Asahi Linux Project Makes Progress On USB3, Toward Speaker Support, Keyboard Backlight

The Asahi Linux crew has published their November 2022 status report highlighting recent open-source progress on supporting Apple Silicon M1/M2 devices under Linux.

Good progress continues to be made on fully supporting Apple's modern Arm-based SoC and systems under Linux thanks to the reverse-engineering, open-source community. Some of the latest Asahi Linux milestones in this long effort include:

- Thanks to PHY driver work, the USB3 mode for the Thunderbolt ports should be pretty solid. Prior to this Asahi Linux was operating the Thunderbolt ports as just USB2. Some glitches in the USB3 support are to be expected.

- The integrated MacBook / MacBook Pro / MacBook Air speakers remain disabled by default still but progress is being made on able to safely enable it.

- Headphone jack support is now working across the spectrum of devices after reverse-engineering the CS42L84 headphone codec.

- Keyboard backlight support is now working.

- Continued work around power management.

- Continued improvements to the Asahi Linux installer.

- As reported in prior articles, the Rust-written DRM kernel driver and AGX Gallium3D Mesa driver continue to be under active development for supporting the Apple Silicon graphics.

Apple M2 vs. AMD Rembrandt vs. Intel Alder Lake Linux Benchmarks

The November status report in full can be read via AsahiLinux.org.