Linux compatibility on ARM Macs is becoming more and more complete

The Asahi Project has made great progress recently. The developers have even taken an important step by doing better than Apple.

It’s not just macOS that you find on MacBooks or Mac Minis. If Windows is a recurring tenant of these computers, Linux is obviously not left out.

However, the introduction of Apple Silicon chips has changed things somewhat, complicating the work of developers who, don’t worry, are working hard to get back to normal. This is evidenced by the impressive work of the team behind Linux Asahi, a port of the Tux operating system for Mac ARM.

Go further than Apple

Asahi has been in the works for three years, a period during which regular updates have made the project ever more complete and usable. Latest achievement to date: this port of Linux now supports the latest versions of OpenGL and OpenGL ES, in versions 4.6 and 3.2.

In a blog post, Alyssa Rosenzweig pointed out that these graphics drivers had to go ” more than 100,000 tests » to be deemed API compliant, but there are still some limitations. The developer emphasizes, for example, that the chip “ M1 is not compatible with graphics standards newer than OpenGL ES 3.1 ”, and 4.1 for OpenGL at all. So the team had to find some tricks for devices using this generation of processors.

“ Geometry shaders, tessellation, and transform feedback become compute shaders. The Cull distance becomes a transformed interpolated value. The clip control becomes an epilogue of the vertex shader “, explains Rosenzweig, “ The list is long “. This work on graphics drivers for Asahi takes a lot of time, because Apple only supports versions of OpenGL and OpenGL ES that are more than… 10 years old.

A long work that progresses well

According to Rosenzweig, the Vulkan implementation is, for its part, “ on the right track “. In the meantime, MoltenVK can help transition to Metal, the API that Apple has been focusing on for some time now, and which is more modern than OpenGL.

Support for more graphics APIs is essential for the Asahi project. It should, for example, allow you to run native applications under Linux, and even take advantage of Valve’s Proton. The world doesn’t seem to want to stop running games on MacBooks, even with a different operating system.

Asahi is also taking the opportunity to support more and more components of MacBooks. On models equipped with M1 and M2 chips, users can use the webcam and trackpad, change the keyboard backlight, activate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and above all benefit from graphics acceleration. Impressive. If the OS does not yet fully exploit the Thunderbolt ports or the Touch ID sensor, the Touchbars are now included, as are the HDMI ports, which can even display 4k resolutions.

The team is still working on initial compatibility with M3 chips, which will still take a little time. Indeed, the project’s developers rely mainly on Mac Minis, which are not yet equipped with the latest Apple chips.

Source : Ars Technica