Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon in Practice (2022)

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

jakogut

36 points

14 comments

gist.github.comTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Apple SiliconLinuxDesktop Environment

Key topics

Apple Silicon

Linux

Desktop Environment

The post discusses the author's experience running Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, highlighting the progress made and challenges faced, while the discussion revolves around the technical details and potential applications.

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01Story posted
Oct 2, 2025 at 12:48 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 2, 2025 at 1:03 PM EDT
14m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
11 comments in 0-1h
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04Latest activity
Oct 2, 2025 at 4:42 PM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (14 comments)

Showing 14 comments

righthand

3 months ago

3 replies

What does the Venn diagram look like for:

“Linux is too much work so that’s why I use Apple products”

AND

“I’m putting in the work to install partially working Linux on my Apple Mx laptop and loving it”?

Do they share members?

porphyra

3 months ago

1 reply

Apple Macbooks are still class leading in efficiency and build quality, so some Linux tinkerers may still be drawn towards them.

righthand

3 months ago

I would expect that to be the entire case for the 2nd group. My only Apple laptop is a one for work, and my IT department can’t pick a password manager without contracting an agency, so I’m definitely not allowed to install Linux.

dbtc

3 months ago

More like, "Apple hardware is fantastic but I wish I had more control over the software."

airstrike

3 months ago

it's more like "Apple makes great hardware and I prefer Linux pain over macOS pain"

porphyra

3 months ago

1 reply

Asahi Linux totally has graphics acceleration on M1 and M2.

2OEH8eoCRo0

3 months ago

1 reply

What about Thunderbolt or DisplayPort alt mode?

eighthourblink

3 months ago

IIRC, those are not supported as of now.

I have been running Asahi on my M2 MacBook Air for the last ~9 months or so and actually really enjoy it. Showed me the world of aarch64. Battery life could be better but normal low level power usage ranges in the 6 to 7 hour mark. But nothing close to official Apple battery usage.

William_BB

3 months ago

3 replies

How does this compare to Asahi in 2025? In my experience, Asahi's been great

jakogutAuthor

3 months ago

One of the problems is Asahi lacks significant support for the M3/M4, including any kind of graphics acceleration.

https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m3/#soc...

orangea

3 months ago

Asahi is useless to me, and I would assume many others, without USB-C display support.

2OEH8eoCRo0

3 months ago

Still no thunderbolt on M1

Aurornis

3 months ago

Parts of this gist have been updated in May, but sections date back to 2022 and earlier. Some of the links I clicked are no longer relevant, such as the sections about upstreaming parts of code. Since they didn't link the actual patches (just a search query for their author name) I don't know exactly which patches they were referring to or what their status is.

Does anyone have a more up to date resource?

bri3d

3 months ago

A gist is such a weird way to run a project like this!

Basically what this seems to be about is adding full native acceleration support for Mac OS hosts to QEMU (audio, GL, etc.), to enable running a desktop Linux guest effectively, but it's so hard to follow what's going on that I'm not certain what to actually do to get the Best Possible QEMU on OSX Host.

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ID: 45452149Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:43:43 PM

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