Contributors to the Asahi Linux project have recently successfully launched a Linux system on a Mac equipped with an M3 chip, but it is currently only in a very early stage and is still a long way from being available to ordinary users. Although Apple Silicon series Macs officially only support macOS, this has not stopped enthusiasts from continuing to try to port Linux on Apple’s self-developed chip platform. This progress has now been extended to the latest generation of M3 chips.
As early as 2021, developers began to try to port Linux for Apple Silicon devices. Later, the system gradually achieved "available" status on Macs equipped with M1 and M2 chips, and was even able to run on the first-generation Mac Studio. The goal of the Asahi Linux project is to make the Linux kernel fully compatible with Apple Silicon, so that Mac users and gamers using M-series chips can use these machines as Linux devices. Asahi Linux currently supports the M1 and M2 platforms, and the community has subsequently shifted the focus of porting work to M3, and has achieved preliminary results.
On Monday, Asahi Linux contributor IntegralPilot posted a photo on Reddit showing that Fedora 43 Asahi Remix is already running on Macs with M3 chips, and the desktop environment is KDE Plasma. He said other users have also successfully booted Linux on models equipped with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, but these installations have significant limitations. The system currently "does boot," but is still far from ideal in terms of end-user experience.
One of the driver developers involved in the M3 Asahi Linux project noted that the system is "definitely very early days" at this stage, with basically only the internal SSD, display, keyboard, and trackpad working. IntegralPilot added that the graphics part currently relies on LLVMpipe software rendering because the members responsible for project development have not yet begun to overcome the difficulty of GPU support. It is expected that GPU driver will be a large and time-consuming work, and until it is completed, both graphics performance and desktop experience will be severely limited.
The Asahi Linux project itself is a highly collaborative community project. Reddit users noopwafel and Shiz are working with IntegralPilot to promote the adaptation of the M3 platform. Project members also revealed some news about subsequent chips: Contributors are already working on the M4 and getting basic Alpine Linux launched successfully. This means Asahi Linux is targeting not just the current M3 generation, but also evolving towards future Apple Silicon.
In a December 2025 speech video, Asahi Linux developer Sven Peter detailed the difficulties faced in porting Linux to M3 and updating chips. Compared with M1 and M2, M3 has made some adjustments in the input controller and NVMe storage, and also migrated the PD controller from the I2C bus to SPMI, which overall increases the complexity of driver development and maintenance. As for the M4 and M5, Peter said that these chips add more restrictions and changes at the hardware level, further raising the porting threshold.
Even on the current M3 models that can start Linux, the installation process is by no means "fool-like", and the operating threshold is still very high for ordinary users. Based on the current progress, unless the user is clearly willing to accept a system environment with "no M3 GPU official support", it is currently not recommended for general users to try to install Asahi Linux. Even if a more complete version is released in the future, there may still be many problems with stability and compatibility for a long period of time, which requires users with a strong technical background to weigh it themselves.
The key bottleneck right now is the GPU: While developers have demonstrated that Linux can boot on the M3, as of press time, the chip's graphics unit still lacks any form of hardware acceleration support. Under this premise, although Linux can run some lighter-loaded programs, such as classic games such as Doom, more complex 3D games and graphics workflows are not expected to have a good experience in the short term. The article also mentioned that Doom can even run on extremely restricted devices such as Apple's Lightning to HDMI adapter, so it is not surprising that it can run in an M3 Linux environment that lacks GPU acceleration.