[svenpeter]

That missing patch is the iommu driver which is currently under review and will hopefully make its way to mainline soon.

Once that one is merged there's already another series to enable PCIe (which needs the iommu driver) which gives us more USB ports, ethernet and with another small patch WiFi. There's also a WIP series for NVMe.

What's missing are then a few smaller things (i2c, spi, keyboard on the macbooks etc.).

And then there are a few bigger tasks left, e.g. thunderbolt support, usb super speed support, support for the secure enclave, and ofc the largest one being the display controller and the GPU.

And once that's all done there's the long tail of making this all work nicely (e.g. power management, making the installation as easy as possible, etc.)

[londons_explore]

And sadly that long tail of work will be completed just as the platform is becoming obsolete...

[freedomben]

From what I've been told, full support as it's becoming obsolete is mostly the point. Running Linux on a highly closed and manufacturer hostile system will never be a good experience. Anyone who wants a Linux machine will buy a frame.work, system76, Lenovo or Dell, etc, not an apple. The point of linux support here is to give the device a longer life once apple drops support. In other words, when the hardware is no longer a sufficient apple machine and is more of a toy, at least it will be possible to put something else on it.

[marcan_42]

You've been told wrong; our goal is absolutely to catch up to Apple's hardware cadence and make Linux on Apple Silicon something people want to run as an alternative to macOS, well within the platform's support lifetime.

[freedomben]

Interesting, thank you. How realistic do you think that goal is? (Honest question, nothing implied)

[marcan_42]

I think it's entirely doable, especially with the interest the platform has. There will always be things macOS does better, but there are also things Linux will do better.

Personally, I'll consider the project at success if we can match or exceed the features and stability of an average x86 laptop running Linux, with the performance and power efficiency advantages that Apple Silicon brings, which I think is totally possible.

[marcan_42]

Apple doesn't throw away their SoC design and start from scratch. Future iterations will share much of the same code. For example, the interrupt controller and the UART hardware haven't really changed since the first iPhones.