Apple Focused Security / Virtualization Launch Corellium has posted a very primitive version of Linux for Apple M1 Mac devices.
Corellium is one of several efforts to bring bare metal Linux to Apple’s new ARM-based systems. This week, the affected developers booted the Linux kernel on M1 Macs, but it is still in early form. In fact, the first build doesn’t have a working USB yet, but that would be forthcoming. Of course, this is also booting in console mode only and any Apple M1 graphics support will be a long way off … It is likely unlikely that there will be a satisfactory Linux desktop experience on Apple M1 hardware in 2021.
We had some free time today, so we ported Linux to the M1. Releasing tomorrow #fridayfun pic.twitter.com/dCrXApyKef
– Corellium (@CorelliumHQ) January 16, 2021
A new build with SMP and USB support is expected to work on Sunday.
Here’s a very early beta of Linux on the m1 for * advanced users only *. https://t.co/pFLgksZsdw if you don’t know how to do this wait until tomorrow when the more complete release with USB, SMP is posted (with instructions).
– Chris Wade (@cmwdotme) January 17, 2021
Corellium has said they will release all of their code to this Apple Silicon port and are “actively looking upstream,” but at the time of writing, they don’t seem to have posted any patches / Git repositories for their code yet. Hopefully that will come soon.
Once the Linux support is a bit more robust, we’ll definitely try benchmarking it on an Apple Mac Mini M1 for fun … But for most users, this won’t be too practical, at least for a long time until there is support upstream and ultimately the separate Asahi Linux effort that is also reverse-engineering the Apple M1 GPU. In any case, it is surprising to see that Linux is already booting on Apple Silicon, albeit in a primitive form.