After a very active past few days, security startup developers Corellium have followed their word so far to publish the Apple Silicon patches on the Linux kernel list for possible upstream in the future, allowing the Linux kernel to compete with Apple M1 start hardware.
Corellium developers sent out their first set of seven spots this morning under a “request for comment” flag. These are the minimum changes needed to get Linux up and running on current Apple M1 ARM-based hardware.
Linux is now fully usable on the Mac mini M1. Start from USB with a full Ubuntu desktop (rpi). Network works via a USB c-dongle. Update includes support for USB, I2C, DART. We’ll make changes to our GitHub and a tutorial later today. Thanks to the @CorelliumHQ span ❤️🙏 pic.twitter.com/uBDbDmvJUG
– Chris Wade (@cmwdotme) 20 January 2021
It was the weekend that Corellium started posting their work from Linux on the Apple M1. This is now to the extent that they can get the Raspberry Pi ARMv8 desktop screenshot from Ubuntu on Apple M1 hardware to a GUI, although it does not speed up hardware. The Apple M1 graphics support will keep the big elephant in the room, given the huge challenges of setting up a brand new OpenGL / Vulcan driver stack and running all the reverse engineering first under macOS.
The initial patches posted for the Linux kernel mailing list contain the necessary bits for FIQ interrupts, WFI hook, a new driver like the Apple AIC interrupt controller, and an Apple CPU startup manager. The DeviceTree section, other driver support for various components on these new Apple Macs and related pieces are still being worked on. The initial RFC patches for the Linux kernel can be found at lore.kernel.org.
It will probably take a while before everything is well reviewed, tested and streamed, but at least good progress is being made. It’s surprising and exciting to see how fast this education takes place, though GPU support will be a long journey for those hoping to one day use these ARM-based Macs as a viable Linux / laptop computer.
Corellium’s work-in-progress code for their Apple M1 core is streamed via the Linux-M1 Git repository.