Asahi Linux announced its progress report for Linux 7.2, focusing on improvements to power management on Apple Silicon platforms. The update details advances in cpuidle handling, UEFI PSCI conduit implementation, and support for newer Apple chips.

The report builds on the project's ongoing effort to run Linux on Apple hardware, where power management has been a persistent challenge. Apple Silicon divides power management responsibilities among multiple hardware blocks, and earlier kernel code relied on vendor‑specific methods to put CPU cores into low‑power states. The standard Power State Coordination Interface (PSCI) provides a vendor‑agnostic way for operating systems to interact with firmware for CPU power operations, but Apple Silicon cores operate at Exception Level 2 without a corresponding EL3 firmware context, preventing direct use of PSCI.

Developers have introduced a UEFI Runtime Service based PSCI conduit that runs in the m1n1 hypervisor, allowing the kernel to invoke PSCI functions without requiring EL3 firmware. Kernel patches enabling this interface are already submitted as a request for comments. To address M4 series power‑state issues, a kernel command line parameter was added to configure idle loop behavior, preventing crashes before the cpuidle driver loads. Additional work includes reverse engineering of the Secure Page Table Monitor (SPTM) and Guarded Execution Framework (GXF) to emulate XNU memory management on Apple Silicon, enabling the use of SPTM blobs under the hypervisor.

Further updates cover support for M3 series devices, including webcam and microphone drivers, USB‑Type‑C controller changes based on the ACE3 hardware, and firmware ABI updates for GPU and display controllers that bring direct scanout capabilities closer to macOS behavior. Work on M4 and M5 bringup also addressed NVMe controller firmware changes and PCIe enumeration issues. Upcoming desktop integration will rely on a VA‑API to V4L2 Stateless translation layer to enable video decoding acceleration. The team notes that while many patches have been upstreamed, full hardware support for GPU and display pipelines remains a larger undertaking. The report concludes by indicating that a formal release is expected in the coming weeks.