It took a few months, but Linux has now received support for M1 Macs with Linux Kernel 5.13. This comes after several months of testing, including its Release Candidate version first being announced more than a month ago.
The new 5.13 Kernel adds support for several chips based on the ARM architecture — including the Apple M1. This means that users will be able to run Linux natively on the new M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and 24-inch iMac.
It was already possible to run Linux on M1 Macs via virtual machines and even with a port from Corellium, but none of these alternatives run natively — which means they don’t take advantage of the maximum performance of the M1 chip. However, some developers had been working to include native support for M1 in the Linux Kernel, and now this has become a reality.
As spotted by Phoronix, Linux 5.13 brings “initial but early support for the Apple M1 with basic support but not yet accelerated graphics and a lot more to iron out moving ahead.”
The new Linux Kernel 5.13 brings security features like the Landlocked LSM, Clang CFI support, and optionally randomizing the kernel stack offset at each system call. There’s also FreeSync HDMI support
The announcement of the release of Linux Kernel 5.13 was made by Linus Torvalds this Sunday on his blog:
So we had quite the calm week since rc7, and I see no reason to delay 5.13… Of course, if the last week was small and calm, 5.13 overall is actually fairly large. In fact, it’s one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16k commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2k developers… And with 5.13 out the door, that obviously means that the merge window for 5.14 will be starting tomorrow. I already have a few pull requests for it pending, but as usual, I’d ask people to give the final 5.13 at least a quick test before moving on to the exciting new pending stuff.
