Asahi Linux improves Apple Silicon
- Asahi Linux said Sunday its latest progress report brings a rebuilt installer pipeline to Apple Silicon Macs, after nearly two years without a CDN installer update and mounting breakage for newer kernels. - The project said the previous installer tag dated to June 2024, and that kernel 6.18 changes to Apple USB device trees had made fresh UEFI-only live-media boots fail until automation landed. - Asahi also said Fedora Asahi Remix 44 is still targeted for April 28, alongside Linux support work spanning M1 through M4 Macs. (asahilinux.org)
Apple Silicon Macs use custom boot code and hardware descriptions, so Linux installers have to match the machine closely before the kernel can even start. (asahilinux.org) Asahi Linux said on April 26 that it has rebuilt its installer pipeline after letting the CDN-hosted installer go almost two years without an update. (asahilinux.org) The project said the previous installer tag was from June 2024. It said that gap became a problem as upstream Linux work changed device-tree bindings used to describe Apple hardware. (asahilinux.org) Asahi’s installer can do a UEFI-only setup, which shrinks macOS and installs only the pieces needed to boot another operating system. Those pieces include m1n1 stage 1, device trees, and U-Boot. (asahilinux.org 1) (asahilinux.org 2) That lightweight path matters for people booting live media, including specialized Gentoo images with Asahi support. If the installer’s bundled device trees and the kernel disagree, the machine will not boot correctly. (asahilinux.org) Asahi said kernel 6.18 forced several changes to m1n1 and the Apple USB device-tree bindings. The result, it said, was that booting 6.18-and-newer kernels from live media became impossible on fresh UEFI-only installs. (asahilinux.org) The fix was to separate the manifest of installable images into the `asahi-installer-data` repository and automate deployment with GitHub workflows. Asahi said every push to the main installer branch now builds a dev installer, and every Git tag publishes the stable one. (asahilinux.org) The report also said Fedora Asahi Remix 44 remains on track for release on or within a few days of Fedora Linux 44 on April 28. New KDE Plasma installs will pick up features that arrived with Plasma 6.6. (asahilinux.org) Fedora Asahi Remix is Asahi’s flagship Linux distribution for Apple Silicon Macs, installed from macOS with a `curl | sh` command. The current public Fedora Asahi page still lists Fedora Linux 43 as the latest release on the site. (asahilinux.org) (docs.fedoraproject.org) Asahi’s documentation now breaks feature support out by M1, M2, M3, and M4 families, underscoring how the project has expanded beyond the first 2020 M1 Macs. Sunday’s update was less about a new laptop model than about making future Apple Silicon Linux installs easier to keep working. (asahilinux.org 1) (asahilinux.org 2)
