Linux: Coming Soon to M1 Macbooks

Regardless of the chipset or original intended use of any computer system, someone somewhere is going to want to try and run Linux on it. And why not? Linux is versatile and free to use as well as open-source, so it’s quite capable of running on almost anything. Of course, it takes a little while for the Linux folk to port the software to brand new hardware, but it’s virtually guaranteed that it’s only a matter of time before Linux is running on even the most locked-down of hardware, like the M1 MacBooks.

[Hector Martin] aka [marcan] has been hard at work getting Linux up and running on the latest Apple offerings with their ARM-based M1 processors. Since these are completely divorced from their x86 product line the process had to be worked from the ground up which included both booting Linux and modifying the kernel to include support for the hardware. [marcan] has a lot of hardware working such as the USB ports and the SD card slot, and notes that his setup is even compatible with the webcam notch included in the latest batch of MacBooks.

There are a few things still missing. He’s running Arch and doesn’t have the GPU configured yet, so all of the graphics are rendered in software. But he has put the computer through the wringer including running some computationally-intense software for nearly a full day before realizing that the machine wasn’t charging, which did not make much difference in performance. These machines are indeed quite capable with their new ARM chipsets and hopefully his work going forward will bring Linux to the rest of us who still use Macs even if they don’t want to run macOS.