This are automated build that have not been tested, use at your own risk.
Asahi Linux is a project and community with the goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro.
Our goal is not just to make Linux run on these machines but to polish it to the point where it can be used as a daily OS. Doing this requires a tremendous amount of work, as Apple Silicon is an entirely undocumented platform.
Asahi Linux is developed by a thriving community of free and open source software developers.
The name Asahi means “rising sun” in Japanese, and it is also the name of an apple cultivar. ???? (asahi ringo) is what we know as the McIntosh Apple, the apple variety that gave the Mac its name.
What devices are/will be supported? All Apple Silicon Macs are in scope, as well as future generations as development time permits. We currently have support for most machines of the M1 and M2 generations. Check out our feature support page for the most up-to-date information.
Is this a Linux distribution? Asahi Linux is an overall project to develop support for these Macs. The majority of the work resides in hardware support, drivers, and tools, and it will be upstreamed to the relevant projects. Our current flagship distro is Fedora Asahi Remix, which is a collaboration between Asahi Linux and the Fedora Project, and serves as both a polished end-user distribution and a reference for other distributions who wish to incorporate our work.
Other distributions are already working on implementing support for these platforms, and we expect to have more options officially available in the future.
Does Apple allow this? Don’t you need a jailbreak? Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn’t a hack or an omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though they probably won’t help with the development).
Is this legal? As long as no code is taken from macOS to build the Linux support, the result is completely legal to distribute and for end-users to use, as it would not be a derivative work of macOS.
How will this be released? All development takes place on GitHub, http://github.com/AsahiLinux. All contributions will be written with the intent to upstream them into the respective upstream projects (starting with the Linux kernel) and upstreamed as early as is practical. Code will be dual-licensed as the upstream license (e.g. GPL) and a permissive license (e.g. MIT), to ensure that the work can be reused in other OSes where possible.
Will this make Apple Silicon Macs a fully open platform? No, Apple still controls the boot process and, for example, the firmware that runs on the Secure Enclave Processor. However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today with completely open software and hardware (as much as some companies want to market themselves as such). What ends up changing is where you draw the line between closed parts and open parts. The line on Apple Silicon Macs is when the alternate kernel image is booted, while SEP firmware remains closed - which is quite similar to the line on standard PCs, where the UEFI firmware boots the OS loader, while the ME/PSP firmware remains closed. In fact, mainstream x86 platforms are arguably more intrusive because the proprietary UEFI firmware is allowed to steal the main CPU from the OS at any time via SMM interrupts, which is not the case on Apple Silicon Macs. This has real performance/stability implications; it’s not just a philosophical issue.
