Asahi Linux Nears Release "Real Soon" For Apple M2 Hardware

While Apple just recently introduced their first M2-powered Apple Silicon devices, thanks to the dedication of Hector Martin with Asahi Linux and not too many breaking changes over the M1, Asahi Linux is looking at "soon" having a Linux release to support the new platform.

As written about at the end of June, Linux porting to the Apple M2 is underway. Within days of receiving the hardware, Hector Martin had Linux booting on the Apple M2. But a lot of peripheral support still needed to be implemented. Since then he's continued chipping away at the Linux bring-up on the Apple M2 MacBooks.

Most recently he's been working on a new Linux driver for supporting the keyboard and touchpad of Apple M2 MacBooks. As of yesterday he's got some code in place for keyboard and nearing working touchpad support -- obviously very important for laptops.

M2 keyboard works. ~1000 lines of Linux driver code and it's not done yet...

Just need to implement sending commands properly and load the multitouch firmware to get the trackpad to work!

— Hector Martin (@marcan42) July 5, 2022

He tweeted that he's aiming for feature parity real soon for Linux on the Apple M2 relative to the M1 Linux support. Additionally, "expect an Asahi Linux release with on-par M2 support Real Soon™."

The current M2 support for the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro can be tracked via the Asahi Linux Wiki. Power management, Thunderbolt, and GPU acceleration are among the big ticket items to still be tackled for making Linux a competitive option on Apple Silicon. In any event it's great seeing all the progress being made for Linux on the M2 and that Apple hasn't thwarted the effort for Linux or other operating systems on their silicon.