Linus Torvalds announced the availability of a new version of Linux 5.19. In the announcement as a “personal note” he writes that the release took place under Asahi Linux and an unspecified Apple laptop.
Torvalds has long g been a supporter of the idea of an ARM device for development so that ARM could also be established as a server platform. Up until now, however, there were basically no devices that would have satisfied Torvalds’ claim, and he used x86 devices.
He writes, “I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it’s finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We’ve had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now.”
As some of you know, not too long ago, the Asahi Linux team announced that they had successfully completed the development of the first distribution 100% compatible with the Apple Silicon platform. In fact, with the publication of the new version of the Linux Kernel, Torvalds himself has congratulated them for their work.
So far, however, Torvalds hasn’t used Apple’s ARM laptop running Asahi Linux for “real work,” just for test builds, launches, and release tagging. On his next trip, however, Torvalds wants to make full use of the ARM64 laptop and test the kernel’s architecture support himself.
For the Linux founder, it is now the third time that he uses Apple hardware. This has happened before with a PowerPC machine and with the thin and light MacBook Air more than a decade ago.
In this new version of Linux 5.19, there are many new features, and the developers additionally promise performance improvements. New features include LoongArch support for AMD Zen 4 processors, work on AMD RDNA3 and Intel DG2/Alchemist, Intel Idle driver support for Alder Lake, etc.
