Asahi Linux developers have published a status report following the recent Linux 6.19 kernel release to outline recent progress and upcoming items around Apple Silicon support on Linux. This year will also mark five years that Asahi Linux has been around for bringing Linux to the Apple M-Series hardware.
Their latest progress report began by commenting that the DisplayPort Alt Mode support with USB-C — a very frequent question from users — will be “done when it’s done”. There still is a “fairy dust” branch with their downstream code in current form but not officially supported.
With much of the workable Asahi Linux support so far being on Apple M1 / M2 hardware while Apple already being up to M5 hardware, the other common question is around newer hardware support. As for Apple M3 hardware support their progress report notes:
“In fact, the current state of M3 support is about where M1 support was when we released the first Arch Linux ARM based beta; keyboard, touchpad, WiFi, NVMe and USB3 are all working, albeit with some local patches to m1n1 and the Asahi kernel (yet to make their way into a pull request) required. So that must mean we will have a release ready soon, right?
A lot has changed in five years. We have earnt a reputation for being the most complete and polished AArch64 desktop Linux experience available, and one of the most complete and polished desktop Linux experiences in general. It is a reputation that we are immensely proud of, and has come at a great personal cost to many. We will not squander it or take it for granted.
Ideally, the current state of M1 and M2 support should be the baseline for any general availability release for M3. We know that’s not realistic, however nor is releasing a janky, half-baked and unfinished mess like the initial ALARM releases all those years ago. So, what needs to be done before we can cut a release? Quite a bit, actually.
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We don’t expect it to take too long to get M3 support into a shippable state, but much as with everything else we do, we cannot provide an ETA and request that you do not ask for one.”
Asahi Linux developers have also been working to overcome the 60Hz screen limitation on MacBook Pros to allow for a 120Hz refresh rate. Plus overcoming some lingering issues around certain web camera issues, continuing to work on the GPU support, and more.
See the Asahi Linux project’s latest progress report for more details on the current efforts around running Linux on Apple Silicon hardware.
