When Apple released the first Macs with the M1 chipset, it was uncertain whether any operating systems other than Mac OS could run on them. It soon became apparent that not only was it possible, but that Apple’s developers clearly had in mind.
Soon after, some developers led by Hector “Marcán” Martin got the Linux kernel up and running with rudimentary support for some Mac mini hardware components. Since then, the development of Asahi Linux, as the project is called, has continued at a rapid pace and today most of the hardware is supported on most Apple Silicon Macs.
Last week, another big step was taken towards the goal of a fully functional Linux – the release of the first beta version of the gpu driver. Alisa Rosenzweig, Asahi-Lena, and Dougal Johnson worked for months to understand the architecture and develop the various necessary components.
The first version includes support for opengl 2.1 and opengl es 2.0, two older graphics frameworks for 2D and 3D acceleration that are no longer used, for example, in games, but which allow acceleration of desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE.
Developers write in one blog posts They’ve already come a long way towards opengl 3 support and Ella Stanforth is also working on Vulkan on the side.
The curious adventurer can follow the instructions in the blog post to install the driver.
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