The first device trees for Apple’s M4 machines are headed for Linux 7.4. Asahi Linux developer Sven Peter sent the pull requests for the merge window later this month, covering the M4 MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2024), both 24-inch iMacs, both M4 MacBook Airs (2025) and the M4 Mac mini, plus a first tree for the MacBook Neo and its A18 Pro chip.
A device tree is how the kernel learns what a machine contains, and it is the prerequisite every driver after it builds on. Without one, an M4 Mac boots nothing; with these, it can begin booting.
What “initial” means here
The trees carry the “minimal amount of hardware,” and most of what is in them did not change between the M3 and M4 generations: the CPU cores, the interrupt controller, power states, the watchdog, serial, the pin controller, i2c and the frame buffer. Everything else, GPU included, is left to future kernels. In practice the kernel is good enough to start booting on these machines and not much more, which is the same shape the first Apple M3 trees arrived in.
The MacBook Neo tree is thinner still, with the CPU cores, interrupt controller, watchdog, serial and frame buffer, and the same long runway ahead of it. Landing trees this early is not about producing a usable desktop; it is about giving future work something to build on. The M3 generation is the worked example: its trees landed the same way, and support deepened over the kernels that followed. The pattern has held since the M1: an initial tree lands, and the drivers follow in later kernels.
The rest of the series
A second pull request from Peter adds shared GPIO support and RTKit crash logs for older 32-bit co-processors, showing the work still reaches older chips. Both requests are up for review on the kernel mailing lists ahead of the 7.4 merge window.
My read
The list of machines is the quiet signal: these are Apple’s mainstream models, not exotics. Device tree bring-up is step zero of a slow climb, and it is worth naming what it is not: nobody should install Linux 7.4 on an M4 MacBook and expect a working laptop. What it does mean is that mainline has begun. The M3 machines show how the rest goes, with feature support arriving in kernel-sized pieces over many releases. There is no schedule to hold anyone to, and no promises, but the reliance on largely unchanged hardware hints that this generation is friendlier ground than a fresh design would be. If you want Linux on Apple silicon today, M3 is the current answer; if you want M4, the countdown just started.
Source: Phoronix’s report, the Apple SoC DTS pull request and the driver changes pull request on patchwork.