While we’ve seen various attempts to bring support for Linux on M1 Macs, official support could be coming sooner than expected. Asahi Linux reported its pull request was merged, indicating that initial support for the M1 chip is officially set to arrive with the Linux 5.13 kernel.
Asahi Linux also clarified this through a series of tweets:
“This only includes support for a serial console and framebuffer at this point and no other drivers by upstreaming first we lower the overall development workload and increase code quality, since upstreaming code from a kernel fork often ends up requiring a lot more rewriting and re-engineering to make it meet kernel standards and fit within subsystem development plans.”
Features Supported on the Initial Port of Linux On M1 Macs
Developer Hector Martin submitted the pull request. There are two members of the Asahi Linux project dedicated to porting Linux to Apple silicon. This brings up initial support for the Apple M1 SoC, used in the 2020 Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models.
The following features are supported in this initial port:
- UART (samsung-style) with earlycon support
- SMP (through standard spin-table support)
- Interrupts, including affinity and IPI
- Devicetree for the Mac Mini (should work for the others too at this stage)
- simplefb-based framebuffer
You can find more details about these efforts on GitHub and at Git Kernel.
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