The first Asahi Linux Alpha Release is here

It's been a long while since we updated the blog! Truth be told, we wanted to write a couple more progress reports, but there was always one more thing"... So, instead, we decided to take the plunge and publish the first public alpha release of the Asahi Linux reference distribution!

We're really excited to finally take this step and start bringing Linux on Apple Silicon to everyone. This is only the beginning, and things will move even more quickly going forward!

This is an absolutely stunning effort and achievement by the Asahi team, but as a mere user, this whole thing does not exactly instill me with the confidence needed to buy Apple hardware to run Linux on it. There's no denying M1 hardware is amazing, but the idea of being entirely at the mercy of whatever Apple decides to do with the firmware and boot process seems like a terrible place to be in. That being said, few people will care about that possible issue, and for them, this is great news.

It also trickles down to other projects:

It has taken a while, but I'm pleased to announce that OpenBSD/arm64 works well enough on Apple M1 systems for some wider testing. A major milestone was reached with the release of the Asahi Linux installer.

Both Asahi and OpenBSD are available on all M1 Macs, except the Studio, since it's too new. Also, quite a few things do not work yet, such as GPU acceleration, sleep, webcams, Thunderbolt, Bluetooth, video acceleration, and a bunch more.