This week was the dramatic decision by Asahi Linux lead developer [1]Hector Martin to step down as upstream kernel maintainer for the Apple Silicon (ARM) code following friction with other kernel developers over Rust affairs within the kernel. He still intends to contribute code to Asahi Linux's downstream kernel and Linus Torvalds has already [2]merged the patch dropping him as an upstream maintainer. Now a new co-maintainer has volunteered to help oversee the Apple Silicon code for the mainline kernel.

As a co-maintainer alongside Hector Martin there was already long-time Apple Silicon Linux contributor Sven Peter. Now in addition to Sven helping to oversee the upstream Apple Silicon patches for the Linux kernel is Janne Grunau.

Janne Grunau is an existing Asahi Linux / Apple Silicon contributor and has been working on the downstream Asahi kernel tree since last April as well as working on a number of drivers. Janne Grunau has the blessing of both Sven Peter and Hector Martin.

[3]This patch aims to make it official and thus still hopes for more Apple Silicon code reaching the mainline kernel in a timely fashion.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream

[2] https://x.com/phoronix/status/1888015217663295507

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208-maint-soc-apple-v1-1-a7f7337baec0@jannau.net/