macOS 27 Beta Boots Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0183735948
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/06/10/1629209/macos-27-beta-boots-asahi-linux-off-apple-silicon
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/06/10/macos-27-beta-boots-asahi-linux-off-apple-silicon/5253587
> The team added: "If you insist on trying out macOS 27 as soon as possible, please ensure you install a secondary copy of macOS 26 first, or install macOS 27 itself on a secondary volume." They've also updated the installer to prevent installs from running on macOS 27 for now. For anyone who ignored all of the above, "we will not support users who have installed the macOS 27 beta without ensuring at least one stable version of macOS is installed."
>
> Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware. The Asahi team said it has filed bug report. The good news for anyone who pulled the trigger on installing the macOS 27 beta is that although the partition might not be visible, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Asahi team wrote: "If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that your Asahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partition is still there, and you have not lost any data."
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/asahilinux.org/post/3mntzon7x2x2e
[2] https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/06/10/macos-27-beta-boots-asahi-linux-off-apple-silicon/5253587
Re:Might be intentional (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's not cutting into margins and it's a small number, it's way more likely that they just don't care. The more mild form of [1]Hanlon's razor. [wikipedia.org]
Asahi people are buying the hardware and wouldn't make sense to cut them off because of App Store profits. Not like these people will be making App Store purchases on non-Apple hardware. And almost assuredly significant amount are dual booting anyways and so there's not even a really a threat to the apps and services market.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Its just inherent misalignment of strategies (Score:2)
> I don't trust apple enough to rule out that this is intentional.
Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac? Any exploit Asahi uses might also be a vector for malware too.
Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anythi
Re: (Score:2)
> Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anything wrong.
I guess that depends on your definition of "wrong". IMO, you just provided a perfect description of something wrong, then said neither is doing any thing wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did. It's just a negative side effect of the GPL. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just an inherent misalignment of their respective strategies. Each has the right to pursue their respective strategies, neither is doing anything wrong.
> I guess that depends on your definition of "wrong". IMO, you just provided a perfect description of something wrong, then said neither is doing any thing wrong.
That's a perfectly understandable opinion for someone in the camp of one of these parties. I'm not in either's camp. I used Apple stuff since the 1980s, I've used Linux since the 1990s. However I never bought the religious-like beliefs that plague both camps. I like both, different tools for different problems. I see nothing wrong with a security model that completely locks down the operating system software. An Apple Silicon Mac was never sold with a dual booting feature, unlike the Intel Macs that were. A
Re: (Score:2)
> That's a perfectly understandable opinion for someone in the camp of one of these parties. I'm not in either's camp.
This may be getting a big pedantic, but you had just said:
>>> It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
> Why associate negative with GPL? You could have just as easily said it's a negative side effect of their own licensing choices, or more fairly said it was a licensing conflict between the two. I also don't see how that has anything to do with this problem, or how Microsoft's situation is somehow special/different.
> It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
AFAIK, an arm based Mac can't boot directly to Windows either.
If Apple and Microsoft had made a special agreement so that Apple's hardware
Re: (Score:2)
>> It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
> Why associate negative with GPL?
Because it is? Even if Asahi was personally willing to sign an NDA it is specifically the GPL that prevents this. The GPL requires the source code to be shared. Why can't the license at the heart of the problem be named? Many decisions have pros and cons, we often pick a solution where the pros outweigh the cons. How is it unfair to mention one of the cons?
> AFAIK, an arm based Mac can't boot directly to Windows either.
I believe Microsoft had an exclusive agreement with Qualcomm to only use their CPUs. I'm guessing with the upcoming ARM based Windows machines using Nvid
Re: (Score:2)
> Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac?
The devices don't have a locked bootloader, you might be thinking of iOS devices that need to be jail-broken.
> Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
Windows for ARM doesn't run on current Apple Silicon. [1]Boot Camp support ended 6 years ago [apple.com] with the end of Intel hardware. Which with Intel hardware had support by most of the main distros.
> It's just a negative side effect of the GPL.
The license really isn't the issue. Apple just doesn't have much incentive to release documentation to it's silicon when it wants to sell the vertically integrated platform. But if they really cared, they wouldn't l
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102622
Re: (Score:2)
>> Why would it be surprising that Apple only allows approved system software to run on a Mac?
> The devices don't have a locked bootloader, you might be thinking of iOS devices that need to be jail-broken.
Actually Apple Silicon Macs do.
"When a Mac with Apple silicon is turned on, it performs a boot process much like that of iPad and iPhone."
[1]https://support.apple.com/guid... [apple.com]
>> Do you know what the main roadblock for Asahi is? It is the fact that they can't sign an agreement with Apple as Microsoft did.
> Windows for ARM doesn't run on current Apple Silicon.
Microsoft had an exclusive arrangement with Qualcomm, perhaps it is expired now that ARM based windows systems are coming out using Nvidia CPUs. Perhaps Microsoft is now free to sign another NDA with Apple and collaborate again for an ARM Boot. Camp.
Also Windows for ARM runs extremely well on Apple Silicon via Parallels. Windows is s
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/boot-process-secac71d5623/web
Well, duh (Score:2)
> Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware.
Ya think?
Probably an accident (we shall see) (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt Apple engineers try booting Asahi linux as part of their testing. In the past Apple has also managed to break Asahi boot and Apple engineers have adjusted the bootloader once the issue was identified. That seems like the most likely scenario (this is a beta release, after all).
Apple has a security model ... (Score:2)
I've worked closely with Apple engineers at times. I've needed to do some questionable things that tested the boundaries of Apple's security model. To summarize the Apple perspective, it was: This is the obscure supported API that allows you to do this. If you figure out how to do this in any other manner we will consider it an exploit and patch macOS to prevent that.
The short version is they have a security model and they don't want to punch holes in it for you nor do they want to allow holes you discov
Whoever put other meaning of Boot in that headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Should be booted off Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
> Should be booted off Slashdot.
Agreed! I absolutely misread this headline 4 times before I understood.
Re: (Score:2)
100% I read that as, "While running macOS 27 beta, it is capable of booting directly into Asahi Linux."
Wordplay (Score:2)
I read it as sassy wordplay.
That's great news! (Score:2)
Glad to hear Asahi boots off Apple Silicon.
/s
Oddly misleading headline (Score:2)
> "macOS 27 Beta Boots Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon "
I initially thought the above headline meant "MacOS capable of running Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon"... where as it appears the article is instead about almost the opposite, an incompatibility with a recent Apple change hampering its ability to run Asahi linux.
Re: (Score:2)
I think 90% of people read it that way. And it wasn't even obvious in the comment thread because so many people took it the way you and I did. Absolute trash article thanks to the botched headline that seems to immediately conflict with the first sentence of the article.
Re: (Score:2)
A better headline would have been "macOS 27 Beta Kicks Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon".
Least of Asahi's problems (Score:2)
Asahi Linux doesn't really support Apple Silicon in the first place. They have prototype-level quality support for the M1 and M2, and no support at all for the M3/M4/M5/A18. If you want to run Linux on a mac today, virtualization is the only realistic option.
Apple Silicon (Score:2)
Overrated and overpriced.
The sweet spot was on Intel & PPC Macs (Score:4, Interesting)
The old 68k macs were a bitch to write bootloaders for. They had this "Toolbox" in ROM that the OS used and it was spread out all over hell's half acre. You needed those features or you had to re-implement a ton of the Toolbox features in the ROM. Only fully booting MacOS 6-8 would get you there then you had to run a bootloader application to boot NetBSD, for example.
On PPC and x86_64 macs, one could use something like Clover or REfit. I do think REfit is working on ARM Mac support, but it's not there yet and apple has seemly gone backwards as far as making booting alternative operating systems a thing. To their thinking, this is strange and perplexing why anyone would want to leave MacOS.
Re: (Score:2)
> To their thinking, this is strange and perplexing why anyone would want to leave MacOS.
I have a 2012 27" Intel iMac on which I installed Ubuntu, but that was entirely because I couldn't upgrade MacOS beyond whatever the last version was. Otherwise, I'd have been perpetually happy with MacOS. It's a fine machine, in all other respects.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I bought a Mac specifically because it runs MacOS. If I wanted Linux then I would buy a NUC or similar style device.
Re: (Score:2)
I bought a Mac and Parallels software, ARM-based Linux distros run fantastically on the macOS desktop.
Re: (Score:3)
Great. That's some definition of "run"
I prefer bare metal for what I do. Plus I have had my fill of wrestling with macOS's weirdness around keyboard layouts, when I can fix it on Linux with a simple text file change.
Re: (Score:2)
> Great. That's some definition of "run"
On a Mac mini M4, running on the macOS desktop via Parallels, ARM based Debian runs better than Intel based Debian natively booting on my Intel i7 gen14 (Raptor Lake Refresh).
ARM based Debian can be run fullscreen on the M4 for a comparable experience to native boot. Or it can be run in a window on the Mac desktop to give simultaneous access to commercial software. Best of both worlds. It's the user's choice.
OK? (Score:2, Informative)
These guys want to run Linux, so your opinion is not relevant to them.
As for why I know this, and why I care about external booting, I want to run different versions of macOS because the XCode versions are tied to the macOS version and the iOS versions supported by any specific version of XCode are limited as well. So to write code for my iPod Touch (which is for an embedded purpose) I need to use a specific version of MacOS which is not the current version and in practical terms that means having a stack o
Re: (Score:3)
Your use case should definitely override everyone else's use case. I mean, that's just logic!
Re: (Score:2)
Runs great, but macos updates has broken dual-boot on more than one occasion. Boot loader and closed hardware are the weakest links of using Linux on a Mac as a daily driver. It can be done, but Framework laptop is my preference for Linux if non-AI workloads are desired. Easier to install, easier to fix, and easier to upgrade. And 10 years from now it will still be working and worth a damn.
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely! In fact now, people who want Linux should buy something from Fyde or System 76 or companies that specifically make Linuxstations. Or if you have to convert something, convert a Wintel PC. Even the Arm based PCs are hard to convert to Linux: in fact, for those, resurrecting the Hackintosh project could be more useful
I do get that given that the M-series runs rings around everything else - Snapdragon Elite, Ryzens and Intel Cores, Linux fans who want the fastest Linux devices are headed that