No M1 Mac's are not locked down. You can run other kernels/OS. Like Linux.

[Kung gu]

Some people spread misinformation and say M1 Mac's are locked down and you can ONLY run macOS. This completely false with regards to M1 Macs. The bootloader is completely OPEN on ARM Mac's.

YOU CAN'T DO THIS ON AN iPAD PRO M1.

Hector Martin is the guy who is making Linux work on M1 Macs and he works on Asahil Linux.

https://asahilinux.org/about/ - The answer is from here.

Does Apple allow this? Don’t you need a jailbreak?​

Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn’t a hack or an omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though they probably won’t help with the development).

This is progress so far. GPU acceleration is being worked on should be completed by next year.

Debian Linux Running Bare Metal on Apple's M1 SoC

apt-get awesome

www.tomshardware.com

 

[vagos]

This is progress so far. GPU acceleration is being worked on should be completed by next year.

So no Gnome yet ?

 

[Kung gu]

Mods can you pin this, so people know other options available/exist on M1 Macs and they can load other OS.
We can also stay up to date on the matter.
Thanks.

 

[Kung gu]

So no Gnome yet ?

Not yet. But that should easy when GPU acceleration is there.

 

[Kung gu]

This is native Linux running on M1 Macs. But no GPU acceleration.

You can get details about it here.
https://www.corellium.com/blog/linux-m1

Personally I would wait for Asahil Linux to complete their Linux port as they are more ethical and it allow you to duel
boot Linux and macOS.
And Hector Martin ported Linux to the PS4 as well.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

What?

I can run more than macOS on an M1 Mini?

If I had the money, I'd say 'SIGN ME UP!!!'...

 

[Digitalguy]

So in theory it should be possible to install Windows on Arm without virtualization

 

[zakarhino]

They are unlocked *for now* and an unlocked bootloader is relatively meaningless in my eyes because Martin and the Asahi team still have to go through all sorts of nonsense to reverse engineer Apple Silicon. Last I heard there's still a long way to go for Asahi (particularly on the GPU side) before anyone can expect to run Linux natively on AS. Even once they get it working relatively well who's to say new major challenges will come about once the next generation of AS is released. We still don't know how feasible the project will be for reliable dual booting on the latest AS hardware as it rolls out over the next few years.

If Apple were to really make a statement about Apple Silicon on Mac being an open platform they should have released documentation or some basic helper libraries to help Linux open source devs bring native compatibility to Apple Silicon. An absolute power move would have been Apple dedicating engineers to do exactly what Asahi are doing minus all the barriers of reverse engineering. Imagine what the community would say if all of a sudden Apple made a pull request into the linux kernel with all the necessary stuff for native Linux on AS. That would take up minimal resources from Apple, it wouldn't be a threat at all to their business, and it would give them major props in the open source community I imagine. Shame...

 

[zakarhino]

So in theory it should be possible to install Windows on Arm without virtualization

Yes, in theory, Craig said something along those lines when M1 released: "native Windows on ARM support is entirely up to Microsoft" but right now there's no information on whether or not Microsoft are working on this. I suspect they'd rather devote time to making Windows ARM run best on their own upcoming native chip platform. Considering Microsoft's strategy to focus on getting people to sign up for Microsoft services it's possible they'll skip native Windows on Apple Silicon entirely because it's not necessary to get people to pay them for stuff like Office 365 or Windows on Cloud.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

So in theory it should be possible to install Windows on Arm without virtualization

Why?

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

They are unlocked *for now* and an unlocked bootloader is relatively meaningless in my eyes because Martin and the Asahi team still have to go through all sorts of nonsense to reverse engineer Apple Silicon. Last I heard there's still a long way to go for Asahi (particularly on the GPU side) before anyone can expect to run Linux natively on AS. Even once they get it working relatively well who's to say new major challenges will come about once the next generation of AS is released. We still don't know how feasible the project will be for reliable dual booting on the latest AS hardware as it rolls out over the next few years.

If Apple were to really make a statement about Apple Silicon on Mac being an open platform they should have released documentation or some basic helper libraries to help Linux open source devs bring native compatibility to Apple Silicon. An absolute power move would have been Apple dedicating engineers to do exactly what Asahi are doing minus all the barriers of reverse engineering. Imagine what the community would say if all of a sudden Apple made a pull request into the linux kernel with all the necessary stuff for native Linux on AS. That would take up minimal resources from Apple, it wouldn't be a threat at all to their business, and it would give them major props in the open source community I imagine. Shame...

Ahh, good comment. 'For now'... Currently... Um, it could change... At any moment....

I'm sure it was an 'oversight' to be corrected soon...

EDIT: After being educated reading more posts here, I still remain suspicious of their motives, but maybe they are 'gifting' the mini as an open system, which is really odd for the notorious locked down tight Apple to do.

 

[leman]

They are unlocked *for now* and an unlocked bootloader is relatively meaningless in my eyes

It’s not unlocked „for now“, third party bootloader support has been explicitly added in a Big Sur update a while ago. It’s a documented, fully supported feature.

As to the rest of your post, Apple has no incentive whatsoever to support Linux hackers in reverse-engineering their hardware. They give you the bootloader access and the community can do whatever they want.

I don’t expect useful native Linux support on Apple Silicon, well, ever. There will be some fun little proofs of concept and that’s it. Linux does not have the software ecosystem to benefit from more interesting features of Apple hardware and the number of people interested in running native Linux on M-series will be extremely limited.

Yes, in theory, Craig said something along those lines when M1 released: "native Windows on ARM support is entirely up to Microsoft" but right now there's no information on whether or not Microsoft are working on this.

I am fairly sure he was talking about virtual machines. Porting Windows to Apple Silicon would be a massive endeavor (just GPU driver stack support would require crazy effort), and there is literally zero benefit of that to either Microsoft or Apple. Why bother when there are folks like Parallels that are eager to take care of the interfacing details?

 

[Kung gu]

I'm sure it was an 'oversight' to be corrected soon...

It was not an 'oversight'. This was added to macOS 11.2. I am 100% sure that Apple approved this.

If it was an oversight they would have removed it straight away in the next update.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349478954982232064

And as of 11.5.2, M1 Mac's still have an unlocked bootloader. If it was an oversight, it would not last this long.
11.2 was released 7 months ago and if Apple did not approve of an unlocked bootloader on Macs this would not be released at ALL.

 

[crazy dave]

Mods can you pin this, so people know other options available/exist on M1 Macs and they can load other OS.

Yeah I’ve been following this and it is a cool project, maybe when it’s more mature (ie people can use it for daily driver) it could even be it’s own forum sub-section? Like rename the current subsection under the Mac heading to Windows, Linux, and others on Intel Macs and add Windows(virtual)/Linux(native/virtual) on AS Macs? Something like that? Those may become differentiated enough to warrant different groupings … especially as time marches on the former will become increasingly about legacy hardware only.

 

[crazy dave]

If Apple were to really make a statement about Apple Silicon on Mac being an open platform they should have released documentation or some basic helper libraries to help Linux open source devs bring native compatibility to Apple Silicon. An absolute power move would have been Apple dedicating engineers to do exactly what Asahi are doing minus all the barriers of reverse engineering. Imagine what the community would say if all of a sudden Apple made a pull request into the linux kernel with all the necessary stuff for native Linux on AS. That would take up minimal resources from Apple, it wouldn't be a threat at all to their business, and it would give them major props in the open source community I imagine. Shame...

Just to add to @leman and @Kung gu wrote, them releasing the boot loader is signaling their support. Would it be great if they did more, like documentation? Sure! And I can understand why doing so would give many more confidence. But that’s very rarely Apple’s MO unless they are open sourcing something themselves. Basically beyond making it possible to install other OSes, they aren’t providing help or support to ensuring those other OSes run and work.

Also, while not a hugely important point as Ashai have reverse engineered all the CPU bits needed to get Linux working and those have all been upstreamed, Apple does actually have an internal Linux build on AS. It’s clear from both job postings and the OS that Linux runs on AS internally at Apple. So yes theoretically they could upstream that themselves.

Last I heard there's still a long way to go for Asahi (particularly on the GPU side) before anyone can expect to run Linux natively on AS.

You haven’t been following recently. They’ve made huge progress on all fronts - CPU side for basic Linux done and (largely) upstreamed, OpenGL (3ES I think) on GPU almost done (like 98% passing or something in the last report) and in Mesa, got a few helper processors like display control to do, installer done, and running virtual machines on your Linux partition done. Vulcan support will take a little bit longer, but on the horizon.

 

[Kung gu]

They are unlocked *for now*

Nope Apple added an unlocked bootloader in 11.2. It is therefore a feature of M1 Mac's that iDevices can never get.

Even once they get it working relatively well who's to say new major challenges will come about once the next generation of AS is released. We still don't know how feasible the project will be for reliable dual booting on the latest AS hardware as it rolls out over the next few years.

Hector said new AS Sillcion will not be a problem at all.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27957813

Hector's says future Apple SoC will share the same code. He mentions that Apple does not throw away their design and start from scratch.
The person with username: marcan_42 is Hector Marcan.

What Hector's AIM is?
source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28180135

It's several things (yes, we know it's confusing). Asahi Linux is the overall project.
m1n1 is our bootloader, which once installed will present a standard (ish) U-Boot/UEFI boot environment. From there you will be able to boot any distro or USB installer, in principle, once the changes trickle upstream.

Our installer will install m1n1 and then give you the choice of also installing a distro image. We'll be providing our own based on Arch Linux ARM, but we're open to other distros providing images so we can add them to the list. We already have interest from Fedora, for example.

So we expect that people who want to run Linux (or in fact openbsd or anything else) on these Macs will first use our bootloader installer, then either pick one of the built-in images or use their own USB installation media from whatever distro.

This progress website is also good:

Progress Report: August 2021 - Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org

Triple-booting two versions of macOS and Asahi Linux with the built-in boot picker

 

[crazy dave]

I don’t expect useful native Linux support on Apple Silicon, well, ever. There will be some fun little proofs of concept and that’s it. Linux does not have the software ecosystem to benefit from more interesting features of Apple hardware and the number of people interested in running native Linux on M-series will be extremely limited.

Unless you’re talking about Apple themselves providing support, I would take issue with this as Asahi Linux and the Linux core maintainers have been very quick to upstream Linux support for the M1 and while the number of people who will run it so are small, they are often halo effect users, like developers and designers so as much as Linux on the desktop is a thing anyway I would expect people to run and maintain Linux on AS. The people behind this are certainly aiming for more than just proof of concept, which is why they are upstreaming to mainline Linux in the first place. They could’ve just released builds like Corellium.

I am fairly sure he was talking about virtual machines. Porting Windows to Apple Silicon would be a massive endeavor (just GPU driver stack support would require crazy effort), and there is literally zero benefit of that to either Microsoft or Apple. Why bother when there are folks like Parallels that are eager to take care of the interfacing details?

We’ve talked about this before and you’re probably right. Beyond Apple and MS eschewing their normal patterns of behavior and saying “**** it, let’s be legends”, the benefits to Microsoft are access to the Mac user base and frankly access to far superior hardware than anything Qualcomm/Mediatek has put forward or will do until next year at the earliest. Being able to buy hardware can (natively) run intensive Windows software well could help boost the WoA ecosystem. Of course virtualization on the M1 does help with that aspect too (which MS would need to release an official version you can buy, not just insider builds). For Apple, again the kind of users who want to do this, while small in number, tend to drive hardware sales at the higher end as they typically want it for gaming or other such purposes and again can serve as halos. Is this enough given the hurdles … eh … you’re probably right, no. But it’s also not something that would *completely* shock me if it did happen one day. There are reasons to do it. It just isn’t likely.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

It was not an 'oversight'. This was added to macOS 11.2. I am 100% sure that Apple approved this.

If it was an oversight they would have removed it straight away in the next update.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349478954982232064

And as of 11.5.2, M1 Mac's still have an unlocked bootloader. If it was an oversight, it would not last this long.
11.2 was released 7 months ago and if Apple did not approve of an unlocked bootloader on Macs this would not be released at ALL.

But even I have been involved in products that had an alternative use, and, while flattered, the company was horrified, and tried to end it. *shrug* Apple *could* end this at any moment, I'm sure. *Maybe* *shrug*

 

[anonyme]

Kind of a noob question here, but does that mean I can install the ARM version of Windows 10 without virtualization ??

 

[crazy dave]

Kind of a noob question here, but does that mean I can install the ARM version of Windows 10 without virtualization ??

No. This is a Linux only project. MS would have to take the reverse engineering CPU/GPU/driver work Asahi Linux have done and apply it to Windows. Theoretically they could and Apple’s bootloader would load it. As @leman has said MS probably won’t without long term coordination with Apple and that seems unlikely from both companies (mostly due to support rather than just getting it working or even optimized).

 

[Kung gu]

But even I have been involved in products that had an alternative use, and, while flattered, the company was horrified, and tried to end it. *shrug* Apple *could* end this at any moment, I'm sure. *Maybe* *shrug*

Yes they could but they have not. What's the point of stopping this anyway??
On Macs you can get/download/install apps from the internet or external devices.

Apple had to code to enable this you know. They won't waste their time making an unlocked bootloader and then the next month shutting it down. As I said before if Apple wants shut it down it would done so by now.

 

[Kung gu]

The people behind this are certainly aiming for more than just proof of concept, which is why they are upstreaming to mainline Linux in the first place.

Not necessarily. Hector the man behind this wants his project to enable Linux to be an alternative to macOS on M1 Macs.
See my above post for more info: #16
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-kernels-os-like-linux.2308200/post-30195378

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Yes they could but they have not. What's the point of stopping this anyway??
On Macs you can get/download/install apps from the internet or external devices.

Apple had to code to enable this you know. They won't waste their time making an unlocked bootloader and then the next month shutting it down. As I said before if Apple wants shut it down it would done so by now.

Yeah, they will.

It's a corporation. It can do any number of incredibly bizarre and illogical things. Because it works today, do NOT assume that it will work on the next update.

Bottom line: Apple doesn't sell Windows. Why would they want to *allow* it to run on THEIR equipment for the future.

Point is, it works *now*, but given Apple's past, do NOT depend on it running after any future updates.

 

[NT1440]

Ahh, good comment. 'For now'... Currently... Um, it could change... At any moment....

I'm sure it was an 'oversight' to be corrected soon...

Especially given the lengths they talked about giving people that option during the wwdc AS was originally announced. You know, after the Keynote once tech “journalists” stop paying attention.

I’m continual amazed by the absolute insistence people here have in asserting notions that are explicitly disproven by Apple if they cared to actually look.

I’m excited about dual booting possibilities.

 

[EmotionalSnow]

Hector's says future Apple SoC will share the same code. He mentions that Apple does not throw away their design and start from scratch.

I definitely agree. Apple is probably going to change a few things each generation and some times there are going to be relatively huge changes but considering the progress that has been made since January and the fact that as this project gets more popular more people are going to be involved I don’t expect this to be a problem at all. It shouldn't take them long to add support for new Apple Silicon Macs.