What works in 2026

The Asahi project has shipped continuous progress; check the feature support page for the current state. As of 2026:

  • Working well: CPU (all cores including efficiency cores), NVMe, USB-A/USB-C (data + display + power), Thunderbolt 3/4 (with restrictions), GPU acceleration via the conformant OpenGL 4.6 + Vulkan 1.3 driver, audio (incl. the magical speaker DSP), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, suspend-to-RAM, keyboard, trackpad, internal display at native resolution + HiDPI.
  • Partially working: Some external display DPI modes, certain Thunderbolt eGPUs, microphone array beamforming (basic mic works).
  • Not working: Touch ID / Face ID, hardware video decode acceleration (in progress), neural engine, the M4 GPU on the very latest hardware until upstream catches up.

Prerequisites

  • Apple Silicon Mac (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4 generation; Intel Macs use a completely different install path — rEFInd + a generic distro).
  • macOS 13.5 or newer fully updated.
  • At least 53 GB free disk space (32 GB for Linux, ~20 GB headroom in macOS).
  • Backup of macOS (Time Machine or clone). The installer modifies the partition table; risk is low but non-zero.

Run the installer

From a working macOS terminal:

curl https://alx.sh | sh

This script:

  1. Checks the Mac model and macOS version.
  2. Asks how much disk space to allocate to Linux. 60+ GB is comfortable.
  3. Shrinks the macOS APFS container.
  4. Downloads the chosen distro (default: Asahi Fedora KDE or Asahi Fedora Minimal).
  5. Creates the partitions, copies the installer payload.
  6. Walks through SEP (Secure Enclave Processor) policy creation — you confirm boot-policy changes by reauthenticating in Recovery Mode.
  7. Reboots and finishes the install on first boot.

The installer is the only safe path — it handles the firmware coordination that Apple Silicon requires for any non-macOS OS boot. Don't try to manual-install with dd; the Secure Boot / SEP rituals are non-trivial.

First boot

The Mac boots into a picker that lists macOS and Linux. Pick Linux; the Fedora KDE / GNOME login screen comes up. Trackpad, keyboard, Wi-Fi, audio — all work.

To make Linux the default boot target: System Preferences → Startup Disk in macOS, pick the Asahi disk. Or hold the power button at boot to get the picker.

Distro choices

  • Asahi Fedora — the reference distro maintained by the Asahi team itself. Most-tested, most-current kernel patches. Recommended.
  • Asahi Arch Linux ARM — community-maintained; rolling release. The earlier reference distro; less actively supported now.
  • NixOS on Asahi — community port. Works but needs the Asahi-specific kernel + firmware overlays.
  • Debian / Ubuntu — possible with manual kernel configuration, not a one-click experience.

Performance characteristics

  • CPU performance is excellent — Apple Silicon's per-core throughput is best-in-class for ARM, and Linux fully utilizes both performance and efficiency cores via scheduler awareness.
  • Battery life approaches macOS — within 10-20% for most workloads, thanks to upstream powerd integration and the conservative GPU power state machine.
  • GPU performance via Asahi's Vulkan driver is genuinely good — Mesa's "Honeykrisp" Vulkan driver is conformant and can run Steam games (via Proton) at native resolution.
  • Memory bandwidth is the standout — the unified-memory architecture means GPU + CPU share LPDDR5 at staggering bandwidths. ML inference workloads (Ollama on a small model) are surprisingly fast.

Things to know about

  • x86 software via Rosetta / box86 — fex-emu is the path for running x86-64 Linux binaries on ARM. Performance is acceptable for non-hot-path use.
  • Docker — works native ARM64. Multi-arch images that include arm64 (most modern ones) just work; x86-only images run under qemu-user-static (slow).
  • Browsers — Firefox native ARM is excellent. Chromium native ARM works. Both have hardware video decode pending on the upstream VPU driver.
  • External display via USB-C / DisplayPort Alt Mode — works for most displays at standard refresh rates. HDMI via dongle: usually fine.
  • Keyboard backlight, ambient light sensor — work via the Asahi-provided sysfs interfaces.

Upgrading the kernel

Asahi Fedora ships a custom kernel package; updates come from the Asahi-maintained repo. Standard dnf upgrade picks them up. For testing pre-release kernels (e.g. enabling new SoC support sooner), see the Asahi project's testing channel instructions.

Removing Asahi cleanly

From macOS, run:

curl https://alx.sh/wipe-linux | sh

The script reclaims the Linux partition into the macOS APFS container, restores the original boot configuration via the SEP rituals, and reboots into macOS-only. Clean.

Why this matters

Apple Silicon Macs are some of the highest-performance, lowest-power laptops shipping in 2026. The Asahi project means you can have that hardware running Linux full-time, with a community-vetted upstream kernel, GPU driver, and complete documentation of every reverse-engineered piece of the SoC. For people who want a "MacBook-quality ARM Linux laptop" — nothing else comes close.

What it isn't

  • Not Apple-supported. Apple doesn't actively help (or actively hurt) the project; the work is volunteer + a few full-time contributors.
  • Not zero-effort — you accept being on a less-trodden path. Distro choice is more limited; not every Linux package is tested on ARM.
  • Not for production servers — the project's focus is the desktop / laptop case. Server use is possible but undocumented.