Lead dev for Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon Macs resigns

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Hector Martin, the lead behind the ambitious Asahi Linux project, resigned from his position yesterday morning.

While the project was going great, and there has been significant progress, 9to5Mac reports that Martin’s decision to resign was due to an uphill battle with the Linux community, including Linus Torvalds himself, and burnout.

The Asahi Linux project began shortly after Apple transitioned to Apple Silicon in 2021. With significant effort, Martin and his team launched the alpha build of Asahi Linux for M1 and M2 Macs in early 2022.

Although Martin has resigned, the project should ideally go on without him. 

What happened with the Asahi Linux project

Martin and his team achieved the impossible feat by porting Linux to Apple Silicon. There was tons of support from the Linux community.

While the release of the alpha build was not without its issues, it was a significant step forward. The project was thriving.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period didn’t last long. Several entitled users started complaining, and even some key developers in the Linux community tried to harm the project. According to Martin,  

Suffice it to say, I consider Linus’ handling of the integration of Rust into Linux a major failure of leadership. Such a large project needs significant support from major stakeholders to survive, while his approach seems to have been to just wait and see. Meanwhile, multiple subsystem maintainers downstream of him have done their best to stonewall or hinder the project, issue unacceptable verbal abuse, and generally hurt morale, with no consequence.

Additionally, the project didn’t receive proper support from Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux Kernel.

Martin indicated that Torvalds initially supported the project, even drafting the Linux 5.19 release notes on an M2 MacBook Air running Asahi Linux.

However, his engagement did not progress to the hands-on level that Martin believed was essential for advancement. 

Ultimately, even after overcoming all these hurdles, Hector Martin decides to leave the project for good. 

What’s in the future for the Asahi Linux project 

According to Martin, the Asahi Linux team will move forward without him, and in 2025, the team aims to achieve kernel upstreaming, meaning all the drivers necessary for M1 and M2 would become a part of the Linux kernel.

The team will also improve its testing efforts and develop new features for M1 and M2 Macs, like alternate DisplayPort mode, DirectX 12 support, and more. 

Unfortunately, in 2025, new hardware won’t be a priority. So, if you were expecting Asahi Linux for M3 and M4 Macs, you have to wait for quite some time.

Although efforts are being made to move on to new hardware, it is not a priority at the moment. 

The resignation of a project lead means a difficult time for the entire team, and a lot of questions will be raised regarding the project.

But it seems the Asahi Linux team is ready to move forward and excited for what’s about to come. 

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