The CTO of Corellium — Chris Wade has shown that Ubuntu 20.10 (dubbed Groovy Gorilla) can be made to run on an M1 Mac Mini. M1 is Apple’s ARM-based architecture and it is built to run Mac OS. However, ARM versions of Ubuntu Linux (and other Linux distributions) do exist and have made it possible to run Ubuntu on virtually any device with an ARM or x86 processor. Running Ubuntu on Macs is nothing new, but that was because they had Intel processors. The new M1 architecture is the next nut to crack for developers.
Chris Wade said that Linux is ‘now completely usable’ on the M1 Mac Mini with help from Corellium HQ, according to a tweet. However, some components and features in the Mac aren’t yet accessible in Ubuntu such as networking (unless you use a dongle) and hardware rendering. It was demonstrated using a Raspberry Pi (small ARM-based computer) USB image of Ubuntu. The changes to the Linux kernel that facilitated this have been pushed to GitHub for anyone that wants to view or improve the code. It is likely that the changes Wade made to the Linux kernel will enable (or at least pave the way for) all other Linux distributions to run on Macs.
