The Asahi project, aimed at porting Linux to run on Mac computers equipped with the Apple M1 ARM chip (Apple Silicon), has introduced its first alpha release of the reference distribution, allowing anyone interested to explore the current level of development of the project. The distribution supports installation on devices with M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max. It is noted that the builds are not yet ready for widespread use by regular users but are suitable for preliminary exploration by developers and advanced users.
Asahi Linux is based on the Arch Linux package base, includes a traditional set of programs, and comes with the KDE Plasma desktop. The distribution is built using the official Arch Linux repositories, while all specific changes, such as the kernel, installer, bootloader, auxiliary scripts, and environment settings, are placed in a separate repository. The project aims to ensure the functionality of Linux on Apple M1 systems in general and is prepared to support similar integration in any distributions.
A shell script executable from macOS has been prepared for the installation of the distribution ("curl https://alx.sh | sh"), which, depending on the selected configuration, downloads data ranging from 700MB to 4GB and creates an environment with Linux that can run alongside the existing macOS system. A minimum of 53 GB of free disk space is required for installation (15GB for the Linux distribution and 38GB reserved for the proper installation of macOS updates). Installing Asahi Linux does not disrupt the existing macOS environment, except for reducing the size of the disk partition used by macOS.
It has been reported that proper functionality is ensured in the distribution for Wi-Fi, USB2 (Thunderbolt ports), USB3 (Mac Mini Type A ports), screen, NVMe drives, Ethernet, SD card reader, lid switch, built-in display, keyboard, trackpad, keyboard backlight control, CPU frequency switching, and battery charge information retrieval. On M1 systems, the headphone jack is also operational, while Mac Mini devices support output via HDMI. Among the components whose support is in the final stages of implementation and will be available soon are USB3, built-in speakers, and screen controller (backlight, V-Sync, power management).
Among the currently unsupported components are GPU graphics processing acceleration, hardware acceleration for video codecs, DisplayPort, camera, Touch Bar, Thunderbolt, HDMI in MacBook, Bluetooth, machine learning system accelerators, and deep CPU power-saving modes. The distribution includes all standard packages from the Arch Linux repositories, but some applications exhibit unresolved issues, primarily due to the kernel being built with a 16KB memory page size. For instance, there are problems with Chromium, Emacs, lvm2, f2fs, and packages that use the jemalloc library (e.g., Rust) or the electron platform (vscode, spotify, etc.). Issues have been observed with applications using the libunwind and webkitgtk libraries, but fixes for them have already been formulated.
The distribution can be used without fear of legal issues, as Apple typically allows users to load kernels without an authenticated digital signature onto their computers without the need for jailbreaking. The project is entirely legal since it does not use any code from macOS and Darwin, and the specifics of hardware interaction are determined through reverse engineering, which is permitted by law in many countries for compatibility purposes.
Source: opennet.ru
