Porting Linux to Apple M1 Macs is proving trickier than previously imagined

Asahi is working to ensure all its work is rolled into the upstream Linux kernel

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Thecrowdsourced Asahi Linux projecthas published its first detailed status report to summarize the progress, and challenges, of gettingLinuxto run natively on theApple M1 Macs.

Porting anoperating systemas complex as Linux to a system-on-a-chip as closed as theAppleSilicon wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. The project’s first detailed progress report gives a glimpse of Apple’s unique boot process, and the challenges it presents to gettinganother operating systemto run on the hardware.

“The way they [Apple Silicon Macs] work is more akin to embedded platforms (like Android phones, or, of course, iOS devices), but with quite a few bespoke mechanisms thrown in. However, Apple has taken a few steps to make this boot processfeelcloser to that of anIntelMac, so there has been a lot of confusion around how things actually work,” wrote Asahi’s founder and lead developer, Hector Martin.

Long road ahead

Prolific Linux porter Martin officially began work on the Apple Silicon port in January this year. His first target is theM1 Mac Mini, though he intends to eventually get Linux to run on all M1 macs.

The first big challenge, Martin writes, is the boot process of the M1 Macs, which he says is different from anything you’d find in the traditionalArmecosystem. For instance, you cannot boot Apple Silicon Macs fromexternal storagein the same way as you can on other computers.

So Martin set out to get a lay of the land to understand not just how the boot process works, but also how the partitions were laid out in the disk, and how this compares to astandard PCenvironment. Very thoughtfully Martin has documented his learnings in great detail on Asahi’s GitHub page.

Working with mainline

In terms of concrete progress, Martin has been able to use his knowledge of the boot process to write a custom bootloader named m1n1 that bridges the Apple peculiarities with the standard way of booting an OS on 64-bit ARM.

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Asahi’s progress might appear slow, being as it is security startup Corellium have managed to get to a workingUbuntu desktop on top of the M1.

However, as Martin explains that his intention isn’t just to get Linux running on the M1, but to do so while upstreaming his work to the mainline Linux kernel, for everyone to benefit.

“Our approach is to upstream early, and work with the overall community from day 1. To this end, we have been working with the upstream Linux maintainers, and in fact several key Linux folks now hang around in the Asahi Linux IRC channels,” says Martin.

Via:The Register

With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.

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