Osegi
Software·2 min read

Omarchy 4.5 brings Linux to Apple M1, M2 and M3 Macs and Neo

DHH says Omarchy 4.5 will fully support Macs with M1, M2 and M3 chips plus Neo, and will also reach ARM laptops with Snapdragon X and Nvidia N1X chips.

A MacBook laptop running the Omarchy Linux distribution with a tiled Hyprland desktop on screen.
Image: Frandroid
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David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, has announced that version 4.5 of his Linux distribution Omarchy will offer "complete compatibility" with Apple's M1, M2 and M3 chips, as well as Neo. Macs with Apple silicon released between late 2020 and late 2023 will be able to boot Linux directly, without a virtual machine. DHH summed it up in three words: "Apple hardware liberated", crediting the Omarchy M team that handles the Mac work.

Omarchy is an Arch-based distribution that ships preconfigured. It uses Hyprland, a tiling window manager controlled mostly from the keyboard, and every default reflects DHH's own choices. Until now the project targeted PCs with Intel or AMD processors.

Dual boot by default, open questions

DHH promises a dual boot of macOS and Linux that is so smooth it becomes "a no brainer". In September, Marcelo Alcantara, one of the porting developers, said the installer sets up dual boot by default and lets users partition the SSD as they wish. DHH has not said whether macOS can be wiped entirely, even though users asked him. No battery life figures have been published either.

Newer chips are not covered yet. DHH lists the M4, M5 and M6 as "on the way" without a date, so every Mac sold since late 2024, including the Mac mini M6, is left out for now.

ARM laptops too

Phoronix, which examined the first release candidate, found initial AArch64 support, the 64-bit ARM architecture. Omarchy previously ran only on x86_64 processors. The tested machines include the Dell XPS 16 and Asus ProArt P14 with Nvidia's N1X chip, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and ThinkPad T14s with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X. On most Snapdragon PCs, Omarchy fetches firmware from the Windows partition, as other distributions do, so Windows should stay on the disk.

The previously separate Omarchy Mac edition is now merged into Omarchy. The official Linux kernel still handles the newest M-series chips poorly. No release date is set for the final 4.5; a third release candidate, the first with the new Apple installer, was announced on November 2.

Before installing, check your chip under About This Mac, back up your data before partitioning the SSD, and keep the Windows partition on Snapdragon X laptops.

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Tags:omarchylinuxapple silicondhharmsnapdragon x

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