Initial Patches Posted For Bringing Up The Linux Kernel On Apple Silicon M1 Hardware

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Initial Patches Posted For Bringing Up The Linux Kernel On Apple Silicon M1 Hardware

Following a very active past couple of days, developers from security startup Corellium have followed through on their word so far of publishing the Apple Silicon patches to the Linux kernel mailing list for possible upstreaming in the future that allow the Linux kernel to boot with Apple M1 hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Kernel-Patches-Apple-M1

[CochainComplex]

I was not expecting this stage so fast to be honest. Considering the custom nature of the Chip.

btw. Does this mean it might be easier to backport the kernel to older Apple A Series processors as well? I would love to revive the older 1 2 iPads with some Linux on it (eg stationary monitors for some stuff...).

edit...well iPad and iPad 2 are mostlikely to old to have much in common with the M1 Architecture.

[timofonic]

What about the already done efforts by Asahi Linux?

[vladpetric]

On the plus side, Apple doesn't care.

They didn't help at all, but they also didn't lock the hardware enough to prevent Linux from running.

[intelfx]

What about the already done efforts by Asahi Linux?

There has already been some sort of drama between the two. No links though as all relevant tweets have been deleted (to my knowledge).

So I think this is a pissing contest now, and an exercise in deliberate non-collaboration. Sigh. What a shame.

[michaelo2]

What about the already done efforts by Asahi Linux?

Marcan continues working and documenting all the effort done. In today's stream he used some of the patches posted by Corellium.

The stream: https://youtu.be/GxnWuXgj3JI

The good thing about Corellium's new patches is that they start to be signed-off and they've a branch that seems to contain patches they're working to be upstreamed.

But booting is the first step, and incredible one, but just part of the project. Full working support for different parts is still missing. So still long way for Corellium/Asahi.

[yoshi314]

Marcan continues working and documenting all the effort done. In today's stream he used some of the patches posted by Corellium.

The stream: https://youtu.be/GxnWuXgj3JI

The good thing about Corellium's new patches is that they start to be signed-off and they've a branch that seems to contain patches they're working to be upstreamed.

But booting is the first step, and incredible one, but just part of the project. Full working support for different parts is still missing. So still long way for Corellium/Asahi.

the argument was over my head, i barely understood what did he have against their efforts. something about copyright attribution in gpl by cutting off git metadata history.

to a layman like me, it sounded a lot like picking at straws.

[torsionbar28]

I was not expecting this stage so fast to be honest. Considering the custom nature of the Chip.

btw. Does this mean it might be easier to backport the kernel to older Apple A Series processors as well? I would love to revive the older 1 2 iPads with some Linux on it (eg stationary monitors for some stuff...).

edit...well iPad and iPad 2 are mostlikely to old to have much in common with the M1 Architecture.

I don't know ARM very well, but I wonder if there is some lowest common denominator target they used, just to get the thing booting? Like 'i686' is to the AMD64 world?

[AJenbo]

I don't know ARM very well, but I wonder if there is some lowest common denominator target they used, just to get the thing booting? Like 'i686' is to the AMD64 world?

AArch64

[Markopolo]

Booting Linux on the M1 macs is enabled because Apple has explicit support for booting alternative operating systems. The iPad/iPhone has a locked boot loader so don’t expect this to work there...