The Linux 6.2 Kernel And Apple’s M-Series Processors

Not Quite Ready For Prime Time

There is good news for Linux fans looking to pick up a new Mac and trying it out.  The Asahi Linux team have been able to get the Linux 6.2 kernel to boot on M-series hardware, but they are still working on making it usable.  As it stands you wouldn’t be able to get any of the major distros to run perfectly on an M1 or M2, but that should change in the not too distant future.

The major hurdle is that no generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today and Linux requires built in 16kB page size support to run properly.   Currently the team have developed a tool which could be added to give support for 16kB page sizes and are hoping support for 4K-size kernel builds will be developed soon to avoid this issue altogether.

You won’t be booting from a USB disk this year, the team expects that is the minimum amount of time they will need to finish reverse engineering Apple’s commands and silicon.  Two years may be a more likely timeline; let’s hope that is a little pessimistic and that M1 powered devices will soon be able run at least some Linux distros.