Asahi Linux reaches 'very early Alpha'

Asahi Linux – the most prominent effort to create a Linux distribution for Apple's M1 silicon – has loosed what project lead Hector Martin has described as "a very early alpha release." "It is intended for developers and power users," Martin wrote, adding that all users are welcome but may find the experience of running the …

[45RPM]

Whilst I don’t want to work on Linux on my Mac (I have many other machines to use for that), I am delighted that this work exists. It’s a fantastic initial effort and, if successful, with guarantee a users investment in this new Apple hardware even after Apple has stopped supporting it.

For those of us who only want to use MacOS on our Macs, the lessons learned here may also be useful in developing the necessary hacks for a future incompatible-with-first-gen-m1 MacOS to be made compatible. (Just as I can run MacOS 12 Monterrey on my 2009 Mac Pro now)

All in all, a happy story in dark times. A story with no downside!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point?

Giving Linux access to Apple M1 chips seems to have little present day value.

Most people who have invested in an M1 Mac are also invested in the Apple ecosystem, as you appear to be.

The speed differences between Apple and ARM (and maybe even Intel) are narrowing and far more stable distros are available for the later. Besides, raw speed on a desktop is of limited use beyond gaming and personal crypto mining.

If Apple gets into M1 servers, a Linux distro for that might make sense, but for now it seems like an academic exercise. Which is not a bad thing as long as it is treated as such.

[Tom 7]

53G of disk space?

Is there a Ultra HD video of the complete compile, build and install process?

[Elledan]

Re: 53G of disk space?

Asahi itself needs only about 18 GB according to the developer, but it appears that MacOS upgrades break if you have less than a certain amount of free space.Ergo 53 GB total free, but not required for Asahi itself.

[GraXXoR]

Re: 53G of disk space?

From another article:

The distribution explained that it needs the space due to having around 2.5GB for Apple's bootloader and firmware, as well as a full copy of the macOS recovery image and spare space for the ability for macOS to do updates.

"You need 15GB for Asahi Linux Desktop, but macOS itself needs a lot of free space for system updates to work, so the installer will expect you to leave 38GB of extra slack in macOS by default to avoid shooting yourself in the foot," it explains.

[VoiceOfTruth]

In a few months time it might be semi-usable

When it is eventually *usable* it will probably be OK.

-> "It is intended for developers and power users,"

Without emacs? Shurely there has been some misteak.

-> 53GB of disk space

What is this? That's almost enough space for two installations of LaTeX.

[s. pam]

They'd be wise to change their logo!

Apple has sued the pants off of smaller companies / efforts. Their logo is likely to cause Apple's rabid solicitors to invoke orders :(

[Proton_badger]

Looks good

It's remarkably good for a very first alpha, these are very talented people. And what's interesting; After Asahi had to use an ugly hack to load the image, Apple added a “raw image mode” which allows the bootloader to load things that don’t look like macOS kernels, it’s an officially-supported boot mode for the Asahi project to use.