The latest kernel release is out with Linux 5.19 and showing just how far Linux support for the newer Apple silicon MacBooks has come, Linus Torvalds did the release on one!
Writing in the release notes, Torvalds mentioned:
On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it’s finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We’ve had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now.
It’s the third time I’m using Apple hardware for Linux development – I did it many years ago for powerpc development on a ppc970 machine. And then a decade+ ago when the Macbook Air was the only real thin-and-lite around. And now as an arm64 platform.
Not that I’ve used it for any real work, I literally have only been doing test builds and boots and now the actual release tagging. But I’m trying to make sure that the next time I travel, I can travel with this as a laptop and finally dogfooding the arm64 side too.
Torvalds also mentioned the next kernel release is likely to be the big 6.0.
For those that don’t know, the Asahi Linux team have been dedicated to working on Linux support for the newer Arm hardware from Apple. It’s come a long way in a short amount of time, with Apple M2 support only just landing in July 2022.
As always for kernel releases there’s absolutely tons of changes, the vast majority gamers don’t really need to know about apart from the usual additions of new hardware support, bug fixes, security improvements and so on. This includes better Apple M1, Wacom hardware support upgrades, Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint II support, improvements for Intel laptops when in sleep mode, NTFS driver improvements, exFAT performance improvements and the list goes on.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
