Abstract:
The Asahi Linux project is very close to officially launching a version that supports Apple's M3 series chips, but the adaptation work for M4 and M5 chips is still in the development stage. The project aims to allow Linux to run natively on Apple's Apple Silicon chips based on ARM architecture. Although progress on the project has been slow overall, it is approaching a major milestone.
The project team stated in a blog post published on August 26 that the support for Apple Silicon in the M3 series has undergone multiple adjustments. The relevant functions were already operational as early as January this year, but were still in a semi-available state at that time. Now the overall completion level has been significantly improved. The team says that the M3 supported version is almost ready for "official release" and will announce more information in the coming weeks.
During the M3 adaptation process, the team found that its webcam image signal processor had not changed much compared with the M2 version, and the main work was focused on making it run normally. However, the M3 Max continued to display a prompt message that caused initialization to be skipped, affecting the function enablement. The team subsequently solved this problem through a new driver.
The way the M3's built-in microphone works has also changed. Since the system uses a new "high frequency" extractor, which requires configuring new coefficients and processing another initialization prompt, the related issues have also been fixed.
In addition, minor changes were also found in the ATCPHY hardware module responsible for handling USB 3, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt connections through the USB-C interface.
In terms of USB interface controllers, the basic M3 and earlier generation chips use Apple’s customized Texas Instruments ACE2 chip, while the M3 Pro and M3 Max use ACE3 instead. To support the latter, the development team completed the necessary reverse engineering work.
Another more anticipated change is the firmware application binary interface for the GPU and display controller. The firmware of both is bound to a specific version of the macOS system, so it also needs to be adapted for different system versions.
As M3 support is about to be completed, the Asahi Linux team has not stopped. The team has previously realized that the M4 and M5 will pose greater challenges, and hinted in April 2025 that some of these issues may affect subsequent development.
According to the latest update, the M4 adaptation work is still progressing, and the team has even created an early M5 version. Current issues facing the M4 include WFI command-related glitches and "breaking changes" Apple made to the NVMe controller firmware application binary interface in macOS 15.x firmware versions. Some developers have managed to mitigate these changes so that system builds targeting different chip generations can run.
At the same time, the team also fixed a PCIe support issue to enable Linux to enumerate devices on the bus; it also resolved a bug that caused Linux to crash shortly after booting when multiple CPU cores were enabled.
However, although the adaptation work for M4 and M5 is ongoing, the Asahi Linux team is not yet ready for ordinary users to try these two versions.
Learn more:
https://asahilinux.org/2026/08/progress-report-7-2/
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