While the feature had been documented and mostly implemented, there was one final missing piece of the puzzle: support for the kmutil configure-boot command, which is what lets you install a non-Apple kernel.
The Asahi Linux project officially kicked off at the beginning of the year, but at that time we were all waiting for one crucial piece: support from Apple for booting alternate kernels on Apple Silicon systems.
The terms have subtly different meanings, but for our purposes you can mostly take them all to mean “64-bit ARM”. AArch64 refers to the 64-bit ARM architecture instruction set ARM64 is what Linux calls its support for 64-bit ARM and ARMv8-A is the ARM CPU architecture specification that includes AArch64. In this report, you will see the terms AArch64, ARM64, and ARMv8-A. The original plan was to do separate updates for January and February, but things were moving so fast it was hard to call a cut-off point, so we ended up with a two-month update. Welcome to the first Asahi Linux Progress Report! In this series we’ll be taking a page from the Dolphin playbook and giving you monthly updates on the progress of the project.īringing up support for a new system-on-chip on Linux is no small task! I hope this series will be educational to everyone and give you a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making Linux work on a brand new device.
