Three years after Apple launched its M3 chips, the mainline Linux kernel is finally set to boot on them. The milestone arrives with Linux 7.2. Yet the achievement feels more like a starting line than a finish.
Patches queued for the kernel add minimal device trees for M3-based systems. These cover the iMac 24-inch from 2023, the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air models from 2024, and the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The trees enable the CPU cores, interrupt controller, power states, watchdog, serial console, pin controller, I2C bus and boot framebuffer. Notebooks gain PWM control for keyboard backlighting. Some models include the CD321x USB Type-C port controller.
Minimal Bring-Up Leaves Most Hardware Idle
That’s it. No display output beyond the basic framebuffer. No storage access in the upstream trees. No GPU. No WiFi. The result? A kernel that boots to a serial console and an initramfs. Nothing more. Sven Peter, who sent the pull request, put it plainly. “These are enough to boot Linux on these devices to a simple serial console but future work is required to make these machines useful for end users.” (Phoronix, June 2026)
Janne Grunau authored the nine patches that define the M3 device trees. His cover letter lists exactly which components made the cut. The list stops short. Everything else stays out. And the gap matters. Apple moved the architecture forward from M2 to M3. Registers changed. Power management evolved. The Asahi Linux team, already small, now faces fresh reverse-engineering tasks on top of upstreaming earlier work.
But progress exists. Downstream, the Asahi project has pushed further. Michael Reeves and Alyssa Milburn contributed patches for PCIe, MacBook keyboards and trackpads, the SMC-based real-time clock and reboot controller, and the NVMe storage controller. Those changes bring M3 support roughly to the level of the original M1 alpha release. “While we aren’t quite ready to enable installation on M3 machines via the Asahi Installer, progress is being made. Stay tuned for more!” the project wrote in its April 2026 progress report. (Asahi Linux)
Some testers already reach a desktop. One Asahi contributor booted Fedora Asahi Remix to KDE Plasma on an M3 MacBook. The image showed a working environment. Impressive on paper. Less so in practice. The system relied on LLVMpipe for rendering. No GPU acceleration. CPU cores stayed busy drawing the desktop. Battery life turned atrocious. “Apple M3 and newer has been a struggle,” noted one Phoronix report from January 2026. Performance stayed slow. Power draw stayed high.
The official Asahi feature matrix tells the same story in shorthand. For the M3 series, GPU sits at WIP. Display controller support is TBA. Thunderbolt, video decode, and several power domains remain works in progress or to be announced. USB, NVMe, WiFi and PCIe show partial downstream support but need more polishing before they land in mainline. The installer still refuses to target M3 hardware. (Asahi Linux Documentation)
Power management offers one bright spot. New PMP drivers reduced idle consumption by about 20 percent on M1 Pro, Max and Ultra chips. The same code needs validation on M3. Early signs suggest gains are possible. Yet the team holds back from enabling it by default until testing completes.
Why the delay? Resources. The Asahi project depends on a handful of dedicated reverse engineers. They balance upstream kernel submissions with downstream fixes and distribution work. Fedora Asahi Remix 43 and 44 added better M1 and M2 support, improved Plasma integration and automated firmware handling. M3 support trails because the team first cleared technical debt from earlier chips.
Graphics remains the largest obstacle. The Apple GPU driver, still under heavy development, must handle the M3’s updated architecture. Until that driver reaches mainline and gains M3 compatibility, software rendering will dominate. Battery life will suffer. Desktop fluidity will lag. And users will stay on macOS or wait.
Still, the Linux 7.2 device trees mark an official acknowledgment. M3 hardware now exists in the kernel source. Future patches can build on it. The serial console proves the cores run and the memory map is understood. From there, storage comes next. Then display. Then GPU. Each step unlocks more.
Observers following the project expect M3 to reach basic desktop usability later in 2026. Full feature parity with M1 and M2 could stretch into 2027. Meanwhile Apple prepares M4, M5 and reportedly M6 chips. The gap between new silicon and Linux support risks widening again.
The work continues quietly. Patch sets appear on the kernel mailing list. Benchmarks run on prototype hardware. Discussions about power domains and interrupt routing fill technical threads. No fanfare. Just steady forward motion. For Linux users with M3 Macs sitting on shelves, that motion finally carries a date. Linux 7.2. Serial console only. But it’s a start.
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