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Asahi Linux Now Officially Supports Apple M3 Macs – With Caveats

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Why This Matters

Asahi Linux's expansion to Apple's M3 chips extends the life and openness of Apple Silicon hardware, giving developers and enthusiasts a viable Linux option on modern Macs. But with unfinished GPU acceleration, no sleep support, and dead HDMI ports, it remains a project for tinkerers rather than everyday users. It also highlights the slow grind of reverse-engineering Apple's undocumented hardware and upstreaming that work into the mainline Linux kernel.

Key Takeaways
Worth a Look

Apple MacBook Air (M3) — The M3 MacBook Air is exactly the hardware Asahi Linux just added official support for, so it's a great pick if you want a fanless Apple silicon laptop that can dual-boot macOS and Linux. Its lightweight design and long battery life make it a solid daily driver while Asahi's GPU and sleep support keep maturing.

See Apple MacBook Air (M3) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.

Asahi Linux developers announced today that they are now officially supporting the Linux distribution on Apple M3 powered Macs. With the exception of the Mac Studio M3 Ultra, other M3 / M3 Pro / M3 Max devices should now work with the latest Asahi Linux builds but with some feature caveats.The Asahi Linux developers announced today that the Apple Macs with M3 series SoCs have reached a state now where "almost" everything is supported to a state similar to the older M1 and M2 hardware.

The biggest exception though is the GPU support, which they acknowledge is not yet performant or power efficient for 3D acceleration. They hope to have more GPU progress in the coming months.In addition to the poor GPU support, Asahi Linux on the Apple M3 also does not currently provide sleep support due to the lack of DCP support. Without DCP support, the HDMI port on M3 MacBooks is also not working. This M3 support should cover all Apple devices with the exception of the Mac Studio M3 Ultra.More details on this official support now for the downstream Asahi Linux on Apple M3 Macs can be found via AsahiLinux.org . The upstreaming of all the M3 support remains ongoing. There is the initial M3 support in the mainline Linux kernel for basic boot support but various other patches remain for upstreaming in Linux 7.4+ before it will reach a state similar to Asahi Linux itself.