The developer of the open source Linux driver for the Apple AGX GPU announced the implementation of support for the Apple M2 chips and the successful launch of the KDE and GNOME user environments on the Apple MacBook Air with the M2 chip with full support for GPU acceleration. As an example of OpenGL support on M2, the launch of the Xonotic game was demonstrated, simultaneously with the glmark2 and eglgears tests. In our battery life test, the MacBook Air lasted 8 hours of continuous Xonotic play at 60FPS.
It is also noted that the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver adapted for the M2 chips for the Linux kernel can now work with the asahi OpenGL driver developed for Mesa out of the box without making changes in user space. Complicating Linux driver development is that Apple's M1/M2 chips use their own Apple-designed GPU, which runs proprietary firmware and uses fairly complex shared data structures. There is no technical documentation for the GPU, and independent driver development uses reverse engineering of drivers from macOS.
In the meantime, the developers of the Asahi project, which aims to port Linux to run on Mac computers equipped with ARM chips developed by Apple, have prepared a November update of the distribution (590 MB and 3.4 GB) and published a progress report on the project. Asahi Linux is based on the Arch Linux package base, includes a traditional software suite and comes with the KDE Plasma desktop. The distribution is built using the regular Arch Linux repositories, and all specific changes, such as the kernel, installer, bootloader, auxiliary scripts and environment settings, are moved to a separate repository.
Recent changes include the implementation of USB3 support (previously, Thunderbolt ports were used only in USB2 mode), continued work on support for built-in MacBook speakers and a headphone jack, adding support for keyboard backlight control, improving power management support, adding native installability to the installer. devices with an M2 chip (without switching to expert mode).
Source: opennet.ru