Apple M1 support on Linux?

Hello world,

Is there any sight on native (arch) linux support on the Apple M1 platform?

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Nope. likely never. apple has that hardware on lock.

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No Tux, no Bux

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It’s being worked on. Nowhere near close to being a daily driver yet tho https://asahilinux.org/

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Will be years before this is remotely usable, is my guess, so best not even bank on it

I mean, it boots and works so it’s not like it’s a complete pipedream. But there’s no hardware acceleration for GPU/etc. yet.

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Eh. By usable, I meant full functionality and end-user friendly. Lol kinda similar to how we can get Doom to run on a fridge, but no one would suggest actually playing the game like that :slight_smile:

Edit:

Not saying impossible/pipe dream, btw, just that it’s years down the line, so I don’t think anyone making decisions today should factor it in hardware purchases

Oh for sure, I wouldn’t buy M1 with the plans to run Linux on it. If that’s the goal, check back in a year or so and it might be getting close to “usable” although definitely won’t be 100%.

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OpenBSD is also working on it.

https://www.openbsd.org/70.html

This is true for internal hard drive but not the system overall (booted from external storage).

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Okay, that’s an interesting problem to have; why is the internal boot drive not accessible?

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The T2 sits between the processor and the storage, so presumably no T2 driver yet.

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Huh; can’t even be mad about it, that’s pretty smart security/privacy design

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Im afraid since Apple has complete control of the chip, they will do everything in their power to wrestle absolute and total control.

If you stopped buying Apple products because you could prolong its life with Linux. We can only guess what happens if people/devs interfere with Apple’s income stream.

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I don’t know the technical particulars but the hardware encryption prevents it from being usable. I assume there’s some sort of signing involved similar to secure boot where only a verified OS can use the drive. Plus T2 is closed source… but even if it wasn’t I think you’d have a signing/verification issue.

Even VMWare which has previously been blessed by Apple for ESXi use on certain Apple hardware has not been allowed to use T2 and must boot from external storage.

I mean there’s a pretty big argument to be made here for hardware level security should always be encouraged, even if it inconveniences us. S’why I’m in favour of the TPM on windows

Makes sense. Not the kind of thing I’d ever propose making open source anyway, honestly.

edit:

oh, god I kicked the hornets nest ಠ_ಠ

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Im sure stupid people can defeat any hardware security module on a computer.

You build a module to defeat the stupid people and the universe will evolve stupid people that will defeats your chip.

I’m pro-open source in this case (and in most cases). It could be open source and still be just as secure as it is now (including preventing all 3rd party OS’s), plus reap the benefits of being open source. That would potentially include becoming even more secure…

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If that was their goal they would just lock the bootloader and that would be that, like they do on iOS. Clearly, they’re at least somewhat open to other operating systems since they haven’t done that.

This is most likely the case. If you don’t boot into macOS via the secure boot chain, you (probably) won’t have access to the correct keys to communicate with the T2.

Lol have fun with that one bud, I used to work for a company that included cryptographic hardware modules in its product and there are pretty extensive anti-reverse engineering technologies that go into that.

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Well its not just stupid people. You also have the polar opposites, your APTs and what not constantly digging into any hardware security stuff.

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You could reverse engineer the hardware, but you’re not going to break the underlying security mechanisms (AES256 or whatever they happen to be using). You would merely know how they were implemented.

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