Asahi Linux Alpha Released: The First Linux Distribution to Support Apple's M-Series Chips

​Recently, Asahi Linux, the group that researches Linux for Apple Silicon macs, announced:

Asahi Linux has been successfully run on the M1 MacBook Air laptop, and the download and installation of Asahi Linux is open.

This is the first Linux distribution to offer native support for Apple's M-series chips.

The development team said that as an alpha version, bugs and missing features are inevitable, but they will improve at a faster rate, so the existing alpha version of is mainly suitable for "developers and advanced users".

At present, the development team has shared a list of system requirements, installation guides, and a list of compatible features. It is worth mentioning that if you want to install Asahi Linux on a Mac, does not require jailbreak and will not affect the security level of macOS installation.

Asahi Linux installation requirements:

• M1, M1 Pro or M1 Max computer (except Mac Studio)
• macOS 12.3 or later, logged in as an administrator user
• At least 53GB of free disk space (desktop installation), 15GB for Asahi Linux Desktop, but the installer reserves an additional 38GB of disk space in macOS to avoid breaking macOS updates.
• With a valid internet connection, the installer will download 700MB ~ 4GB of data, depending on the operating system selected by the user.

Users who meet the above requirements, just open a terminal in macOS and paste the following command to install:

curl https://alx.sh | sh

At present, Asahi Linux still has some important functions that are not supported, and there is still a lot of work to be done.

Unsupported features:

• DisplayPort
• Thunderbolt interface
• HDMI on MacBook
• Bluetooth
• GPU acceleration
• Video codec acceleration
• Neural Engine
• CPU deep idle
• sleep mode
• camera
• Touch Bar

* On a 13" MacBook Pro, you can use Fn + number row keys (1-9, 0 and the next two) as F1..F12 in place of the Touch Bar.

Supported features:

• Wi-Fi
• USB2 (Thunderbolt)
• USB3 (Mac Mini Type A port)
• Screen (no GPU)
• NVMe
• Laptop lid opening and closing
• power button
• Built-in display (frame buffer only)
• Built-in keyboard/touchpad
• Display backlight on/off
• Battery Information/Charge Control
• RTC
• Ethernet (Desktop)
• SD Card Reader (M1 Pro / Max)
• CPU frequency switching

Known bugs:

• If Wi-Fi doesn't work, try turning it off and on in the network management menu
• ​If the headphone jack is not working or only one channel is working, try restarting

blog address:

https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/