Ubuntu Linux is now running on M1 Macs

For the first time, users of Apple Silicon Macs using Apple’s M1 chip – such as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini and MacBook Air – can now boot and run Linux natively.

The vintage at stake here is Ubuntu, and the port was developed by Corellium, which virtualizes iOS and other ARM-based operating systems to allow easier security testing. It is also important to note that Apple has already sued the company over the iOS security testing tool. The process did not follow Apple’s path.

Corellium Chief Technology Office, Chris Wade, announced the culmination of the team’s work on Twitter yesterday. And in a blog post on the Corellium website, the team behind the port writes that it was developed in parallel with the group’s efforts to “create a model of the [M1] for our security research part. ”

The blog post has several additional details about the hurdles that Corellium had to overcome, including dealing with how Apple’s SoC brings additional CPU cores, dealing with Apple’s proprietary interrupt controller, and more. Among other things, Corellium added “a preloader that acts as a wrapper for Linux and provides a stepping stone to start processor cores.”

The post includes a tutorial for installing Ubuntu on M1 Macs, and there is a Github repository (corellium / linux-m1) from which you can download the kernel. Following the steps, you will finish booting directly from USB. However, we are a long way from Boot Camp style dual boot operating systems. Even after the work of the Corellium team, the necessary steps are more complex and technical than most users would like to tamper with, and it is certainly not recommended to do this as your daily driver yet.

Still, enthusiasts or those who want to stay ahead of the curve now have a choice, so if it’s your jam, head to town. Wade calls the port “completely usable” and you’ll get the fully functional Ubuntu desktop if you go through this process.

There are other efforts to bring Linux to Macs M1, and further refinements of each will certainly come, so it is still the beginning. And before you ask: doing this with Windows still looks a little foggy. You would need to use the ARM version of Windows, which is not an option for most people at the moment.

When we interviewed Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, Craig Federighi, and asked about native Windows execution on Apple’s Silicon Macs, he said, “It really depends on Microsoft … we have the basic technologies for them to do that. , run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn, of course, supports x86 user mode applications. Macs are certainly capable of that.

List image by Samuel Axon