Updated October 2026. Asahi Linux now officially supports M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max Macs, with caveats covered below.
Can you run Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac? Yes, and this Linux Apple Silicon guide covers both ways. You can run it in a virtual machine with UTM, which works on every Apple Silicon Mac and leaves macOS untouched. Or you can dual boot it natively with Asahi Linux, which runs on the bare hardware and officially supports M1, M2 and M3-series Macs. M4 Macs are not supported yet.
Quick Comparison: UTM vs Asahi Linux
- UTM (virtual machine): works on any Apple Silicon Mac, takes about 20 minutes, is easy to undo, and runs ARM Linux distributions with near-native performance. Best for development, Kali Linux and security testing.
- Asahi Linux (dual boot): real native performance and Linux as a full operating system, but it depends on your chip and Mac model, and some hardware features are still missing.
Which Apple Silicon Macs Can Run Asahi Linux?
- M1 and M2 series: the Asahi Linux site lists all M1 and M2 series MacBooks, Mac minis, Mac Studios, iMacs and the M2 Mac Pro as supported. This is the best-supported and most mature option.
- M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max: the Asahi developers announced official support in September 2026. The main caveats are that GPU acceleration is not yet fast or power efficient, sleep is not supported, and the HDMI port on M3 MacBooks does not work. The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is excluded.
- M4 and later: still in early bring-up as of October 2026, with no installer. If you have an M4 Mac, use UTM for now.
Option 1: Running Linux in UTM (Recommended for Most Users)
UTM is a free, open-source virtualisation application for macOS that uses Apple’s Hypervisor framework on Apple Silicon, meaning ARM-based Linux distributions run with excellent, near-native performance. It works on every Apple Silicon Mac, including M3 and M4 models.
Download UTM from getutm.app. Once installed, click “Browse UTM Gallery” in the app and you’ll see ready-to-run images for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Kali Linux, and more. Select your preferred distribution, click Download, and UTM handles the rest. Each image comes with default login credentials listed on the download page.
Once imported, click the Play button to boot the VM. For Kali Linux specifically, this is an excellent way to maintain a dedicated pentesting environment fully isolated from your macOS installation – you can snapshot VM state, roll back changes, and share files between macOS and the VM using UTM’s shared folder feature.
To adjust VM settings, right-click the VM in the UTM sidebar and select Edit. Allocating at least 4 GB of RAM to a Kali Linux VM is recommended if your Mac has 16 GB or more.
Option 2: Native Dual Boot with Asahi Linux
Asahi Linux is a project dedicated to porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs. Its flagship distribution is Fedora Asahi Remix, which currently tracks Fedora Linux 44. On supported Macs it gives genuine native performance with no virtualisation overhead.
The installation is handled by a script. Open Terminal in macOS and run the official installer command shown on asahilinux.org, which is curl https://alx.sh | sh. Read the script and the instructions on the Asahi site first, as it repartitions your disk. The installer walks you through the process interactively: you choose how much disk space to allocate to Linux, and it handles partitioning, downloading the Linux image and configuring the bootloader. Back up your Mac before you start.
When you hold the power button on an M-series Mac during startup, you’re presented with a boot picker that includes both macOS and your Linux installation. Switching between them is clean and reliable.
What Works on Asahi Linux
On M1 and M2 Macs, the Asahi Linux site lists the camera, speakers, Thunderbolt/USB4 and USB-C displays as working, along with Touch ID on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. On 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pros, local dimming works, but variable refresh rate (ProMotion) and HDR are not yet supported. Support varies by model, so check the feature table for your exact Mac on asahilinux.org before you commit.
Which Option Should You Choose?
For most users – particularly those wanting to run Kali alongside macOS for security work – a UTM virtual machine is the right choice. It’s simple, stable, works on every Apple Silicon Mac, and you can have a Kali Linux VM running within 20 minutes. If you have an M1 or M2 Mac and want Linux as a primary or secondary OS with native performance, Asahi Linux is genuinely impressive. On an M3, it is usable but the missing GPU performance and sleep support make it a harder daily driver.
Conclusion
Running Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac is no longer a fringe pursuit or a complicated hack – it’s a well-supported, practical option with two clear paths depending on your needs. UTM gives you a hassle-free virtual Linux environment on any M-series Mac, while Asahi Linux offers a native dual-boot experience on M1, M2 and now M3 machines. Either way, your Apple Silicon Mac is a more capable machine than it might appear if macOS is the only OS you’ve ever run on it.