Asahi Linux’s latest progress report makes Apple’s M3 Macs a normal install target, ships a first cut of Thunderbolt/USB4 to users, and says the project is moving its own code from MIT to GPLv2-or-later after what it describes as bad-faith reuse of in-progress work.
James Calligeros published Progress Report: Linux 7.3 on 7 November 2026. The post tracks upstreaming for Apple Silicon, early Thunderbolt support, a first rendered triangle on the M3 GPU, Fedora Asahi Remix 45, and the licensing change. The report reached the Hacker News front page the same day; the discussion mixed practical install questions with debate over copyleft.
M3 Macs leave the EXPERT flag behind
Asahi previously offered M3-series machines only through an EXPERT flag on its installer. The new report says early adopters raised almost no issues, so M3 support is now generally available without that flag.
The team also enabled DCP — Apple’s display controller path — on M3. Asahi says that improves performance and battery life, unlocks sleep on M3 devices, and makes the area around the notch usable on MacBooks. It asks users to watch for m1n1 and kernel updates in the following days.
For everyday owners, that is the clearest user-facing change: an M3 Mac can install Asahi without expert mode, and sleep plus notch display behaviour should improve once those updates land. The M3 GPU is still the big gap versus M1 and M2.
Thunderbolt ships — with sharp limits
Asahi had said almost nothing about Thunderbolt since promising it “within the year” in January 2024. The 7.3 report points to a kernel mailing-list series and says the work is now in the project’s downstream kernel and shipping to users.
Sven Peter’s v2 cover letter on lore.kernel.org (6 September 2026) describes initial USB4/Thunderbolt support for Apple M1, M2 and M3 SoCs. Apple built its own Thunderbolt controller (an ACIO block: a small Cortex-M3 chip plus a USB4 router on each Thunderbolt USB-C port). That layout does not match the Intel-shaped assumptions in Linux’s Thunderbolt code. Peter’s series was developed upstream-first; Asahi has pulled it into its own tree as well.
The catch is practical. Asahi says only USB3, XDomain and Thunderbolt networking work today. You can plug in USB devices or connect two Thunderbolt computers and ping each other. PCIe and DisplayPort tunnelling — what most Thunderbolt docks need — are not supported yet. Peter’s cover letter says the same thing: only XDomain links and USB3-over-USB4 tunnels work so far. PCIe and DisplayPort still need more reverse engineering, and the machine cannot suspend while a link is up.
First triangle on the M3 GPU
M3 machines are otherwise close to M1/M2 feature parity, Asahi writes, except for the GPU. The M3 GPU differs sharply from the M1 and M2 designs. A newer group of contributors has been taking it apart.
At this year’s X.Org Developers’ Conference (XDC), Alyssa Millburn, Anna Maniscalco and TellowKrinkle gave a talk on that work. Asahi says m1n1 can now initialise the GPU and the team has drawn a triangle. The report also says Apple’s design choices will need substantial engineering before the driver fits upstream Mesa cleanly. Sulat News has not independently verified the talk’s detailed slides; Asahi links the XDC session recording for readers who want the primary presentation.
Fedora Asahi Remix 45 on day one
Asahi says Fedora Linux 45 arrived on 3 November 2026 and Fedora Asahi Remix shipped the same day. Calligeros calls that the first time the Remix matched upstream’s release day. Fedora Magazine announced Remix 45 with initial out-of-the-box support for M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max alongside M1/M2, while noting that performant M3 GPU drivers are not included yet and are expected later via Mesa.
Remix 45 offers KDE Plasma as the flagship desktop, plus GNOME, Server and Minimal variants. Existing Remix 43/44 users are pointed at Discover or DNF system upgrade rather than GNOME Software.
Why the project is leaving MIT
Asahi started under MIT so BSDs and other free systems could reuse the work. The new report says that posture is no longer viable. Calligeros writes that permissive licensing has been used to hijack the project’s work and monetise Linux on Apple Silicon, including lifting unfinished code:
“In some extreme cases, in-development feature code was being lifted straight out of our personal forks and published without attribution or lazily rewritten with LLM assistance to obfuscate its origin.”
The project is therefore moving its repositories to the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. It compares the decision to WINE’s early-2000s shift from MIT to LGPL, and closes the licensing section with: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Other progress worth noting
Upstreaming continues: macaudio and the AVD video decoder are on the review list, with AVD described as the project’s shortest turnaround yet for a major SoC block. Barebones device trees for M4 Pro/Max and M5 can boot to a TTY. On the reverse-engineering side, m1n1 can now virtualise SPTM and Exclave setups needed for newer macOS on M4 and M5.
Gaming gets a long technical aside. Google’s Android-oriented “per-process page size” (P3S) patches let some Windows titles run outside Asahi’s muvm VM — including demos of older games such as GTA IV and Fallout: New Vegas — but Asahi is not shipping that stack while upstream plans remain unclear. Microphone beamforming (Triforce) is reported as nearly twice as fast after SIMD work.
What users can do now
If you have an M3 Mac and already follow Asahi’s install docs, the installer no longer needs the EXPERT path for that generation. Thunderbolt docks that depend on PCIe or DisplayPort will still disappoint; stick to USB devices or simple Thunderbolt networking for now. M3 owners who care about 3D should treat GPU acceleration as unfinished until Mesa catches up. Fedora Asahi Remix 45 is the packaged path Asahi and the Fedora Asahi SIG point to for a full desktop.
Downstream projects that redistributed Asahi code under MIT should read the relicensing plan carefully; future Asahi repositories are intended to be strong copyleft only.
Sources
- Asahi Linux: Progress Report Linux 7.3 (7 Nov 2026)
- Sven Peter: Initial USB4/Thunderbolt support for Apple M1/M2/M3 (lore.kernel.org)
- Fedora Magazine: Fedora Asahi Remix 45
- XDC M3 GPU talk recording (linked by Asahi)
- sysxplore on X
- Phoronix on X
- Hacker News discussion
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