales." It sucks but it's the reality of the situation.
  - mistrial9 1y ago
    casual observers "discover" that Apple is deeply controlling with regards to monetization.. sharing or open-for-its-own-sake are not welcome
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  As other comments have mentioned, they have kind of a "total hands-off; neither help nor hinder" policy around 3rd-party operating systems on Apple Silicon. They aren't providing any kind of assistance, but they aren't doing anything to obstruct it either: even though the Linux drivers have to be reverse-engineered, the actual installation process is very easy and not inhibited at all by the extensive cryptographic boot chain protections built into macOS, even though it easily could be. And as far as I know, what little they have said publicly about this is that they don't intend to ever try and actively block Linux. So in that sense I think it's mostly just a resources thing: they don't feel it's worth their time and money to assist this process. Which, honestly, I can't get that upset about: we're not entitled to Apple spending resources to help people install other operating systems on their hardware; so long as they don't actively impede the process I see no reason to get upset.
ef2k 1y ago
The amount of effort and polish that goes into Asahi is commendable. I installed it on an M1 MBP and the process was seamless, from the initial curl, to it handling the disk partitions. It was a work of art. Fighting to install native linux on apple silicon is an uphill battle though.
deleted 1y ago
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ycui1986 1y ago
why can’t apple just assign one engineer to get this done. it is much less effort if apple does it than the community to reverse engineer it.
pluto_modadic 1y ago
looks like the installer still doesn't support LUKS2.

313 points by LorenDB 1y ago

I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple’s yearly release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean task. Though in the plus side, even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come.

throw728349 1y ago
[flagged]
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  I should have been ready for the HN pedantry... When I said base model M1, I meant the CPU as opposed to the M1 Pro or Max, not the base model machine. The M1 CPU is fast enough to be "capable for years to come." Also Asahi currently has decent support for up to the M2 Max, which is available in significantly higher configs and very much will be "capable for years to come". Yes they still have soldered SSDs, but I have a feeling the 4TB SSD in my personal M2 Max machine will in fact last for many years. Not to mention that it's possible to solder on different NAND chips if the existing ones fail, though of course that requires a shop with sufficient skill and tools. My point was only to say that keeping up with each years model may in fact be impossible, but the M1 and M2 line of chips are so capable that even if they stopped there, it would be a useful operating system for many years.
  - throw728349 1y ago
    With M1 memory is part of chip, no?
    - einsteinx2 1y ago
      RAM memory is on chip, SSD storage is on the motherboard. The potential issue you brought up was related to the SSD, which can be replaced by a competent technician as they’re separate chips on the motherboard. DRAM also doesn’t wear out from use the way that NAND flash does.
- mort96 1y ago
  Since they didn't mention a computer line but rather a CPU, I assume they used "base M1" to mean the CPU called "M1" as opposed to the "M1 Pro" or "M1 Max" or "M1 Ultra". I don't think they were referring to "base M1 MacBook Pro" or "base M1 MacBook Air" or "base M1 Mac Mini". And they're right, the "base M1" (as in not the Pro, Max or Ultra) is a very capable chip.
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    > I assume they used "base M1" to mean the CPU called "M1" as opposed to the "M1 Pro" or "M1 Max" or "M1 Ultra". Yep, that is exactly what I meant.
  - prmph 1y ago
    Even the base model M1 is still a very capable machine for a lot of tasks. The HN bubble strikes again
- achandlerwhite 1y ago
  do you have a link or anything that supports this claim? As I recall it was an error in the reporting utility not the drives themselves.
  - lagniappe 1y ago
    It's best not to respond to unruly green names.
ForHackernews 1y ago
We're witnessing the end of the IBM PC-compatible era, and maybe more ominously of general-purpose personal computing. The future looks like custom chipsets with signed bootloaders that only run signed OEM applications. You will not have root on any of the devices you nominally own.
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  The tide does seem to be turning that way, though I do think it will be possible to buy general purpose computers for the foreseeable future. Also as a minor counter point, the only reason Asahi is even possible is that Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips. They certainly could have locked them down just like they did the iPhone and iPad, but they didn't. That was a conscious choice according to the Asahi folks. So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing.
  - transpute 1y ago
    > Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips Thank Xeno, who has since been creating open-source training on low-level firmware security at https://p.ost2.fyi https://p.ost2.fyi, a new iteration of open training material published ~15 years ago at https://opensecuritytraining.info https://opensecuritytraining.info before joining Apple. https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/ his final project was leading the M1 SecureBoot architecture - being directly responsible for designing a system that could provide iOS-level security, while still allowing customer choice to trust arbitrary non-Apple code such as Linux bootloaders.
  - Rohansi 1y ago
    > Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option for Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC. > So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing. Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on new hardware.
bluedino 1y ago
> even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come. My M1 Air is 4 years old and it's by far the most capable 4 year old Mac I've owned.
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  Yeah when I got the first gen base model M1 Air, I put it to the test against my maxed out i9 MacBook Pro (basically the last Intel model they released, so it was the “best of the best” they had to offer on the Intel side). I tried out using Handbrake to CPU encode the same video on both devices. Amazingly the M1 Air was slightly faster than the i9, while comparatively sipping power, and staying relatively cool without even having a fan. The i9 on the other hand drained its battery super fast, sounded like a jet plane taking off, and was too hot to sit on my lap. That’s when I knew it was really a massive leap forward.
DannyBee 1y ago
"I really love what Asahi Linux is doing, but given Apple’s yearly release cadence of new chips, it feels like a Sisyphean task." This is more true on the gpu side than the cpu/soc side for sure. Speaking as someone who worked on this (i did a bunch of the m3 work here, and some wifi work) - it's not anywhere near as bad as embedded work i used to do many eons ago. Apple doesn't like to spend tons of time/energy either, and since they make most of their own hardware interfaces (or force others to their specs), most of the time the driver->hardware interfaces are just being extended/improved year over year. Sometimes things move from one bus kind to another, and there's different hookup to do, or you have to get around to some functionality you never did, etc. But it's not like you need a brand new driver every year for the usb controller, for example. Power management is probably one of the worst changing areas, along with NPU/GPU obviously. Put another way - outside of NPU/GPU, you can slowly build up enough of the driver base that it can be maintained and kept up to date by a small number of people with not huge amounts of time. It's not there yet, but it's possible to get there. This is because Apple doesn't get a lot from changing this stuff either.
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  Thanks for the insight!
giancarlostoro 1y ago
As others have noted, Linux is fine on older hardware, always. In fact, laptops I would have otherwise thrown away were given totally new life by Linux alone. Windows is too bloated the last few years. It is really ridiculous how much Windows bloat there is, no amount of breaking the OS with unstable tweaks ever did it any better either. With Linux you can go as lean and minimal as you want and need, without breaking the OS.

jasoneckert 1y ago

I was an early adopter of Asahi Linux on my M1 Mac Mini (and later M1 Mac Studio). As a result, I benefited from the most amount of support for the platform at the beginning of the project (laptop-specific hardware support was provided after desktops) and have been using Asahi ever since (now Fedora Asahi Remix). It's nice to see that M3 and later is coming, but as a Linux person, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a bit behind the latest hardware. After all, many of us still use ancient Thinkpads running Linux, and prefer to buy used hardware for a better cost (M1/M2 hardware can be had much cheaper now).

xbar 1y ago
Well said. There is a large number of inexpensive, long-batteried, powerful devices with lovely designs, good keyboards and trackpads that Asahi Linux has enabled to run Linux on beautifully. There are a 1st gen M1 Air wedge and M1 Macbook Pro 14 in my home that belong to other family members. I look forward to running Asahi on them when the users eventually upgrade.

mort96 1y ago

I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro. It's getting a bit old, so it would be nice to replace it with a new MacBook Pro in not too long. But honestly, losing Linux support would be pretty devastating. Docker and virtualization just isn't the same. There's lots of interesting stuff you can do with your hardware in Linux, there's for example Linux-specific software which puts the WiFi card in promiscuous mode and does useful stuff with that. That sort of software doesn't work virtualized. And I have all sorts of issues with loopback devices in Docker in macOS; 'losetup --partscan' doesn't seem to work at all, even in a privileged container. For these sorts of things, having a genuine bare-metal Linux install I can reboot into is invaluable. I wish things had turned out otherwise, and we didn't have to choose between buying a Mac without Linux support and buying a 3-5 year old Mac with Linux support. And I expect that as time goes on, Asahi will just fall further and further behind. I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe this MacBook Pro was just a one-off, and I have to go back to buying Windows laptops and putting Linux on them. But they just aren't as nice.

bestouff 1y ago
I used to have the same one, with Asahi. There were some problems which were never fixed (battery drain in sleep mode, no working Thunderbolt ...). Now job will give me a brand new one (I guess M4 or M5), I don't know how I'll do to run Linux on this. Either it'll be a VM or I'll use my own thinkpad. So sad.
- mort96 1y ago
  The battery drain in sleep mode is why Linux is relegated to a dual-boot option for use when necessary for me, rather than my daily driver. Battery drain when in use or idle seems perfectly acceptable, but I can't use a laptop which discharges itself overnight while the lid is closed. I'm sad that Asahi never implemented a proper sleep mode.
  - intrasight 1y ago
    Honest question: why would you care about battery in your daily driver? aren't you sitting or standing at a desk?

nicce 1y ago

How is the project actually doing? Feels like most original core developers have quit.

dagmx 1y ago
The project is currently focusing primarily on reducing the number of patches against the Linux kernel which has somewhat slowed their rapid development rate. It’s a massive task keeping the large number of patches going, while simultaneously trying to land them in the mainline kernel.
ndiddy 1y ago
The project is currently mainly focused on upstreaming as many of their patches as possible, and maintaining the existing code. M3/4/5 have a completely different GPU instruction set from M1/2, so they would need a large amount of new reverse engineering to get the GPU support where it is on M1/2. I don't believe there's anyone working on GPU support for those newer platforms.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

They're still working on M1 support. Still no thunderbolt or display port alt mode. Its painful to watch people choose Apple over a user respecting company that supports Linux well

lenerdenator 1y ago
There really aren't that many companies that respect users and support Linux well that need this sort of work done on them. Then again, the hardware that those companies release isn't quite as good as Apple Silicon, IMHO.
- superkuh 1y ago
  It's not so much that other companies support Linux. It is that they support industry standards and protocols. Apple is totally vertically integrated and they always cut corners on hardware implementation to save money. This means their hardware does not work how it should and requires custom work arounds and patches if you want to run a normal OS. This is very different from PC hardware. It doesn't need to support linux. It just needs to not cut corners.
DannyBee 1y ago
i mean, i did a bunch of the m3 support that m1n1 has, and i did it because it was fun. The reason you get blinking cursor and not linux is because hacking on the linux kernel is decidely less fun (I did a bunch of wifi work).
- transpute 1y ago
  Is it theoretically feasible for Apple Silicon M3 (with nested hypervisor support) to run pKVM as bare-metal hypervisor?
- donaldihunter 1y ago
  Oh, that's interesting. Linux kernel hacking is the area where I have the best chance of contributing something. If I can get my m3 max bootstrapped to a blinking cursor then I'd be very happy to participate in kernel work.

orliesaurus 1y ago

I appreciate the focus on older hardware and virtualization challenges in this thread, but I'm also interested in the broader implications of the Asahi work beyond just running Linux on used Macs. Getting a bespoke SoC supported in the mainline kernel and rewriting low‑level firmware in Rust could set a precedent for other ARM64 platforms with opaque boot chains. It might also encourage more laptop makers to ship machines with first‑class Linux support so people aren't forced to pick between hardware they like and the OS they want. And for folks who don't need a Mac specifically, the growing ecosystem of non‑Apple ARM laptops could offer a smoother path than shoe‑horning Linux onto proprietary silicon.

nightski 1y ago
I mean sure, but ARM SoC in Linux has been a thing for quite some time in the embedded space. This is hardly new.
- LtdJorge 1y ago
  That’s true, but the Apple chips are not built on the base Arm designs and don’t use Adreno, they also use more proprietary IP in the SoC.
  - monocasa 1y ago
    Adreno is proprietary IP; it's an exclusively Qualcomm thing.
    - LtdJorge 1y ago
      True, meant Mali, mb

achairapart 1y ago

Twenty years ago people went to great lenghts to run the best OS available at that time on cheap commodity x86 hardware with hackintoshes. Fast forward to today, similar efforts are made to run linux on the best hardware available. It's funny how things turn around.

fluoridation 1y ago
To clarify, people then and now have in common trying to run the software they prefer on the hardware they prefer. There's no objective "best"; it depends on what you need.
- wyager 1y ago
  For the vast majority of customers' utility functions, Apple has the best hardware (both in absolute and per dollar terms) on the market right now. It's not "objectively best", but it certainly meets the most stringent definition of "best" that's still useful in conversation.
  - fluoridation 1y ago
    If that was the case, the vast majority of the world would be using Apple hardware and/or software, and yet that's not the case.
    - rowanG077 1y ago
      Not really, price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best product. Taken to the extreme, Imagine a laptop a thousand times faster then the best there is now, with an extremely bright HDR screen with perfect blacks and a 1000hz refresh rate. It has a battery life of years, It's made of an unscratchable metal alloy and is fanless. It runs windows, linux and macos flawlessly. It's CPU can natively executable all major instruction sets. It's extremely light. Yet it costs 50 million USD. Sure there will be some super rich who may buy it. But never will the majority of the world use it.

coconut08 1y ago

when this project was first announced I was incredibly skeptical it would ever become something useful. then sometime last year they actually put out something that worked way better than i ever imagined and i became incredibly optimistic and hopeful. then hector, lina and alyssa all left and this project appears to be on life support.

hanikesn 1y ago
>this project appears to be on life support Why do you think that? The upstreaming efforts are more fruitful than ever.
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  Symptomatic of "if it's not growing it's dead" investor/programmer outlook
- thiagobbt 1y ago
  While upstreaming is incredibly important for long-term support it isn't nearly as exciting as the reverse engineering work the people mentioned were responsible for

lenerdenator 1y ago

Honestly, I almost wish there was a push to get Apple to be more open on their OS code instead of trying to get Linux to support Apple Silicon. MacOS is a BSD of sorts, after all. While it'd be nice to be able to run Linux on my M2 MBP someday when Apple stops supporting it, ultimately, the reason many (but not all) power users buy Macs is because they want the UNIX/UNIX-like work done for them and for it to run on fast hardware. If I want something more customizable, I'm barking up the wrong hardware tree. Does that solve the question of "what do I do with this Mac that no longer gets updates?"? No, but most people either list theirs for sale to someone who isn't as bothered by that, or trade it in at an Apple Store for credit towards the new shiny.

FallCheeta7373 1y ago
Not happening—at least not under the current leadership— apple is not in it from the tech side, they're a design company, they make appliances not computers. Your macbook is like a fridge with certain restricted interfaces. The mindset and tradition is different from purely unix hacking, despite the userbase having an overlap. If you can convince your fridge manufacturer to be more open with their code in a competitive market, then maybe you can convince apple with similar sort of reasoning, probably involving some benefit in terms of profit.

bjackman 1y ago

The actual update: https://asahilinux.org/2025/10/progress-report-6-17/ https://asahilinux.org/2025/10/progress-report-6-17/

icar 1y ago
Thanks, this should replace the current URL.

jcalvinowens 1y ago

I don't understand the obsession with the new apple hardware. How is it worth this much trouble? My XPS13 works perfectly with Linux straight out of the box for half the price... and never in my entire life have I needed more than the eight hours of battery life it reliably delivers for me. I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's the disconnect? But seriously, there are few things in the world that matter less to me than how fast my laptop is. I did some real work a few weeks ago on a ten-year-old Celeron POS and it didn't bother me at all.

pankalog 1y ago
> I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's the disconnect? Yeah, I believe that's where the disconnect is. I moved from a Thinkpad to the 16in Macbook Pro with the M3 Pro chip, and I am able to reliably build and write code that runs locally on 5 different Docker containers, for at least 10 hours. I once did a 48hr hackathon with this laptop and I only had to charge it I think 4 or 5 times. I need to be very mobile as I'm going to different locations to attend meetings or write code, and it's able to do everything reliably for a (very extended) workday. I would have to move from wall socket to wall socket on my old Thinkpad, but something to note is that I was using Windows 10 at the time. The Macbook's best-in-class (in performance-per-watt and per-kg) hardware combined with the software was something that became unbeatable for my workflow. That being said, my next laptop will be a reliable, non-Apple, but Apple-like performance, ARM64 laptop, and I'll be using some Linux distribution on it.
- jcalvinowens 1y ago
  It's not that I actually write code over SSH (I usually work with wifi disabled), more that I just push things to big machines for building and testing them, rather than doing that locally. My pair of 32-thread Ryzen machines are worth their weight in gold for the amount they juice my productivity. No laptop can ever touch that, for obvious physics reasons. I can do everything you're describing with my XPS13. I regularly go days without plugging it in.
morshu9001 1y ago

jjtheblunt 1y ago

i was using Asahi on my M1 laptop, it was great, but have since switched to UTM.app (from the app store, but available outside it too), and configured to use Apple Silicon Hypervisor rather than QEMU, and it's been excellent, on M2 series processors at least. UTM warns its wrapping of the Apple Silicon hypervisor is not perfectly tested, but it's perfectly great. (When configuring a new hypervisor-ed OS, i use a Fedora ISO for arm64 (or aarch64 (?)) and in the UTM.app gui choose Linux, which reveals the option to use native Apple Silicon hypervisor over QEMU.) just my $0.02

qudat 1y ago
If I was stuck on Mac and wanted Linux for my dev machine, I would go the VM route. I did that over a decade ago and it was great. Asahi, while a heroic project, was always going to struggle long term and I wonder what kind of battery hit you take using it. I’d rather keep the vertical integration in the Mac ecosystem and just log into a vm that I full screen. Best of both worlds
tkel 1y ago
Thanks, I'm going to do the same. I run asahi but several firefox tabs eats through my 16gb RAM so quickly I often get memory crashes. Even with zswap optimized. I assume it's bugs with the new 16k page size?

ai-christianson 1y ago

I'm mainly a Linux user, but recently switched to a M4 mbp for video editing (davinci resolve) and local LLMs. Is Asahi able to run mlx with the full Apple hw optimizations? I'm guessing it's a long shot for Resolve to run there, let alone with hardware optimizations.

shortformblog 1y ago

They mention Hollow Knight in their update, but I should note that Silksong also works on my M1 Air flawlessly. Games with more 3D graphics also work to some degree. I tried Bakeru on it and got decent results though the texture load time was significant. Asahi has been fun to watch, and I’m happy it’s still moving along, even with the messiness of the past twelve months. I rarely boot into MacOS on the machine these days, and while I’m mostly using a PC these days, I am debating getting a used M1 Pro or Max for the battery life benefits (and access to Mac graphics programs on the rare occasions I need them). The fact that M3 is technically possible, even if likely a while off, is promising.

porphyra 1y ago
I remember my mind was blown when Alyssa Rosenzweig demoed Cyberpunk running on Asahi Linux a year ago. https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html

rootnod3 1y ago

I am still waiting for OpenBSD to add support. They do use Asahi to get the install going. But unless I am mistaken, only up to M2 is supported now.

cchance 1y ago

I honestly dont get why apple isn't more open with their drivers and stuff to get linux working on macbooks, they don't charge for macos, most of their profit comes from hardware it feels like opening up macbooks to be used by people that are linux diehards would just open up more sales

smith7018 1y ago
Most of their profits come from software or ecosystem lock ins. So while they do profit off of each Mac sold, if those sales don't translate to more iCloud subscriptions, app purchases, or iPhones then it really doesn't make financial sense for them. Even if they only had 3 people and a PM dedicated to Linux support, that's still roughly a million dollars a year for a nebulous promise of "slightly more hardware sales." It sucks but it's the reality of the situation.
- mistrial9 1y ago
  casual observers "discover" that Apple is deeply controlling with regards to monetization.. sharing or open-for-its-own-sake are not welcome
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Analemma_ 1y ago
As other comments have mentioned, they have kind of a "total hands-off; neither help nor hinder" policy around 3rd-party operating systems on Apple Silicon. They aren't providing any kind of assistance, but they aren't doing anything to obstruct it either: even though the Linux drivers have to be reverse-engineered, the actual installation process is very easy and not inhibited at all by the extensive cryptographic boot chain protections built into macOS, even though it easily could be. And as far as I know, what little they have said publicly about this is that they don't intend to ever try and actively block Linux. So in that sense I think it's mostly just a resources thing: they don't feel it's worth their time and money to assist this process. Which, honestly, I can't get that upset about: we're not entitled to Apple spending resources to help people install other operating systems on their hardware; so long as they don't actively impede the process I see no reason to get upset.

ef2k 1y ago

The amount of effort and polish that goes into Asahi is commendable. I installed it on an M1 MBP and the process was seamless, from the initial curl, to it handling the disk partitions. It was a work of art. Fighting to install native linux on apple silicon is an uphill battle though.

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ycui1986 1y ago

why can’t apple just assign one engineer to get this done. it is much less effort if apple does it than the community to reverse engineer it.

pluto_modadic 1y ago

looks like the installer still doesn't support LUKS2.