Intro
This cooperative unit is working hard.
IRC: #debian-bananas (also reachable via Matrix)
Salsa: https://salsa.debian.org/bananas-team
The Debian Bananas Team works on getting official Debian supported on Apple Silicon (arm64).
If you are a DD, or Free Software developer, please get in touch to get access to the non-DSA managed machine. You will need to provide full name, email address, and login name, ssh public key. http://bananas.debian.net or ssh you@bananas.debian.net
Waiting for our mailing list / team email address: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1042735
Usable third parties
While the official debian effort is not yet end-user ready, you can consider using any of the third-party efforts:
Debian stable/bookworm by Thomas Glanzmann, see: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/M1
Thomas Renard's fork (testing/trixie) at: https://git.g3la.de/repos/m1-debian/
I am building for personal stuff and do not have the capacities to take over Glanzmanns stuff. And he is still packaging. [...]. You can use my stuff (https://git.g3la.de/repos/-/packages/debian/linux-image-asahi or https://git.g3la.de/repos/-/packages/debian/linux-image-asahi-headless (without audio) use testing! - https://git.g3la.de/repos/m1-debian) but I must say that I cannot give any ... warranty that it works. and I do not have the capacities for support - and this is the main job for officially publish packages.
For the time being, Thomas Renard's packages need apple_dcp and mux_apple_display_crossbar added to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules.
We will try our best to make it possible to smoothly upgrade from these efforts onto official Debian packages when/if possible.
Status
Debian provides most of the Asahi software in the official archive (testing and unstable suites), with the notable exception of the kernel and mesa drivers -- i.e. of those components which are not fully upstreamed yet. Below we track the status of the components and where they live.
Packages
component |
status |
comment |
bootloader (only stage2 currently built) |
||
testing (mainline, unpatched) |
m1n1 payload / EFI, the debian binary package is mainline u-boot - currently not including patches from the asahi fork of u-boot, only what has already been upstreamed |
|
unofficial package, not distributed yet |
use third-party kernel for now, or download last build artifacts from Salsa |
|
unofficial package, not distributed yet |
use third-party mesa packages for now, or download last build artifacts from Salsa. Kernel ABI not yet stable so must be kept in sync with kernel |
|
initramfs and hardware-specific configuration files, essential for the system to work properly |
||
testing (asahi-nvram, asahi-bless, asahi-wifisync, asahi-btsync) |
utilities for syncing macOS information found in NVRAM |
|
asahi firmware utilities |
||
audio processing to make speakers and mics sound good |
||
speaker protection daemon |
||
LV2 speaker bass enhancement plugin - used by asahi-audio |
||
LV2 mic beamformer plugin - used by asahi-audio |
||
alsa use case manager configuration for asahi |
||
touchbar (only on some models) |
See also lzfse, dependency of asahi-fwextract.
Metapackages
Debian also provides metapackages to install the required dependencies (see meta-asahi-platform):
metapackage |
dependencies |
asahi-platform |
core, audio and nvram: everything except for the kernel and mesa drivers |
asahi-platform-core |
core dependencies, required to boot; also suggests tiny-dfr |
asahi-platform-audio |
audio support (internal speakers and mic) |
asahi-platform-nvram |
nvram manipulation (see the asahi-nvram packages above) |
Integration notes
- Upstream only offers limited support for X11: you are advised to use Wayland on desktop installations. Native X11 applications can still run under Xwayland.
A known bug prevents Xorg from working properly on Apple Silicon in the absence of an X11 quirk. This bug may also make SDDM and LightDM crash when starting (both X11 and Wayland) desktop sessions. We got this patched in Debian in November 2024 (xserver-xorg-core >= 2:21.1.13-3, see #1080099), but older installations may still be affected. Should you need a fix, drop this file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. Note that most ready-to-use installations of Debian for Apple Silicon already included this file (perhaps under a different name, sometimes in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/) well before the fix landed in Debian.
If you use the asahi audio stack, make sure to have lsp-plugins-lv2 >= 1.2.14-1 installed. This is needed to prevent damage to the speakers. If you installed an up-to-date version of Debian testing/unstable after around January 2024 you should be good to go. See also #1058672 and https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111577610063142370.
https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/SW:Speakers#distro-integration-notes
Installer
No installer work has yet started. Use glanzmanns installer (m1n1 stage1 needed for installer).
Other resources
ALARM packaging:
Fedora packaging: