Apple’s Macs with M1 series processors offer the best performance-per-watt of any laptop or desktop computers available at the moment. But the transition from using Intel chips to custom-made ARM processors limits your options for running software other than macOS.

You can no longer dual boot Windows on a Mac (although you can run it in a virtual machine using software like Parallels). And most Linux distributions that were compatible with older Macs won’t work on new models with Apple Silicon. But the folks at the Asahi Project have been working on bringing Linux to Apple Silicon, and now they’ve released the first public Alpha of Asahai Linux for Macs with M1 chips.

The development of Asahi Linux for Macs equipped with Apple chips is in full swing. For those of you unaware, Asahi Linux is a project and community dedicated to bringing Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, beginning with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro.

As you know, the M1 is Apple’s custom Arm-based SoC which started showing on Macs in 2020 after ditching Intel’s x86 silicon chip. Because the M1 is Apple’s most powerful chip, it’s easy to see why developers are interested in porting Linux to it and running programs like Proton, which would turn the Mac into a powerful gaming PC.

The first alpha release of Asahi Linux, a distribution for Apple M1 silicon, has been released.

"Asahi Linux aims to bring you a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon Macs," explains the project's web site.

And now that first Asahi Linux alpha release is out — ready for testing on M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max machines (except Mac Studio)...

Asahi Linux has released its first public alpha build for users on Apple M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Max devices.

The distribution is based on the ARM build of Arch Linux, and arrives with a KDE Plasma desktop and a ton of caveats.

Users will need at least 53GB of spare storage as the installer downloads up to 4GB of data depending on if users want a Plasma desktop, or want a minimal installation, or even purely a UEFI environment that then allows for other operating systems such as OpenBSD to be installed.

As usual, Linus Torvalds made an announcement of the release and general availability of Linux 5.17.

Linus Torvalds has released version 5.17 of the Linux kernel.

"So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I'm happy to report that it was very calm indeed," Torvalds wrote in his weekly state of the kernel post. "We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last-minute reverts and fixes in and avoid some brown-paper bugs that would otherwise have been stable fodder, so it's all good," he added.

Asahi Linux – the most prominent effort to create a Linux distribution for Apple's M1 silicon – has loosed what project lead Hector Martin has described as "a very early alpha release."

"It is intended for developers and power users," Martin wrote, adding that all users are welcome but may find the experience of running the release "a bit rough."

That phrase translates to a distribution that can't currently handle DisplayPort, HDMI on MacBooks, Thunderbolt, Bluetooth, GPU acceleration, inbuilt cameras or the Touch Bar. Chromium and Emacs are known to be broken, as is anything that uses the jemalloc memory allocation tool, or the libunwind project that aims "to define a portable and efficient C programming interface to determine the call-chain of a program."

Why it matters: The Asahi Linux Project has published the first public alpha of Asahi Linux, a distro made for the Apple M1 SoC and its derivatives. It's been eagerly anticipated by Linux users wanting to take advantage of Apple's newest silicon.

Support for the M1 was added to the Linux kernel in June 2021, seven months after Apple announced it. By then, the Asahi Linux Project had already formed and was documenting the M1's processes with the community's help. Asahi is now friendly and stable enough for average Linux users to install. Its developers say the alpha is only "intended for developers and power users," but "welcome everyone to give it a try—just expect things to be a bit rough."

Asahi supports the Apple M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max, but not the recently-announced M1 Ultra (not yet, at least). It's also limited to macOS, so no M1-powered iPads.
Asahi has a shortlist of working features for now, but it includes the basics. Almost all the hardware is functional, including built-in displays, keyboards, trackpads, external displays, power buttons, and batteries. Only about half the ports work, but USB type-A and USB over thunderbolt mostly work, and so does ethernet, which is enough. Wi-Fi is also supported.

In 2020, Apple unveiled the M1 at the WWDC event. This reveal brought significant performance improvements and better power efficiency, although it did have one major drawback.

This was the software support, as it meant that it was no longer possible to boot a “normal” X86 distro on new Apple Mac devices with an M1 ARM chip. Hence, the Asahi Linux project (based on Arch) was born, with the aim to develop all the drivers and tools necessary to make a working Linux installation on Apple’s ARM-based Macs.

Now, after more than a year of work, the Asahi Linux project has finally released its first Alpha version, which introduces Linux support for Apple M1 devices.

Asahi Linux is the first distribution to fully support Apple Silicon and is now available for testing.

For anyone looking to install Linux on Apple Silicon, that task has been next to impossible…until Ashahi Linux came into being. The announcement of the project came some time ago, but only recently have the developers finally announced the release of the alpha version of the OS.

This first release will contain bugs and doesn’t include all features that will be found in the final release. Some of the features that do not yet work include DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, HDMI, Bluetooth, GPU acceleration, video codec acceleration, neural engine, CPU deep idle, sleep mode, camera, and the touchbar. Rest assured, however, that common features (such as Wi-Fi, USB, NVMe, and the keyboard) function as expected. As well, some apps (such as Chromium and emacs) do not yet function properly.

There is finally a Linux distro designed exclusively for Apple M1 hardware.

“We’re really excited to finally take this step and start bringing Linux on Apple Silicon to everyone,” the development team of Asahi Linux said in a blog post, adding that “things will move even more quickly going forward.”

This is an Alpha version, meaning it’s limited to a handful of features and designed, first and foremost, built with developers and power users in mind, rather than businesses. To get it up and running, users need an M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Max device, with MacOS 12.3 or later, and at least 53GB of disk space. An active internet connection is also a requirement, given that the installer will download anywhere between 700MB and 4GB of data, depending on the OS selected.

How was your weekend? Ours was spent trying to persuade the first Asahi Linux Alpha release to run on some Apple silicon.

The Alpha turned up at the end of last week and, sacrificial M1 Mac Mini in hand, we had a crack at firing up the distribution.

Our hopes were not high – the poor device has also put in service running Insider builds of Windows on Arm (via the Parallels Desktop) and its disk was bulging with all manner of experimental software.

But it all seemed boringly reliable considering the "alpha" and "proceed at your own risk" labels plastered over the distribution.