Asahi Linux Officially Runs on Macs with M3 Chips

The Asahi Linux project, which brings Linux to Apple computers powered by Apple's in-house processors, has announced official support for the M3-series machines. The corresponding code has already been merged into the installer, so MacBooks and iMacs running the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips can now be turned into full-fledged Linux workstations.

What Already Works

According to the developers, almost everything that was supported on the M1 and M2 “just works” on the new hardware too. The list includes the webcam, the built-in microphones, USB (all the way up to the USB 3 hardware limit of 10 Gbit/s), hardware video decoding with AV1 support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and much more.

The main exceptions are full support for the DCP display controller and the GPU. News on both fronts is promised in the coming months, but for now the team is honest in its warning: don't expect performant or power-efficient 3D acceleration right now.

How to Try It

Since the work is fresh, support is tucked away behind the installer's “expert” mode. Those who want to give it a go are invited to run the command curl -L https://alx.sh/ | EXPERT=1 sh in the macOS terminal and follow the prompts, and after installation not to forget to update the system with dnf upgrade --refresh. The expert-mode requirement is planned to be lifted by the time the Fedora Linux 45 beta ships — it is expected in a couple of weeks, provided no serious regressions surface.

Known Limitations

A few rough edges do remain. Sleep does not work yet — the culprit is the peculiarities of the framebuffer provided by the firmware; the problem is promised to be resolved together with full DCP support. For the same reason, the HDMI port is also disabled on those MacBooks that have one. In addition, the Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra chip is not yet among the supported devices.

The developers gave special thanks to their sponsors on OpenCollective and GitHub Sponsors, noting that many team members gained access to M3 hardware precisely thanks to the donations. Support for the new series, the project stresses, is the result of years of work.

Source: Lobsters