Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall sentiment on Asahi progress

  • Many are impressed that a small team has achieved native Vulkan 1.2 and broad usability, especially on M1/M2.
  • Others stress that key problems remain unsolved after years (e.g., power management), illustrating the pain of reverse‑engineering proprietary hardware.
  • Some argue even partial support on a few models is already a big win compared to having no alternative at all.

Hardware support, power management, and daily‑driving

  • Reports differ on usability: some say M1 Air battery drain at idle is too high and external display (Alt‑DP) is problematic under certain desktop environments; others report Asahi as a very stable daily driver on M2 Max with working DisplayPort.
  • Power management is complicated by Apple not implementing PSCI, which Linux expects; Apple platforms use their own mechanism.
  • M3 support is underway; core components (PCIe, Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, NVMe, input devices) are reportedly working in development builds, but installer support is still some way off.

Apple’s incentives and openness

  • Many question why Apple doesn’t fund or assist Asahi, suggesting it would be cheap goodwill and might sell more hardware.
  • Counterarguments:
    • Macs are a small portion of Apple’s revenue; Apple mainly optimizes for its own ecosystem, services, and control.
    • Supporting Linux increases responsibility and long‑term maintenance; Apple prefers to keep firmware, drivers, and schematics private.
    • Historically, Apple has not prioritized Linux even on earlier architectures.
  • Some note Apple already provides strong virtualization support on Apple Silicon, which they use instead of bare‑metal Asahi.

Distros, upstreaming, and ecosystem

  • Asahi work is being upstreamed to the mainline kernel, but this is slow and demanding.
  • Various distros already exist or are possible on Apple Silicon: Fedora Asahi Remix, Arch, Void, NixOS, Ubuntu Asahi, and experimental Debian ports.
  • Some expect a persistent need for Asahi‑specific installers/bootloaders due to Apple’s platform quirks.

Project process, policies, and tooling

  • m1n1 enables automated tethered boot, debugging, and CI‑like workflows.
  • The project explicitly forbids using LLMs for contributions, which some see as philosophically sound but practically limiting.
  • Discussion touches on Linux kernel culture: high standards are valued, but toxicity in reviews is seen as a barrier for some contributors.

Alternative hardware and comparisons

  • Several argue Apple no longer uniquely dominates laptop quality; Framework, Zephyrus, XPS, and others are seen as competitive, especially with newer x86/Arm chips.
  • For top‑tier battery life with *nix, many still see MacBooks (with macOS) as unmatched; Linux battery life on generic hardware lags.