Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Asahi Linux 7.1 adds M3 support, fixes macOS 27 boot issues, and progresses toward a custom video decoder firmware.
Asahi Linux 7.1 brings M3 support for audio, CPU frequency switching, big.LITTLE scheduling, and PCIe, WiFi, Bluetooth, NVMe, keyboard, and trackpad. A macOS 27 beta broke booting by ignoring an APFS boot flag; the installer now sets it automatically, and a fix for existing installs is available. A new custom firmware for the Apple Video Decoder (AVD) enables basic H.264 decoding via a V4L2 driver, using a basic stateless firmware that just installs interrupt handlers and applies tunables. M1N1 1.6.0 requires Rust for stage 2 builds and moves GPU initialization there.
What commenters are saying
Commenters overwhelmingly praised the Asahi team's technical achievement. A minority questioned the effort's long-term viability, arguing resources should go to truly open platforms instead of Apple's closed hardware. Others countered that the project saves millions of laptops from landfills and that Apple Silicon's IOMMU sandboxing is more secure than Intel's ME or AMD's PSP. There was disagreement about whether Apple should officially support Linux: some saw strong goodwill ROI for a small engineering investment, while others noted Apple's services profit margins give it little incentive. A commenter noted m1n1's tethered boot capability for automation and debugging.