If you’ve been waiting to run Linux on your M1 Mac, we have good news: Linux 6.2, which was released this week, adds upstream support for the M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra. However, there are some serious caveats.
The new Linux 6.2 is considered stable enough for distribution, but according to an Asahi Linux support document, many features on Apple silicon are still labeled as a work in progress and not ready for wider testing or distribution, such as Thunderbolt, speakers, and microphones. Other features, including the webcam, Touch ID, and the Touch Bar are listed as TBA (to be announced), which means that they’re not even being worked on at the time of the posting.
Despite the missing features, Linux 6.2 is functional enough for a user to do some work and is expected to be used as the default kernel for popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora. Linux 6.2 also includes support for Intel Arc graphics, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series GPU, and updated drivers.
Linus Torvalds, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, says version 6.2 is “not a sexy LTS [long-term support] release,” but the support for Apple silicon is definitely notable. Getting Linux to run on Apple’s M-series chips has been an arduous task for the Linux community. The first build of Linux to run on an M1 Mac mini was created by Asahi Linux last July.