Corellium Posts Very Early Linux Port To Apple M1 Macs

Apple-focused security/virtualization startup Corellium has posted a very primitive build of Linux for Apple M1 Mac devices.

Corellium is one of several efforts working to bring bare metal Linux to Apple's new ARM based systems. This week the developers involved got the Linux kernel booting on M1 Macs but still is in early form. In fact, the initial build does not have working USB yet but that is said to be imminent. Obviously this is also only booting in console mode and any Apple M1 graphics support will be a long way out... It's probably unlikely seeing a satisfactory Linux desktop experience on Apple M1 hardware in 2021.

We had some spare time today so we ported Linux to the M1. Releasing tomorrow #fridayfun pic.twitter.com/dCrXApyKef

— Corellium (@CorelliumHQ) January 16, 2021

A new build with SMP and USB support working is expected to be posted on Sunday.

Here is a very early beta of Linux on the m1 for *advanced users only*. https://t.co/pFLgksZsdw if you don't know how to run this then wait till tomorrow when the more complete release with USB, SMP is posted (with instructions).

— Chris Wade (@cmwdotme) January 17, 2021

Corellium has said they will be releasing all of their code to this Apple Silicon port as well as "actively looking to upstream it", but as of writing they don't seem to have yet posted any patches / Git repositories for their code. Hopefully that will come soon.

Once the Linux support is a bit more robust we'll certainly try to benchmark it on an Apple Mac Mini M1 for fun... But for most users this won't be too practical at least for a long while until there is the support upstreamed and eventually the separate Asahi Linux effort that is also working towards reverse-engineering the Apple M1 GPU. In any case, it's surprising to see Linux already booting on Apple Silicon albeit in primitive form.