Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon in Practice

Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon in Practice

I bought M1 MacBook Air. It is the fastest computer I have, and I have been a GNOME/GNU/Linux user for long time. It is obvious conclusion that I need practical Linux desktop environment on Apple Silicon.

Fortunately, Linux already works on Apple Silicon/M1. But how practical is it?

Two native ports exist. Corellium. It is obsolete. https://corellium.com/blog/linux-m1 Asahi Linux. It is greatly improving and may be usable for certain workloads, but it lacks e.g. graphics acceleration for now. https://asahilinux.org

QEMU can run code on CPU natively. But what about GPU? Unfortunately, QEMU is also not optimized so much for macOS.

As I needed Linux desktop right now, I decided to hack QEMU. The most difficult challenge is obviously accelerated graphics, but there is Virgil 3D; a bridge to expose host OpenGL to the guest. https://virgil3d.github.io

It unfortunately didn't work on macOS host. So I just made it work. That's it. Here is a video demonstrating OpenGL on Linux on Apple Silicon/M1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0bVlVQU2JQ&list=PLesZxBYUPr3wdU3sONUv4Q7UDOg1Dn_Ue&index=4

Modifications

QEMU

... continue reading