Linus Torvalds doubts that Linux will run on Apple M1

Recently on the Real World Technologies forum Linus Torvalds was asked what he thinks of Apple’s new M1 laptops. Torvalds then vague replied, “I would love to have this [laptop] if ran on Linux.”

Then, not everyone understood what exactly Torvalds saw as the problem, and now, in an interview with ZDNet journalists, the Linux creator explained what he meant.

I have pretty good memories of the 11-inch Macbook Air (4.1, I think) that I used about ten years ago (but I gave it up because it took Apple too long to fix my screen, and when they did it, I already switched to better laptops, and Apple made Linux less convenient). Apple can run Linux in its cloud, but their laptops it cannot.says Torvalds.

Torvalds now says that in theory he would like to use Linux on newer Macs:

I’ve been waiting a long time for an ARM laptop that can run Linux. The new Air will be almost perfect except for the OS. I don’t have time to mess with it, and I don’t tend to fight companies that are not prompt to help.Linus Torvalds said.

The main problem of the M1 chip he calls the graphics processor and other devices around it, which, most likely, will not have support for Linux, unless Apple suddenly decides to support the operating community (which is unlikely to happen).

Torvalds also hopes that “there will be more cores” and admits that in a laptop he is primarily concerned not with 20 hours of battery life (which is barely achievable), but at least 8 large cores. At the same time, 16 GB of memory does not bother him:

In fact, 16GB is okay for me because I’m not inclined to do something that requires more RAM. All I do is read email, work with git, and compile the kernel. Yes, I have 64 GB of memory on the work machine, but only because I have 32 cores and 64 threads and I work with huge parallel assemblies. To be honest, even 32 GB would be enough for my tasks.

Let me remind you that recently Linus Torvalds approved exclusion of the terms slave, blacklist and others from the Linux kernel code.