During the month of November of last year the news was released that Héctor Martin (better known as Marcan) I intended to adapt Linux to run on Mac equipped computers with Apple's new ARM chip, the M1.
Héctor has extensive experience in adapting Linux for unusual systems, for example, he is known for porting Linux to Nintendo Switch / Wii, Microsoft Kinect and Sony PlayStation 3/4 (including he was one of the defendants in Sony's sensational lawsuit for circumvention of protection on PlayStation 3).
Since 2000, Marcan has committed to porting Linux systems to various devices and to provide unofficial open source support. His last attempt was to port Linux on Sony PS4 and enable it to run OpenGL / Vulkan compatible Steam games.
About Asahi Linux
For this task Héctor Martin launched a funding campaign on Patreon With which all those interested in the project or supporting Héctor, made their donations so that he could port to Linux for the new Apple M1 series.
Well now the project has officially started and Marcan called it Asahi Linux and created the official website and code repositories.
Regarding the name of the project, it is specified that this "comes from the Japanese name of the McIntosh apple, 旭 (Asahi)".
The Asahi Linux project is reported to be planning to port Linux to a number of Apple Silicon Macs computing devices from Apple's 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro.
Marcan said the goal of the project is not only to make Linux run on these Apple computers, but also to improve it to the point where users can use it as a daily operating system.
The developers emphasize on the project's official website that this is not a jailbreak and no macOS code is used. Therefore, the project is absolute and legal in all aspects.
As long as no macOS code is taken to build Linux support, the result is completely legal to distribute and for use by end users, as it would not be a derivative work of macOS. Hector Martin, founder of Asahi Linux wrote
Among the difficulties to be solved, is la driver encoding for "Apple's fully custom GPU" or delicate points such as energy management. The developer will first tackle the Mac Mini M1 and explained that Asahi Linux will eventually be a remix of Arch Linux ARM.
The reverse engineering for the graphics unit of the Apple Chip has already started and as you can read in the article «Apple M1 GPU Dissection»On Alyssa Rosenzweig's blog.
Our goal is not just to get Linux to run on these machines as a simple technical demonstration, but to polish it to the point where it can be used as a daily operating system. Doing this requires an enormous amount of work, as Apple Silicon is a completely undocumented platform. Hector Martin, founder of Asahi Linux wrote
In addition, it is mentioned that in this job, the Japan-based developer could count on the support of Linus Torvalds And you have to remember that the Linux kernel manager had said last year that he would welcome Linux on recent Apple devices.
"I would love to have one, if it was just Linux ... I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time." The latest Air would be near perfect, except for the OS. I don't have time to play, nor do I want to fight against companies that don't want to help me ”.
Finally, for those interested in the project and / or know the current status of the Linux distribution for Apple Silicon, they should know that the development can be tracked through the Asahi Linux project page on the GitHub development platform.
Because instead of creating a new distro, they contribute to an established one, say Debian or Void.