Anyone tried ARM Linux with the M1 MacBook Air or Pro?

[peneaux]

For the ones who prefer Linux, any idea on how the new MacBook Air or Pro run Linux? I was looking for information specifically on ARM Fedora. Can we expect impressive performance and what about compatibility? Does it run smoothly with hardware acceleration and does it recognize all the hardware? Information on battery life would be nice also.

 

[theMarble]

The bootloader is different to the old EFI on the Intel Macs. I think I heard that there is a bootloader called "pangoOS" or similar which is made by the team who made checkm8 (Apple A4-A10 cracker), and they are trying to get it to run ARM linux. It isn't ready for the public yet.

I think that the ASi chips allow a secondary bootloader to be run if a command is run in Recovery Mode + a firmware tool in Big Sur is executed, so that is probably how they as doing it.

 

[wyrdness]

There is currently no way to run Linux on M1. It will be possible to run it on a virtual machine, just not yet.
It will not be possible to boot into Linux. There are no Linux drivers for the M1 SOC and there may never be.

 

[peneaux]

^^
I'm afraid that's true. Straight from the horse's mouth:

At 1h02m52s in case it doesn't go straight to that part.

 

[haralds]

Sign up for the Parallels beta for the new HyperVisor. But they are not testing yet.

 

[gustavopi]

There is currently no way to run Linux on M1. It will be possible to run it on a virtual machine, just not yet.
It will not be possible to boot into Linux. There are no Linux drivers for the M1 SOC and there may never be.

As far I know they are already running. But is different you run a Linux for you and you make available a distribution that includes support etc.. This will take a while, there is no reason to hurry, the average Linux user won't run to a store every time there is a new technology, the hardware update follows a different rule.
Apple M1 is ARM based chip and macOS is still using the same XNU kernel, close to Linux and known. It's not a mystery. What is concerning is the attempt of Apple to block Linux distributions for Mac.
To give an example, I managed to install Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon in my old abandoned Mac mini 2007. This Mac particularly have hybrid architecture with 32bits EFI and 64bits CPU. To install a 64bits OS, a hybrid custom boot is needed, not available for mere mortals. But an app was developed to turn the original ISO image friendly to these hardwares - in a single command line! Of course to run a Linux in this new M1 hardware is by far more complex, but I would expect something from Debian for this year yet.
By the way, I have the Mini with my old but still full HD TV and it is running great. In comparison with old Lion and Windows 7 it's faster and stable, and I have access to updated software! I also have a MacBook Pro with fast SSD and fast corsair memory that struggles to run Catalina (I am now back to Mojave), so I am curious about the performance under Linux... I can understand why Apple fear these new distributions...

 

[leman]

Apple M1 is ARM based chip and macOS is still using the same XNU kernel, close to Linux and known. It's not a mystery. What is concerning is the attempt of Apple to block Linux distributions for Mac.

M1 Macs are full of custom hardware for which no Linux drivers exists. Storage, GPU, power management system, even things like keyboard! As far as I understand it, M1 is perfectly capable of booting unsigned OS partitions if the respective security feature is disabled, so you are welcome to go ahead and try to write your own drivers. I don't see how Apple would "block" you from doing it. They are definitely not helping, but then again why would they? They already ship you a perfectly functional unix system.

 

[Mikael H]

There are efforts underway to backwards engineer parts of the M1 stack and write Linux drivers for it. Alternative operating systems will of course not be particularly useful on the M* chips until they can drive a screen and a network card at the very least, and not attractive until most hardware is relatively well supported.

As @leman wrote Apple is unlikely to help, but they have expressed a wish for people to tinker and hack on their computers so by now I find it unlikely that they would explicitly prevent other operating systems from working.

 

[Earl Urley]

Looks like someone got Ubuntu running under QEMU, details (and how to do it, involves installing Xcode and ARM Homebrew..)

The Apple M1, ARM/x86 Linux Virtualization, and BOINC

About six months ago, I speculated a bit on what Apple might do with their upcoming (rumored at the time) ARM transition. Apple did it, has shipped hardware, and I’ve had a chance to play with for a while now. I’ve also, as is usual for me, gone down some weird paths - like ARM Linux...

www.sevarg.net

According to author, faster than some AMD chips while running on a Mini, plus some other insights..

One big takeaway I got from this is that if screen focus on a particular app goes away, the app's processes all get forced to use the efficiency cores.. put screen focus back and all 8 cores fire up again. Very interesting..

 

[gustavopi]

M1 Macs are full of custom hardware for which no Linux drivers exists. Storage, GPU, power management system, even things like keyboard! As far as I understand it, M1 is perfectly capable of booting unsigned OS partitions if the respective security feature is disabled, so you are welcome to go ahead and try to write your own drivers. I don't see how Apple would "block" you from doing it. They are definitely not helping, but then again why would they? They already ship you a perfectly functional unix system.

There is no such thing as perfect OS, not even Tim will claim this. In my personal tests, Linux is faster and less demanding that macOS, and a lot, that's already something you might want for whatever reason - your particular reason. But this thing - it's just disable the secure feature - remind's me MS Windows like excuses, it's just to disable the firewall and the anti malware and all will gonna be fine... for them! As a hardware manufacturer and now a processor developer, Apple is not a partner of all customers, just the ones accepts the macOS unconditionally. They are not allowing internal competition, it's a different thing. To me, this policy is one more fact that makes me feel Apple got greedy.

 

[leman]

There is no such thing as perfect OS, not even Tim will claim this. In my personal tests, Linux is faster and less demanding that macOS, and a lot, that's already something you might want for whatever reason - your particular reason.

True, Linux can be faster for many operations, buts it’s mainly because it does less. It’s also why Linux is a great system when you need configurability (servers of all kinds, control systems, embedded applications) etc.

As a hardware manufacturer and now a processor developer, Apple is not a partner of all customers, just the ones accepts the macOS unconditionally. They are not allowing internal competition, it's a different thing. To me, this policy is one more fact that makes me feel Apple got greedy.

I don’t see much difference to how it was before. As Apple themselves say, they don‘t build hardware, they build complete systems. I can understand the desire to run something else on that great hardware, but then again, I don’t think one can really fault Apple for not investing resources to make that possible. Not to mention that this would most likely mean divulging sensitive information to their competitors (full GPU documentation etc.).

 

[gustavopi]

I don’t see much difference to how it was before. As Apple themselves say, they don‘t build hardware, they build complete systems. I can understand the desire to run something else on that great hardware, but then again, I don’t think one can really fault Apple for not investing resources to make that possible. Not to mention that this would most likely mean divulging sensitive information to their competitors (full GPU documentation etc.).

Since the very beginning, the market changes. But the average consumer does not fell much. There was a time when DOS and Windows was the default, Mac was only for particular purposes, it was expansive and few people now it for real. Why to buy a Mac if you can buy two PCs? Also the sensitive info is opened and hidden from time to time when is convenient, PCs would never survived without opening their secrets (yes, IBM and MS didn't share full info). So what we perceive as normal today can and in a few years, this has been the reality of this industry.

I like Catalina, but though she don't like me... To me is uncertain if I will go to Catalina or Linux Mint that is also awesome - I already have a 2007 Mac mini running Mint 20 64bit...

 

[leman]

Since the very beginning, the market changes. But the average consumer does not fell much. There was a time when DOS and Windows was the default, Mac was only for particular purposes, it was expansive and few people now it for real. Why to buy a Mac if you can buy two PCs? Also the sensitive info is opened and hidden from time to time when is convenient, PCs would never survived without opening their secrets (yes, IBM and MS didn't share full info). So what we perceive as normal today can and in a few years, this has been the reality of this industry.

I buy a Mac because it's the best computer for my usage. I don't think one needs another reason than that.

I like Catalina, but though she don't like me... To me is uncertain if I will go to Catalina or Linux Mint that is also awesome - I already have a 2007 Mac mini running Mint 20 64bit...

Catalina is end of life, it's Big Sur now I used to build a lot of Linux computers when I was younger, but now I just want something with sensible defaults that actually works. I have neither the time nor the passion for tinker around with stuff anymore.

 

[tokenmacdude]

Never say never. Ubuntu has been ported to the M1 SoC, although it took quite some work. Check out this article. Using their instructions, it allows the user to dual boot between Ubuntu (or Raspberry Pi) and macOS on he M1. This is from January this year.

 

[Toutou]

Never say never. Ubuntu has been ported to the M1 SoC, although it took quite some work. Check out this article. Using their instructions, it allows the user to dual boot between Ubuntu (or Raspberry Pi) and macOS on he M1. This is from January this year.

Both Corellium's and Asahi efforts (the two current major Linux ports) are currently far (months) from being usable. Also AFAIK whatever Corellium is doing is not meant to be used by end users, but rather by their own services.

 

[jdb8167]

Both Corellium's and Asahi efforts (the two current major Linux ports) are currently far (months) from being usable. Also AFAIK whatever Corellium is doing is not meant to be used by end users, but rather by their own services.

Latest update from Asahi here: https://asahilinux.org/2021/08/progress-report-august-2021/

Sounds like they've made some impressive progress. It isn't ready for end-users yet though.