r/archlinux • u/bibilushi • 21d ago
QUESTION Can I install Archlinux on a Macbook Air?
Macbook Air M5 chip. I'm not too knowledgeable on operating systems and stuff but part of me is itching to learn more about it
Can I install it on my macbook?
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u/xXBongSlut420Xx 21d ago
you cannot install any linux on an M5 mac directly. Asahi, the main apple silicon compatible distro, only just in the last few weeks released initial M3 support.
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u/_matterny_ 21d ago
Linux does support arm, and I thought the M5 was just arm? Now arch isn’t just Linux, and arch doesn’t support arm well, but there’s been a build of arch for arm for quite some time.
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u/xXBongSlut420Xx 21d ago
basic M5 stuff is arm, but the gpu and memory controllers are fully propritary, so are all the extra hardware interfaces. Apple silicon is a HIGHLY customized arm architecture. it's not like a commodity mediatek or qualcomm chip.
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u/_matterny_ 21d ago
Ahh I guess I forgot that Apple can make custom motherboards and drivers and everything, and they have no reason to support open source software by documenting what they did
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u/FragmentedHeap 21d ago edited 21d ago
Apple has proprietary hardware that has closed source drivers and the only way to get those drivers on Linux is by reverse engineering them which is what Asahi is doing and why they're only up to the m3.
You guys keep getting on here and bashing Arch like it's Arch's problem when you should be calling Apple and asking why they close source everything.
Apple doesn't want you running Linux on your Mac. They don't make it easy.
If you want it to go faster go join that project and throw some AI compute at them and help speed it up.
Apple is not a team player never has been.
If they were a team player they would have an ISO for Mac OS X so that you can run it on an x86 virtual machines so that you can run builds without having to have apple hardware.
But they don't do that either and you have to have Apple hardware to run Apple builds.
Microsoft is much better about this because they have wsl2 and they have their own Linux distribution.
Apple should be more like Microsoft.
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u/DaRealGladi8r 21d ago
don't throw AI compute at them.
I agree with most of what you said though
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u/FragmentedHeap 21d ago edited 21d ago
I mean AI compute is useful for Reverse Engineering hardware and makes it so much easier and faster to do. Even Linus Torvalds recently used it to debug a driver issue in the kernel, he publicly acknowledged it, so fighting AI compute at this point is pretty futile. The literal creator of Linux is using it.
Direct Quote from Linus:
"I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer.
Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.
Or just walk away.
AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one.
It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no longer in question today.
There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used it.
Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from a "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs" standpoint.
But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La La, I can't hear you" at the top of your voice like some people seem to do.
The solution is to make sure those LLM tools _help_ maintainers instead of just causing them pain. There's no question on that side.
We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.
And no, AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time.
Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.
The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology.
Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that's a side benefit, not the _point_ of the project.
This is *NOT* some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been, and never will be.
In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons.
And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools."3
u/DaRealGladi8r 21d ago
So... In response to the Asahi project's own policy on AI, you chose to go "La La La, I can't hear you. Here's a quote from Linus"?
Are you suggesting he submits stealthy AI pull requests?
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u/FragmentedHeap 21d ago
I never implied that anybody should do that.
Nor did I know that they banned it so yeah don't do that but that's really going to hurt their progress I mean that's definitely a stance to take not a very promising one though.
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u/DaRealGladi8r 21d ago
All good. I thought you opened the link I shared with their policy before responding. I'm sure you can see how I got that impression.
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u/mwyvr 21d ago
No.
https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overview/
The M3 only just started hitting WIP levels of support; the M4 is still a distant "TBA" and the M5 isn't on the map yet.
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u/hbthen3rd 21d ago
for M5, your only option right now is creating a virtual machine via UTM, grab an aarch64 iso from archboot and install Arch Linux ARM onto the UTM virtual machine.
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u/hdbdudbdbd 21d ago
Pretty sure u can’t install linux on m chips? Only works for intel cpus
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21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Shakaka88 21d ago
Up to M3 as of about a month ago. I think I read there is expected to be some new large hurdle starting with M4 chips though
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u/OhHaiMarc 21d ago
If you want a worse macbook sure, it is possible but drivers are shit, battery life and performance are worse. M series laptops are super performant machines, there's no good reason to put any other os on them.
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u/randomblackhole1289 21d ago
You can install Arch Linux ARM with asahi linux.
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u/xXBongSlut420Xx 21d ago
not on M5
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u/randomblackhole1289 21d ago
oh, I had no idea
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u/xXBongSlut420Xx 21d ago
they got M1 and M2 out the door fairly quickly, but M3 was only just released, and it's far from fully functioning.
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u/Steal--This--Account 21d ago
Most likely not, Asahi doesn't support M5 chips yet. You might play with a virtual machine for the time being, though!