Linux 6.4 Bringing Apple M2 Additions For 2022 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini

Further adding to the excitement of the upcoming Linux 6.4 merge window is the mainline kernel seeing the Device Tree (DT) additions for Apple's current M2 devices including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini systems. The upstream kernel still has more work to go around the M1/M2 support compared to the downstream state with Asahi Linux, but at least now with this DT support will provide some basic level of upstream kernel support for the Apple M2.

Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin today sent in the Apple SoC DT updates targeting the Linux 6.4 cycle for queuing into the SoC tree ahead of the merge window opening around the end of the month.

The main addition with this pull request is adding the Apple M2 Device Tree series.

With the Apple t8112 M2 Device Trees there is support for the M2-powered MacBook Air (2022), MacBook Pro 13-inch (2022), and Mac Mini (2023). Hector commented on the patch adding the new DT:

"This brings the hardware support of the machines to the same level as M1 and M1 Pro / Max / Ultra. Supported hardware include NVMe, PCIe, serial, pinctrl/gpio, I2C, iommu, watchdog, admac, nco, cpufreq, boot framebuffer for laptop panels and the interrupt controller.

The ethernet LAN device on the M2 Mac mini is the only working PCIe device. The Wlan/BT devices are powered off and controlled by the not yet supported SMC. The ASMedia xHCI on the M2 Mac mini requires firmware to be loaded at startup.

The main missing hardware support to make these devices useful are the integrated USB 2/3/4 controller, keyboard and trackpad on the laptops and SMC to power the PCIe Wlan/BT device on. The M2 Mac mini has currently no working display output. Due to changes in the display pipeline it is currently not possible to initialize the HDMI output in the bootloader."

So this is a step in the right direction but still isn't yet really usable for end-users. Those wanting the best Apple M1/M2 Linux experience will still want to use a downstream distribution like Asahi Linux - see their feature support Wiki to get a better idea for current expectations.