Asahi Linux has published its latest developer progress report tied to the release of kernel 6.18, detailing the project’s ongoing work to upstream support for Apple Silicon hardware.
One of the most significant areas of progress continues to be Apple’s System Management Controller. After the core SMC driver was merged earlier this year, work has shifted toward upstreaming its individual subdevice drivers so they can integrate cleanly with existing kernel subsystems.
The hardware monitoring driver has already been accepted for Linux kernel 6.19, allowing voltage, current, temperature, and power sensors to be read through the standard hwmon interfaces.
Support for the real-time clock, also handled by the SMC, has likewise been merged for 6.19. Remaining pieces include the power button and lid switch driver, which is still under review, and the battery and power supply driver, which needs adjustments due to firmware changes introduced in macOS 26.
USB-C support on Apple Silicon Macs has also moved closer to completion. Changes to the Synopsys USB controller and the TI USB Power Delivery controller have now been merged upstream, bringing the long-awaited groundwork for proper USB 3 support via USB-C ports.
The final remaining component is the Apple Type-C PHY driver, which, according to the devs, is still under review. This driver is responsible for configuring the physical USB-C connection, negotiating protocols, and routing signals to the appropriate controllers, making it essential not only for USB 3 but for the full range of USB-C functionality.
Audio support saw a particularly notable breakthrough, especially for M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBooks. While microphones had been working on other Apple Silicon systems, these models remained unsupported despite their close similarity to earlier chips. After extensive debugging, the issue was traced to a DMA mapping failure caused by incorrect IOMMU address range constraints defined in the Linux device tree.
Removing the problematic property restored microphone functionality, resulting in working audio input on affected systems. Although further cleanup is still needed, users can already benefit from the fix while a more complete solution is being developed.
Beyond kernel drivers, the Asahi Linux team also outlined ongoing work to improve the installation experience for Apple Silicon Macs. Current disk-image-based installs are intentionally conservative to avoid damaging Apple’s complex disk layout, but they limit flexibility, particularly for users who want full-disk encryption or custom filesystems.
To address this, Asahi developers are working with the Anaconda installer team to ensure Apple-specific system partitions are hidden from automatic partitioning tools. Once these changes reach stable releases, distributions using Anaconda will be able to install safely from live media, operating only on the free space prepared by the Asahi installer.
Related efforts are also underway with KDE, where work on the new Plasma Setup onboarding application could eventually replace the existing Calamares-based first-boot experience.
For more information, see the announcement.
