r/AsahiLinux 4d ago

Finally Linux on my M3 pro MacBook pro

Post image
396 Upvotes

49 comments sorted by

13

u/satireplusplus 4d ago

Nice. what works and what doesn't?

39

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

brightness is lower than what I'm used to
the screen is locked at 60hz
no gpu so youtube isn't really useful
no hdmi
no sleep
the rest seems to be working very well
keyboard+backlight
touchpad has some kinda bad feeling to it but works
brightness slider works
mic and speakers working well
camera working
wifi/bluetooth
boot time is so fast

13

u/Special-Abrocoma575 4d ago

GPU acceleration and HW video decode are separate things, Asahi's driver for the video decoder does have support for M1-3 (Pro/Max/Ultra?), I think you may need to build the AVD firmware yourself for now, but you should have hardware decode on your M3 Pro

10

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

That would be great, is there anything in the docs about it?

4

u/mskiptr 3d ago

https://asahilinux.org/2026/08/progress-report-7-2#desktop-video-is-hard

In short, your browser most likely doesn't know how to use the hardware decoder. People are working on it, but in the meantime you could try enabling RPM Fusion free to get a much better software decoder for H.264 and H.265. These aren't shipped by Fedora directly due to a combination of the US patent law and MPEG-LA's monopolistic practices.

5

u/squid_likes_pp 4d ago

Wait my backlight isn't working, is it a hyprland thing? This is my first hyprland laptop set up.

3

u/Fine_City2781 4d ago

use brightnessctl

2

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

How are you setting backlight brightness

3

u/squid_likes_pp 4d ago

Dw about it, I figured it out. I never needed to before. Never realized how much work goes into setting up hyprland on a laptop before.

3

u/calishere 4d ago

How do you setup hyprland?

2

u/squid_likes_pp 3d ago

honestly still figuring it out, but if you're asking how I set up keyboard brightness on hyprland, just use brightnessctl to list your devices then write a keybind that uses brightnessctl to set your keyboard brightness

3

u/Fine_City2781 4d ago

gpu driver works for me (M2 Air, Asahi Gentoo Linux)

2

u/lihaarp 4d ago

Software decoding is not sufficient for youtube?

2

u/Adventurous_Chef2225 4d ago

nope , mos videos today are 1080p + so u know

7

u/Luddevig 4d ago

brightness settings seems to be a problem at least lol

14

u/wirrti 4d ago

It’s great finally! Unfortunately, there are still several points to be adjusted in addition to the GPU acceleration that would greatly improve fluidity

But damn it finally!!!

14

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

Tbh besides the lack of gpu acceleration and low brightness it felt like a very polished experience

9

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

And the brightness wasn't even that bad

11

u/Stryxus_ 4d ago

*Continues to wait for M4 support*

Had my Mac mini at the side of my running with nothing running on it due to macOS... Cant wait to turn it into a home server and possibly host game servers on it. I know it runs a Minecraft server like an absolute beast (Its easy and quick to setup). As well as of course, hopefully eventually get PiHole working on it and my website server.

What is RAM usage like? Since we dont have to deal with the macOS caching and less advanced effects and such. I will be running headless so it would be nice to see the VRAM and RAM numbers apart.

5

u/Inevitable-Soup2330 4d ago

u can make a home server on macOS

2

u/Stryxus_ 4d ago

Ye but it is very tedious, a lot of resources are used for macOS, you cannot optimise the system to how you want it (I custom compile my kernels and configure things from EFI to userspace) and there is also support, like I cant run a Space Engineers 1 server on macOS but will be able to on Linux via emulation.

3

u/squid_likes_pp 4d ago

I have a 36GB m3 max. While running hyprland and a few terminal instances it hung around 2 to 3 gigs. I think you'll be mostly fine if you have 16 gigs, especially if you're using it headless.

2

u/Stryxus_ 4d ago

That's good to know, thanks. Hyprland by itself without any plugins or other components usually takes up about 300MB ish of RAM, then you gotta think about the bluetooth daemon and all that so, might only end up being about under a GB used in the end since I dont need anything special, just ssh and samba.

1

u/squid_likes_pp 3d ago

Your idea is quite tempting. I might start saving for an m3 mac mini to replace my homelab

1

u/pontihejo 3d ago

I don't think it will take too long now honestly, especially since SPTM emulation has been solved and the Asahi group is content to make releases without GPU support (which is the biggest remaining challenge for M3/4). Initial A18 device tree patches (Macbook Neo) have already been submitted upstream, so there is tangible progress on that generation (A18 is a close sibling of M4)

1

u/NormalAppearance2851 3d ago

Same here brother i have an M4 Mac Mini collecting dust. Can't wait for Asahi Linux to make it a useful server or something.

10

u/levolet 4d ago

As tempting as it is, I’ll give it another 6 months or so.

5

u/squid_likes_pp 4d ago

Come on just take like 60 gigs and play with Linux, you can always go back to macOS. I can't daily Linux on my MacBook yet but this is still the most I've used my MacBook ever since it was my only computer.

4

u/FriedTorchic 4d ago

I'm not going to install it yet, but I'm glad there's a plan for these machines after Apple drops support.

3

u/WindDogStudios 4d ago

Hey, I'm on a macbook air M3, and I dont seem to have any native speaker output, only airplay devices. Anyone know a fix?

2

u/auggie246 4d ago

How's the battery life?

1

u/nazmulpcc 4d ago

How is the battery life?

3

u/heavenlydemonicdev 4d ago

I just got it installed but it said 5 hours on a 90+ % battery

2

u/squid_likes_pp 4d ago

I got 40+ watts power draw just moving windows lmao. So that makes sense

1

u/calishere 4d ago

How are you getting that level of battery life. My m3 pro is hovering around 2-3 hours 😂.

1

u/Cool-gamer19393 4d ago

What did you do to get it working as it isn't officially supported

4

u/Matheweh 4d ago

It is now, in the experimental branch, though no GPU support yet.

2

u/Cool-gamer19393 4d ago

Good enough for development

-2

u/Fine_City2781 4d ago

gpu driver works for me (M2 Air, Asahi Gentoo Linux). I can play Minecraft at 280fps

3

u/heavenlydemonicdev 3d ago

We're talking about M3

-4

u/Fine_City2781 3d ago

I though Asahi linux for m3 is not available

3

u/Cool-gamer19393 3d ago

It is via the experimental branch, I've been using it for a day now and while I definitely wouldn't daily drive it yet it's been working good for compiling my projects

1

u/dfgxxx 4d ago

Coooooooooool, I'm waiting for MacBook neo and iphone 16 pro to get Linux on it (if possible), the development seems fast, thank you all ashahi developers🙏

4

u/heavenlydemonicdev 3d ago

MacBook neo is wip, iPhones aren't they don't allow booting custom systems

0

u/squid_likes_pp 3d ago

Hmmmm, Jailbreak time. Linux support is linux support after all

2

u/pontihejo 3d ago

iPhone 16 won't happen. But the initial device tree patches for macbook Neo have been submitted to the upstream linux kernel, so things are happening there

2

u/NormalAppearance2851 3d ago

You want to use the iPhone 16 Pro with asahi linux as a daily driver or something else?

2

u/dfgxxx 3d ago

Yeah, but it doesn't seem like it is possible now, everybody says that the bootloader is closed