Asahi Linux manages 2023 MacBooks and waits for desktop Macs

Asahi Linux manages 2023 MacBooks and waits for desktop Macs – MacGeneration

Asahi Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution optimized for Apple Silicon Macs, proprietary hardware that requires a lot of reverse engineering to properly support. This explains why new hardware releases take some time before you can install this distribution along with macOS. That’s why MacBook Air and MacBook Pro released in 2023 are now supported, just a few months after their release.

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The developers behind this project promise just as comprehensive support on these machines as on models that came onto the market between 2020 and 2022. This is no small feat as much of the hardware required new drivers as Apple changed almost everything between the M1 and M2 models. The webcam, for example, required a major rewrite of the driver written for older models. Even the speakers are handled differently, with much faster handling.

This tedious work must also be done for each model within the range, with drivers configured differently for the 15-inch MacBook Air and for a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 Max chip. Only portable Macs are currently supported, with desktop models (Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro) to follow later. And when the M2 generation is fully managed, we will have to start again with the M3 generation, which we expect next year…

MacBook Air and MacBook Pro M3 would all arrive in 2024