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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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.

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.