The Asahi Linux project development team has long been working on bringing Linux to Apple Silicon Mac Books and desktops, going so far as to show off games on the Arm-powered laptops. The latest patches to Asahi add proper support for USB4 and Thunderbolt on Mac Books with the M1, M2, and M3 So Cs, and that support is now making its way to the mainline Linux kernel, as per an upstream patch by prominent Asahi developer, Sven Peter.

This series adds initial USB4/Thunderbolt support for Apple Silicon M1, M2 and M3 So Cs. Each USB4 capable Type-C port comes with an ACIO ("Apple Converged I/O") block which contains a Cortex-M3 coprocessor and the hardware implementing the USB4 router.

As highlighted by the developer—and the official Asahi hardware support page—USB4 enablement is still in the early phases, but there is progress being made. At the time of writing, USB4 and Thunderbolt support still lacks PCIe and Display Port tunneling on Apple Silicon, and there are issues with resuming from sleep with an active USB4 connection.