Asahi Linux on M3

478 points312 comments20 hours ago
shmoe

It is odd that Apple doesn't chip in here... they've originated so much decent stuff in the OSS space. Seems like a huge missed opportunity.

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publlus_enigma

The reason this amazing project exists is the same reason my current Mac will be my last Mac.

I wish the team every success.

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jdeaton

This is really incredible work but so frustrating that its necessary

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sansah

Lack of sleep and HDMI support is real roadblock for adoption. Hope they gets past soon.

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xiphias2

While the Ashahi engineers are working super hard reverse engineering the Apple Silicon, there has been a huge surge in Omarchy circles to get it all working with AI writing all the drivers and get all kinds of hardware in M4/M5 and later M6 working as well. It sped up a lot.

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tarruda

Amazing project.

My only blocker for installing Asahi on my Mac Studio (M1 ultra) is that llama.cpp performance is very bad when compared to using the Metal backend on the same hardware.

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mrheosuper

Thanks for the effort, guys. This makes me think, shouldn't the driver layer be generic now. All the driver does is writing correct data at correct address when needed, there is no need for OS support except triggering driver when to do that.

A true HAL, any OS can run on that HAL.

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whatever1

Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.

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simonebrunozzi

What would be the best way to dual boot MacOS and Asahi on a Macbook M2 ?

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benoau

Some big caveats but still amazing progress!

Krish1577

Reverse-engineering Apple's custom silicon is basically the modern equivalent of repairing a spaceship while it's actively launching. Incredible work by the Asahi team!

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TomJansen

I am wondering how much the spec changes per M-chip iteration? I think that after some iterations, the spec stays the same, no?

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colesantiago

This is great news.

Hoping for M4 to the latest chip.

We need Ashai to support more chips.

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_zoltan_

Does USB work already or is that a 2027 item?

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smm11

I don't understand this. Buy something else to run Linux, as in anything other than Apple M series laptops. And if you want to do AI stuff, suffer with OSX using too much RAM, or again, buy something appropriate.

JLO64

Here's the blog post from the Asahi devs announcing this: https://asahilinux.org/2026/09/m2-episode-1/

luciana1u

[dead]

tunder

Still no thunderbolt support.

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pcunite

Let me know when we get M4 support.

TechSquidTV

I thought development officially ended?

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xrd

I'm not sure I understand the target user for Asahi.

Is this someone that only wants to run Linux and wants to use their GPU on Linux? Seems like this is not the case, yet.

Or, is this for someone that wants to dual boot and use Linux sometimes, and then reboot into MacOS when they want to use the GPU?

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amelius

My bet: Apple is going to close it down. It is too much of a legal risk. What if some Linux enthusiast finds patent infringements in Apple's undocumented APIs?

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