I updated to macOS 27 beta 2, but then I wiped everything and performed a clean install of the system via Recovery Mode. I am currently on macOS 26.5.2. This is my first time installing Asahi Linux. I don't know if the update I performed is preventing me from even logging into Asahi, the interface appears and then turns off.

First off, fuck AI slop and I wrote the whole post myself without AI. It took me a whole afternoon.

TL;DR: we are at a historical opportunity to push for Apple to allow post-market OSes on iPads.

Capable iPads Face Planned Obsolescence

With iPadOS 27, Apple is officially dropping support for the millions of units of iPad Pro 11 (1st gen) and iPad Pro 12.9 (3rd gen), as well as tens of millions of iPad Air (3rd gen), iPad (8th gen), and iPad mini (5th gen). (iPad shipment of 2019 alone was ~50 million.) These machines will soon become functionally useless, because:

• You cannot update Safari without updating iOS/iPadOS.
• You simply cannot install a newer version of another browser to get around this, because Apple forces all App Store browsers to use the same WebKit engine that shipped with iOS/iPadOS.
• You also cannot install another OS on iPads. As a result, as soon as websites start dropping support for the last Safari version, which from my personal experience can happen as early as in a few months, the iPads become handicapped. This is not even counting that how quickly some native iOS/iPadOS apps lose support too. I personally have an iPad whose support stopped 3 years ago and it already feels like a brick, purely because of such software constraints.

However, this is all preventable if Apple allows installing third party OSes on iPads, and all that's needed from Apple is to relax firmware signing to allow a bootloader like BootCamp or m1n1, which they already allow on MacBooks; this will be a simple server side change, without needing any hardware hacks.

The Time is Right for Linux on iPad

Unlike 5 to 10 years ago when the resistance from Apple may have been too strong, now is a time when the demand overrides whatever objections Apple may have, and the circumstances are surprisingly mature too, in terms of both iPad hardware and Linux support.

I probably don't need to emphasize how RAM and SSD prices are crazy high and seriously impacting computer affordability. A 32GB DDR5 kit that sold for about $100–$200 in October 2025 now starts around $350. A $189 Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB SSD is now around $429.

Performance of these iPads is better than most $200 laptops, new or used, today. The M1 chip made it to MacBooks and amazed the whole industry, and the iPad Pro's A12X, pretty much the direct predecessor of the M1, is also nothing short of impressive. It is about on par with the i7-8650u; laptops with that CPU still sell for around $200 today. It is also superior to chips like the Kompanio 520 and Intel N100, which are still commonly used in new Chromebooks today. The other non-Pro iPads have an A12 chip that has, albeit fewer cores, the same single-core performance.

On many other metrics and features, including 264 or 326 ppi pixel density, color accuracy, full sRGB or P3 color gamut, anti-reflective coating, 10-point multitouch, power efficiency, and build quality, the iPads also compare favorably with almost all $200 laptops. The iPad Pro's 600 nit brightness, 120 Hz refresh rate and four-speaker audio are, further, vastly superior to most. It's beyond outrageous that such good hardware gets locked up while computers are becoming unaffordable.

Many of these iPads do support a laptop-like form factor. They have official keyboards that allow them to be propped up like a laptop. Even though the official ones are discontinued, third-party replacements or even cheap generic Bluetooth or wired keyboards and mice also work fine. The iPad Pro even comes with a USB-C port that can connect via adapters to a surprisingly wide range of accessories including MIDI devices and RJ45 Ethernet. It may surprise you that the other Lightning iPads can use many USB accessories, too, with an adapter.

Linux on Apple Silicon is now a proven concept. Asahi Linux already allows you to run Linux on Apple Silicon MacBooks. There are now also projects that run Linux on A7, A8(X), and A10 (with GUI) chips, and some support even got upstreamed to the mainline kernel with 5.13, but they are unnecessarily sketchy for now as they rely on a hardware bootrom exploit (CheckM8) that only exists on certain models. If Apple signs open source bootloaders, then an exploit won't be needed, and developers can likely sort out compatibility issues as they have done in the past.

The Message

All that we need from Apple is to relax the firmware signing to allow third-party bootloaders. If Apple won't do it, make laws to force it happen. Similar changes already happened with the Type-C port on iPhones which is only more difficult than this.

Repost this everywhere you can. Share it to your family and friends who are hit by memory price hikes. Request your favorite influencers to make videos on this issue. Call your representatives. There is no better time than right now to push for the change, so don't let the precious opportunity slip away from us.

I tried to install the fairydust kernel using this repo

https://github.com/bharambetejas/asahi-fairydust-display

On reboot i could not escape sddm, it was re appearing after putting my password. I at least had the plasma boot sound but nothing more. I set the grub timeout to 20s and reset its output to console but it wasn’t showing up (the installer creates a boot entry for the custom kernel so I can still use the stock one just in case).

Hey everyone,

This might be kind of a dumb question, but I'm about to install Asahi Linux on my M1 MacBook Pro, and I'm torn between Arch Asahi and Fedora Asahi Remix.

I'm fairly comfortable with Linux, but this will be my first time daily driving Asahi. Arch is really appealing because of its user centric, minimalist approach. On the other hand, I've heard Fedora Asahi is the more stable option.

My workflow is pretty minimal:

Emacs for writing

Neovim for coding

tmux

Karabiner

Zen Browser

Zotero for storing academic papers

And way too many CLI and TUI tools, both useful and completely unnecessary

I'm thinking of splitting the drive about 50/50 between macOS and Asahi. The only reason I'll keep a larger macOS partition is for my filmmaking and graphic design job I can't really escape Adobe yet 😅. Everything else coding, writing, reading, and general productivity I want to do on Linux.

What I'm mainly looking for is stability, good battery life, and a machine that's reliable enough to use every day without constantly fixing things.

For those of you who have daily driven Asahi, which would you choose today, and why?