The topic A new Linux driver gets us one step closer to daily driving the OS on an M3 MacBook is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
The Apple M3 MacBook has been pretty stubborn when it comes to accepting Linux on its hardware. The community has only just managed to boot Linux off an M3 MacBook thanks tothe Linux 7.2 kernel. However, that’s currently as far as you can feasibly get, as the input hardware does not support Linux at all.
Fortunately, the Linux community refuses to surrender. Instead, it’s choosing to fight the good fight, finding ways to convert the M3 MacBook into a Linux daily driver. A new driver has finally given people the power to use the built-in hardware on Linux, and it’s only a matter of time until people can comfortably use the FOSS operating system on their Apple hardware.
As spotted by Phoronix, a new series of patches has arrived on Linux. These ten patches are designed to allow people to use their hardware keyboards on their M3 MacBooks when booting into Linux:
This series introduces support for the internal keyboards on Apple Silicon M2 and M3 MacBook models.
On these platforms, built-in input devices are managed by a dedicated coprocessor running an RTKit-based operating system. Communication between this coprocessor and the main processor is carried out over a low-latency hardware byte FIFO interface called DockChannel.
To get the job done, the patches introduce an apple-dockchannel mailbox driver, a DockChannel HID transport driver for booting the coprocessor and encapsulating the HID protocol, some tweaks to the apple-rtkit and hid-apple drivers, and Devicetree bindings and DTS updates that describe what’s going on with M2 and M3 MacBook nodes.
This new support will be introduced with the apple-dockchannel patch that’s getting added to the Linux kernel, so it should eventually become a core part of the system. Unfortunately, the trackpad is still unsupported right now, so you can’t boot Linux off your M3 MacBook and have a pleasant experience right now. However, I’m sure the community will find a way to get it working soon.