Apple Silicon GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux

Mac Studio. © iStock.

Asahi Linux announced the arrival of the long-awaited GPU drivers that offer hardware acceleration on desktop Macs running on M1 x chips, so basically, the Minis and the Studios for the time being. Getting this OpenGL driver (2.1 and ES 2.0 compatible) to alpha took about two years, but the solid foundational work should enable faster progress from now on, according to project leads Alyssa Rosenzweig and Asahi Lina. Meanwhile, the drivers are up to the task of providing a seamless experience and of rendering a few games at 60 frames per second at 4K. Until now, Asahi Linux made do with software rendering alone. These new drivers do a better job of using the processor’s hardware, thereby gaining fluidity. Asahi’s ultimate goal is to help other distributions work on Apple’s hardware.

⇨ Ars Technica, Kevin Purdy, “Four-person dev team gets Apple’s M-series GPU working in Linux.”

2022-12-07