Image: Asahi Linux
Asahi Linux released first public alpha build for users on an Apple M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Max device.
The distro is based on the ARM build of Arch Linux and comes with the KDE Plasma desktop and lots of info.
Users will need at least 53GB of spare storage as the installer downloads up to 4GB of data depending on whether the user wants a Plasma desktop or wants a minimal installation, or even completely UEFI environment then allows other operating systems like OpenBSD will be installed.
The distro explains that it needs space since it has about 2.5 GB for the bootloader and Apple’s firmware, as well as a full copy of the macOS recovery image.
Asahi has no GPU support, nor does it have DisplayPort, Thunderbolt or HDMI ports; the M1 on-chip neural engine is not used; and camera and touch bar are not supported. Full support for USB3, speakers and display controllers is labeled as coming soon.
“Keep in mind that this is still an alpha release, very soon. It’s intended for developers and advanced users; if you decide to install it, we hope you’ll be able to help us by submitting a submission. detailed bug reports and help with debugging,” the distribution said.
“That said, we welcome anyone to try it out – just hope things get a little rough.”
Since Asahi uses 16K pages, a bunch of software doesn’t work including Chromium.
“There is a category of software that will likely never support 16K page sizes: Certain emulators and compatibility layers, including FEX,” the announcement states.
“Android is also affected, in case someone wants to try to run it natively someday. For users of these tools, we’ll provide 4K page size multiplication in the future, after multiplying. changes that make this available upstream.”
Asahi added that during the installation of any operating system on Apple Silicon, it will be verified with Apple’s servers unless the user disables the home function of the phone, but it still requires downloading. some components” from Apple’s CDN.
On the OpenBSD side, they say its hardware compatibility is on par with Asahi.
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