Gravity Linux Alpha Release: Linux on the M4 Mac Mini with GPU and DCP Support
Gravity Linux announced the early alpha release of its distribution for the M4 Mac mini, including working support for the DCP and GPU, with OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenGL 3.3 compliance. Gravity Linux is a Fedora remix that by default uses KDE with Wayland, and this release is primarily intended for developers rather than use as a daily driver.
Before installing, there are important limitations: there may be no upgrade path from the alpha to beta or final, and users should assume the beta will require a complete reinstall. Known not to work are suspend, display out on the USB-C ports (HDMI works), and Thunderbolt/USB4. Power consumption may be higher than expected, though that is not very relevant for a desktop; maximum speaker volume has been conservatively limited for safety; and shutdown/reboot are flaky, though the power button can be used. Every feature not listed works and has been tested. The release has had very limited testing, so general stability and usability issues may exist, and because it is developer-oriented, some settings are enabled that are not usually enabled for release builds. If these issues are deal-breakers, the team recommends waiting for a later release.
The purpose of this early alpha is to get Gravity Linux into developers' hands so they can test real workloads, find bugs, contribute fixes, and help harden the platform before beta. The beta release is expected to significantly alleviate and/or remove the above limitations. Maintainers Cody Ho and Niklas Sheth note that they are not experts in maintaining Linux distributions; they take the quality of the user experience extremely seriously and will do their best to avoid user-facing errors, especially those affecting privacy and security, but mistakes are likely at some point.
To install from macOS, users can run `curl -fsSL https://install.gravitylinux.org | sh`; the installer handles the required setup and installation process from there. The M4 Mac mini alpha is only the beginning: the team is working toward extending support to the MacBook Neo and the remaining M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max devices soon, with promising new contributors already making significant progress. All M5 and M6 devices remain in scope.
The long-term goal is to upstream all of Gravity Linux's work as the only practical way of ensuring a sustainable project. To that end, the team has documented its methods and findings, respected Apple's copyright by not looking at any Apple binaries to write Linux drivers, and followed a textbook clean-room reverse engineering process. For now, M4 Mac mini owners are invited to experiment and report everything they break, and those interested can join the project on Discord and read the contributor guide.