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Fedora Asahi Remix is now working on Apple M3
- dralley 9mo agoNice! Good to hear that progress is still being made, I know it was on pause for a bit as developers rotated out and there was an effort to get things upstreamed.
- electronsoup 9mo agooh awesome! I had assumed they were just targeting M1/M2 for the time being
- zozbot234 9mo agoDoes this include the newer M3 ultra? Huge news if true!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoDisplayport alt mode? Thunderbolt?
- greenimpala 9mo agoand ProMotion, then its a serious contender
- volemo 9mo agoDunno, I don’t care about ProMotion (I’ve got it and I don’t see it), but sleep and battery life are very important to me.
- porkloin 9mo agoAre you sure you've actually used the higher refresh rate? It might not be enabled by default. I'd be surprised if you can't tell the difference comparing 60hz to 120hz back to back.
- volemo 9mo agoWell, I have an M1 Pro MBP so I'm pretty sure. edit: ok, I've tried toggling ProMotion on and off, and I can see it. However, I still think the improvement is marginal.
- robin_reala 9mo agoI use an M1 Macbook Pro for work and an M2 Macbook Air for home, and I basically don’t see any major difference.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- fainpul 9mo agoAt least for M1 they got it working. Seems to be in testing phase now. Promised to come soon. https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-apple-silicon#t=1714 https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-app...
- michaelRostom 9mo agoFrom that video "Our goal is to make this [dp-altmode] generally available to all people sometime early in the next year [2026]"
- gignico 9mo agoIs that display port over USB-C? That’s the main showstopper for me to use Asahi on my M1 Pro MBP.
- someNameIG 9mo agoThat's great. The only reason I haven't got it on my M1 Air yet.
- hamandcheese 9mo agoI wish it were possible to directly fund DP-alt mode support. It is the only thing remaining preventing me from adopting Asahi.
- ZiiS 9mo agoFor me https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/tree/fairydust https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/tree/fairydust installed and worked without any tweeks. Don't think you can direct funding, but https://opencollective.com/asahilinux https://opencollective.com/asahilinux contributes to getting this fully officially supported.
- hamandcheese 9mo agoNo idea what the fairydust kernel is. For more context, I gooled around and found this Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-EOY-2025-CCC https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-EOY-2025-CCC > On the display side, Asahi Linux developers have been working on the DisplayPort connectivity. For that there are now experimental DisplayPort patches for Asahi Linux via their "fairydust" tree. That's great news!
- jsheard 9mo agoDoes anyone know if M3 support is likely to lead to M4 or M5 support in relatively short order? AIUI M3 took a long time because it was a substantial departure from M1/M2, especially in the GPU architecture, but I don't know if M4 or M5 made similar leaps.
- OGEnthusiast 9mo agoM4 is apparently even harder because of some new hardware-level page table protections. Source from Asahi contributor: https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776 https://social.treehouse.systems/@sven/114278224116678776
- eddyg 9mo agoMemory Integrity Enforcement, perhaps? https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/ https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...
- worldsavior 9mo agoIt's "Secure Page Table Monitor". https://support.apple.com/en-il/guide/security/sec8b776536b/1/web/1#secd022396fb https://support.apple.com/en-il/guide/security/sec8b776536b/.... The kernel requires it so they need to emulate SPTM.
- eddyg 9mo agoThanks!
- nrabulinski 9mo agoThis is not exactly correct. They wouldn’t need to emulate SPTM, since SPTM is already running. And to be very correct, SPTM is a “process” running in a separate privilege level to the regular privilege levels found on arm processors. The reason it’s a pain is because pre M4 the bootloader gave you complete control over the CPU, including the Apple-exclusive extensions like GLx, the special privilege levels e.g. SPTM is running at. Since M4 the bootloader handles that, so asahi team has to either cope with being dropped after GL is already initialized and locked down, or running in a mode with all of Apple extensions disabled. So it’s not a problem for running Linux, but it’s a problem for running macOS with a thin abstraction layer to intercept talking with devices like the GPU, which made reverse engineering for them significantly easier.
- internetter 9mo agoI would just like to point out that Michael Reeves (the poster, no relation to youtuber) is a high schooler who has also found numerous high impact vulnerabilities in Apple software. Immensely talented.
- iknowstuff 9mo agoHow many peaked with our curiosity and exploration software engineering as teenagers and subsequently got ground down by 9to5 corporate soul drain T_T
- benoau 9mo agoJust take the top ticket, thanks.
- preisschild 9mo agoMe. Got countless old servers as a teenager and self hosted as much as possible. Now I have enough money for new servers (well, besides memory...) but not enough time and energy.
- fellowniusmonk 9mo agoI was born with heart defects and pre ACA had to be a wage slave to get health insurance. The moment ACA happened I started several successful businesses. Honestly we already should have contribution/impact based merit threshold UBI with a much lower barrier than research grants or even just time limited UBI systems for youth and adults that meet a contribution threshold. VC allocation is too biased towards group think, profit motivation, predatory contracts and hold on to top many class and cultural artifacts. Yes of course it would be difficult to implement but difficult isn't impossible and gradiated rollouts can help catch unintended side effects. We need to push more money into the hands of the intrinsically motivated. Society already is catering to the whims of consumers and feed zombies.
- AndrewDucker 9mo agoOr you could have universal healthcare. Which everyone else seems to manage and would untie a lot of people from specific jobs.
- drBonkers 9mo agoCan anyone point me to a good report of the current working status and known drawbacks of Asahi on Apple Silicon? Would there ever be a reason to run it on a Mac Mini or Apple desktop device? Or at that point would you just get a Linux box?
- ncrmro 9mo agoI’ve managed to get NixOS running on an 8gb MacBook air which tools a bit of tweaks but asahi installer sets everything up where you can boot and install from NixOS
- kreetx 9mo agoCould you expand/explain, you install Asahi first and then NixOS?
- volemo 9mo agoAsahi includes a shell script that you run from macOS before installation to properly partition the storage (it’s quite involved). I guess, GP ran the script and then just booted from Nix ISO and installed to the new partition.
- 0xADD1E 9mo agoMore or less- Due to the amount of unusual requirements for installing on Apple hardware (such as being kicked off from macOS, to name the tip of the iceberg) the Asahi installer gets used for most (all?) distros running on Apple Silicon. https://asahilinux.org/docs/alt/policy/#installation-procedu https://asahilinux.org/docs/alt/policy/#installation-procedu... edit: The minimal UEFI part of the Asahi installer specifically sets up a “normal” environment that other distros (like Nix) can use, it doesn’t actually install a full distro like Asahi Fedora
- kreetx 9mo agoThanks! What has your experience been thus far? Apple makes great hardware (even more so now with their own CPUs) but I've steered clear of it simply because I run Linux. Last I checked the GPU wasn't fully supported and there were also concerns of of efficiency, that power draw is generally higher than macOS, thus the same hardware on Linux doesn't have the same benefit as with macOS.
- n0n0n4t0r 9mo agoAccording to Asahi's own documentation, they're far from done from the M3. So I guess "now working" is probably a bit misleading... https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m3/#table-of-contents https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m3/#tab...
- michaelRostom 9mo agoI understand where you are coming from, I think the major hurdle was getting it boot and fixing M3 specific things. Now that it is working, they can port over their driver very easily (they might just work or need a small tweak)
- n0n0n4t0r 9mo agoThank you for the clarification!
- zozbot234 9mo agoI'm not sure that this list is updated; this is breaking news, and documenting stuff takes longer than that.
- School-Cotton 9mo agoTrue. Nevertheless, the fact that it even boots, after many years of it not working at all, is huge news.
- swiftcoder 9mo ago> after many years of it not working at all And by "many", we of course mean "2", because the M3 was only released 2 years ago.
- School-Cotton 9mo agoWow, you're absolutely right. Not sure why it felt like longer to me.
- deleted 9mo ago
- dtartarotti 9mo agoPromising progress, I'm excited to try it when they get more things working on M3 Pro
- dangus 9mo agoReally cool, though if I was looking for a Linux laptop today, I’d be watching the Intel Panther Lake products rolling out. The top SKU has a similar performance and efficiency profile to the base M5 processor along with faster graphics performance. Review embargos for the top SKU just dropped today.
- hard_times 9mo agoYou can't really be that naive, can you
- bigyabai 9mo agoAu contraire - which Asahi-supported machines hold a candle to AMD and Intel's Linux support? I can't recommend Macs to other Linux users in good faith unless they're already stuck with the hardware and loathe macOS. If you need an ARM laptop that supports Linux, you should probably wait for Nvidia to release theirs.
- CamJN 9mo agoit's this part: "The top SKU has a similar performance and efficiency profile to the base M5 processor along with faster graphics performance." that is naive, this has been the standard lie told by intel as long as Apple silicon has existed, "Ignore everything we've ever done or promised before, our NEXT gen will be as fast and power efficient as apple! We promise this time!". It has never been true, and honestly I don't think it CAN be true when they have to give over a full third of their transistor budget just to decoding the abomination that is x86_64.
- bigyabai 9mo agoIt's believable. AMD's x86 APUs were basically neck-and-neck with the M1 in performance, and when you normalize for production processes AMD was actually more efficient under load: https://www.notebookcheck.net/M1-vs-R7-4800U_12937_11681.247596.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/M1-vs-R7-4800U_12937_11681.247... x86 is the minority of the issue compared to securing cutting-edge nodes and optimizing for big.LITTLE. And once you factor in all of the dark ops on Apple Silicon (NPU, anyone?), they've basically butt up against the same wall of wasting transistors on specialized hardware that is obsolete within 3 years of release. Minus the ability to cleanly integrate it with compiler tech for efficiency gains, a-la SSE/AVX.
- drcongo 9mo agoThis is great news. If Apple ever get around to releasing actually pro M5 MBPs I'm buying one and turning this M1 MBP into a linux laptop.
- SirMaster 9mo agoIs there a reason why it's so hard to support newer M chips after supporting an older one? Like so much harder than supporting a new generation Intel or AMD chip doesn't seem too hard in comparison.
- zer0zzz 9mo ago1) Intel and AMD help to implement support in Linux before their chips even ship. Actually a sanitized version of the Intel graphics ISA bspec is actually available to the OSS community too. Apple on the other hand provides no support. The one nice thing they did do is allow their bootloader to boot non-apple signed OSes. They do not do this on iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Watches, or homepods btw. 2) The GPU ISA changes drastically and often. Its not entirely uncommon for the entire instruction set to change entirely within one generation. Every change to the ISA would require an entire round of new reverse engineering (I suspect, ive never reversed).
- yonatan8070 9mo agoI do wonder why Apple chooses not to lock down the Mac to just Mac OS like all their other hardware? I'm sure the sales from people who intend to run something other than MacOS look like a floating-point error on the scales Apple operates.
- intrasight 9mo agoThey don't because it's a floating-point error now. But with the continued enshitification of MacOS, it likely won't be in the future, and they just may lock it down. But being so hostile to the hacking community would do more harm than good, so I doubt that they would do so even if Linux use on Macs grew to >1%.
- prmoustache 9mo agoYou replied to your own question. Locking down the system for 3 users worldwide and making sure it stays locked is not worth the effort. Just not publishing the specs is enough to delay so much the effort that those machines are out of warranty and have depreciated so much by the time they are supported that they aren't competitors to the mac ecosystem anymore.
- codepoet80 9mo agoHave they fixed the touchy trackpad issues? Super impressive work, and I want to want this, but...
- drcode 9mo agoI've been using it for over a year, if there are any trackpad issue now, I haven't noticed any
- weinzierl 9mo agoRelevant 39C3 talk from three weeks ago: Porting Linux to Apple Silicon https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-apple-silicon https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-app... https://youtube.com/watch?v=3OAiOfCcYFM https://youtube.com/watch?v=3OAiOfCcYFM
- jojomodding 9mo agoThis talk in particular explains the challenges with M4 and M5 chips, but also a lot more.
- Retr0id 9mo agoThis is super cool and a big achievement, although it's worth noting that this is with llvmpipe graphics (i.e. CPU not GPU). Although, I was daily-driving Asahi on an M1 Pro before GPU support was here and it was very usable.
- rowanG077 9mo agoWhile it's awesome that it runs there doesn't seem to be GPU support yet as the screenshot reports the llvmpipe software renderer. From what I understand there are significant difference between the M2 and M3 GPUs so this unlikely to be implemented soon. Unless it turns out this original analysis turns out to be wrong. Personally I don't consider it "working" as a laptop on an Apple M3 unless you actually have GPU support. Software rending just sucks, even with a SoC as powerful as the Apple M3.
- saubeidl 9mo agoIf anyone else wants the closest thing to a MBP running Linux without waiting for Asahi to fully work, I can highly recommend the HP ZBook G1A. * It has an all-aluminium chassis that feels a lot like a MBP. * Hardware all works - fingerprint reader, webcam, suspend etc etc. Takes a bit of work, but all works in the end. Helps that HP ships them with Ubuntu as official option. * Strix Halo chipset, which is basically AMD's attempt at an Apple Silicon type design. Single big chip, with unified LPDDR5X-8000 RAM (up to 128GB!) shared between CPU and GPU (which is surprisingly strong as well, 40 CU!). This thing is a beast for local LLMs! Only downside really is the battery life. I haven't played around with it too much, I think there's a bit more room with custom tuned profiles, but rn I get like maybe 6 hours on a good day?
- zamadatix 9mo agoI also have an Apple M4 MacBook Pro from Work and an HP ZBook G1a for my personal. I used to have an Asahi MacBook but switched over with the lack of M3/M4 support. Some extra compare/contrast: - The build quality of each are excellent. The touchpad on the G1a is probably the closest to a MacBook touchpad I've seen and it even manages to boast an OLED screen. On the other hand, the G1a is only available as a 14" option. - Strix Halo will still leave you wishing it were Apple Silicon in pretty much every case except "I need to run a x86 native app/VM". It's certainly the best alternative, but you definitely trade away to go to it. You can load large LLMs (I have the 128 GB version for non-AI reasons) but they only run ~3x faster than a laptop without a GPU would because 256 GB/s still ends up being a big bandwidth limit. If you do actually do this regularly, then prepare to hear the fans and look for your power adapter as it does get quite hot doing so. - Speaking of power adapter... you need either a 100 W or 140 W charger + USB C to be able to charge the G1a while you use it. If you want to use a lower wattage adapter you need to power off, or it seems to draw 0 W out of spite. - It's massively refreshing to have a normal UEFI bootup process, and as long as you have a current kernel the hardware support is indeed pretty great on the G1a. Between the two, the G1a has better supported than the M1 w/ Asahi - as one would expect for a corporation officially supporting Linux vs a fan project. If I were to do it all again, I'd say I might have either just gotten an M2 Pro for Asahi or an M4 w/ macOS and a Linux VM as needed. Part of going for an x86 laptop was to be able to dual boot into games with strict DRM, but after trying multiple versions of AMD graphics driver for the 8060s it was more a frustration in random stutters and I ended up not gaming on it as much as I have on other laptops anyways. Bazzite does work great though, just not with all of the different DRMs or games.
- throw0101a 9mo agoIs there any kind of multi-boot support if someone wants to mainly run macOS but checkout Linux on M-chips 'part time'?
- Encounter 9mo agoYes, it installs into a separate partition and you choose whether to boot into macOS or Linux.
- treesknees 9mo agoYes, in fact deleting the MacOS install is not a supported way to run the system. https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/faq/#can-i-dual-boot-asahi-linux https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/faq/#can-i-dual-boot-asa...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 9mo agoDo the M-series have better wifi support than the last Intel range?
- neobrain 9mo agoRuns pretty smoothly with iwd. I get occasional disconnects (one every few hours) that may equally be down to my local wifi (other devices have issues with it too). iwd instantly papers over them, so it doesn't impact me either way.
- yencabulator 9mo agoAnecdata: In macOS, M1 Air wifi signal quality was worse than any other laptop or phone I had in the same room. Apple has historically had bad RF designs for a very long time.
- bsimpson 9mo agoRelated but not: I'm a lifelong Mac user who now has a KDE device courtesy of SteamOS. What are the best options for porting Mac default keybindings over to KDE? I'm using SteamOS and Nix/Home Manager, so I have a preference for something that I can easily use in that environment (e.g. nothing that needs me to unlock the system partition or run as another user). I tried asking Gemini to find where KDE stores its default keybindings, and came up short.
- cies 9mo agoThere's a folder where KDE stores your user's settings. Shortcuts are in their own file... For me it's `/home/$USER_NAME/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc`
- terhechte 9mo agoKDE has a setting to switch the cmd & command keys so that e.g. command+c copies instead of ctrl+c. This works in all KDE apps (it will not work if you install any Gnome/GTK app, though). I forgot the setting but its something in advanced and used to be called Emacs key binds, but now I think it just refers to the keys. Anyways, beyond that, have a look at Kinto which tries to do everything in one box, but it is an additional software you have to run: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
- bsimpson 9mo ago
- jaredcwhite 9mo agoI've been running Asahi Fedora GNOME on a Mac mini M1 for some while now (using it right now in fact) with almost zero complaints. A really solid and usable setup. I could see myself buying a used MacBook Air M3 down the road once this work is all finished up, which is very exciting. The prices are already pretty reasonable, even for a 16GB RAM model!
- ashirviskas 9mo agoApple made lower than 16GB M3 models? Man, can't wait till the cheapest model is at least 128GB.
- jaredcwhite 9mo agoYeah, M4 was the generation when the minimum got bumped up to 16GB.
- kamranjon 9mo agoAsahi is one of the projects I support monetarily cause I really hope that one day I can run linux natively on my M4 max with GPU acceleration. They did an amazing job with M1 and M2 - great to see they are still pushing forward after the departure of Alyssa Rosenzweig, who did a lot of the work on the GPU support for those. Edit: Here is their donation page if you're interested in chipping in as well: https://opencollective.com/asahilinux https://opencollective.com/asahilinux
- storystarling 9mo agoIt is worth noting the distinction between display acceleration and compute support here. While the desktop rendering is impressive, for local AI or LLM inference the Linux stack on M-series is still significantly behind Metal/MPS on macOS. I tried to switch my local dev environment over recently but without a mature compute stack it is hard to justify leaving macOS if you need to run models locally.
- black_puppydog 9mo agoof course, that's only relevant if you do intend to run models locally. which, up to very recently, would have been roughly 0% of mac users.
- m4rtink 9mo agoWhile the M series hardware is impressive and the Asahi project is doing miracles, I myself don't want to support Apple in any way, including buying any of their hardware.
- Forgeties79 9mo agoYou can always get it second hand
- account42 9mo agoWhile that does support them less, it still drives up the value of their hardware and thus the amount of money others are willing to give Apple for it.
- mococa 9mo agoIs there a way to make a clean Asahi Linux installation?
- avadodin 9mo agoI would never buy a Mac, but what's the issue with supporting Mx processors? Are they a generic ARM platform or something highly proprietary with ISA extensions and the like? And if Apple is pulling a Nintendo here why is this project allowed to exist in the first place? It's not like they are getting hit with an anti-trust any time soon.
- rowanG077 9mo agoThe problem are really not the CPU cores itself. It's a generic arm core in terms of ISA with just a tiny bit of proprietary extensions. The problem are all the peripherals. GPU, NPU, Display, USB, Wifi, HID, sound etc etc. These all require custom drivers and reverse engineering.
- a96 9mo agoProblem is, there's no such thing as a generic ARM platform. The devil is in too many details even if there was something common between some core designs.
- donkeylazy456 9mo agostill m1 family is the only one that fully(not acutally) supported apple silicon by asahi? I have m1 pro macbook pro btw
- viraptor 9mo agoThis is awesome, but we'll still need to hear the full support status. Which subsystems are covered by existing development, which need new drivers. Can't wait for the update on https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
- merelysounds 9mo agoNote, SW rendering. Still great to have that. > Yes [SW rendering], should have clarified in the original post sorry! Hopefully GPU to come soon, still investigating that. I believed they changed the ISA so we have to modify our compiler, and I love compilers, so it should be fun! :) source: https://bsky.app/profile/integralpilot.bsky.social/post/3mdeltopgz22d https://bsky.app/profile/integralpilot.bsky.social/post/3mde...
- zwarag 9mo agoCan't wait M1 to not be supported by Apple anymore to snack up some of that awesome hardware for cheap and run linux on it.
- tim333 9mo agoYou'll probably be waiting a long time. But already you can get used M1 Airs for about 1/3 what I paid for mine new.