'I Tried Running Linux On an Apple Silicon Mac and Regretted It'
Source: Slashdot
Background
Installing Linux on a MacBook Air “turned out to be a very underwhelming experience,” according to the tech news site MakeUseOf.
The thing about Apple silicon Macs is that it’s not as simple as downloading an AArch64 ISO of your favorite distro and installing it. Yes, the M‑series chips are ARM‑based, but that doesn’t automatically make the whole system compatible in the same way most traditional x86 PCs are. Pretty much everything in modern MacBooks is custom. The boot process isn’t standard UEFI like on most PCs; Apple uses its own boot chain called iBoot. The same goes for the GPU, power management, USB controllers, and virtually every other hardware component. It is as proprietary as it gets.
The Asahi Linux Project
This is exactly what the team behind Asahi Linux has been working toward. Their goal is to make Linux properly usable on M‑series Macs by building the missing pieces from the ground up.
- Early attempts: I first tried Asahi Linux back in 2023, when the project was still tied to Arch Linux.
- Current state (2026): The main release is now called Fedora Asahi Remix, which, as the name suggests, is built on Fedora rather than Arch.
Major Disappointments
For Linux on Apple Silicon, the article lists three major issues:
- External monitor support – “External monitors don’t work unless your MacBook has a built‑in HDMI port.”
- Software compatibility – “Linux just doesn’t feel fully ready for ARM yet. A lot of applications still aren’t compiled for ARM, so software support ends up being very hit or miss.” (Most of the apps tested with FEX either didn’t run properly or weren’t stable enough to rely on.)
- Network connectivity – Asahi “refused to connect to my phone’s hotspot,” (and it wasn’t an iPhone).