Linux Can Boot On Apple's M1 Pro But More Work Remains

Last month Apple announced the M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs while already the very latest Linux patches originally written for the Apple M1 that launched last year paired with some small changes is allowing the open-source platform to boot on the M1 Pro MacBook.

Hector Martin with the Asahi Linux project has been working on bringing up Apple's newest hardware under Linux via crowd-funding. Today he was able to get Linux booted to a shell on the M1 Pro MacBook with working USB ports. With some changes on top of all the other Linux M1 work carried out over the past year by Hector and others, he was able to achieve this milestone relatively quickly.

He has confirmed SMP, IRQs, IPIs, frame-buffer console, DART, USB (including power delivery), I2C, and GPIO as working with the M1 Pro. Next up he is looking more at PCI Express, especially for bringing up SD card reader and WiFi support. There also isn't yet storage support but the hope is that won't be a big burden. Keyboard and trackpad support for the Apple M1 also is still relying on a proof-of-concept SPI driver.

Linux on the M1 Pro status: boots to a shell with working USB ports

Working: SMP, IRQs, IPIs, framebuffer console, DART, USB, USB-PD, I²C, GPIO. Next I'm looking at PCIe (WiFi & SD card reader). pic.twitter.com/vrowyul4y3

— Hector Martin 💉💉 (@marcan42) November 2, 2021

As with the Apple M1 from last year, the massive elephant in the room remains bringing up the Apple M1 graphics with a DRM kernel driver and OpenGL/Vulkan drivers that are good enough for day-to-day use if really wanting to enjoy Linux on M1 class hardware. Work is underway there but obviously is a huge undertaking if wanting performant and full-featured graphics acceleration.

In any event, it's great to see the M1 Pro already being able to boot Linux and that there are no massive changes required over the M1 Linux work going on since last year.