Deepin M1 Project Updates and Future Plans

TapTechNews July 17th news, in last July, the Deepin operating system successfully made deepin initially adapt to the Apple M1 chip. This year, as deepin V23 beta enters the RC2 version, the deepin M1 project today announced to follow up and update to the RC2 version.

According to the introduction, this adaptation work not only limits to upgrading the system environment version, but also updates some system underlying component versions, optimizes the packaging process of each module of the project and partially adds a timer, and builds the content once a week for developers to experience and try out first.

System Environment

The latest system environment is as follows:

Component

Version

deepin rootfs environment

RC2 (built on June 14, 2024)

linux-image-asahi

6.8.9-6

m1n1

1.4.14

uboot

asahi-v2024.04-1

mesa

24.1.0-asahi-20240228

After the updated rootfs, it has been confirmed to be successfully installed and started on the latest 14.5 version of Mac mini M1. In addition, since the software package version of the deepin V23 ARM64 stable repository has been updated to a level sufficient to be compatible with the unique components of deepin M1, there is no longer a need for the aggressive but less stable CI repository to build the system environment. So, after this update, the system of deepin M1 will switch to the stable repository.

Thanks to the relevant bug fixes of the installer, it is now possible to display the installer and configure after the first start after the script installation is completed. Therefore, deepin M1 has now cancelled the default user account and changed to configure the account when starting for the first time after installation. People no longer need to worry about what the default password is.

Underlying Component Update

Both m1n1 and uboot have been updated to the latest upstream version, in addition to bringing the ability to start on the latest macOS system, it also solves the long-standing problem that the keyboard cannot operate on the system startup menu interface.

The Linux kernel and Mesa, while updating to the current latest stable version, also use the new version of Rust consistent with the upstream to compile and package. In addition, the best build option that has been repeatedly debugged is also used. The result is that the current Linux kernel in the repository can already support GPU hardware acceleration. This also means that the system interface will be more smooth and the game experience will be better.

In addition, the USB input device automatic sleep problem that has always existed has also been fixed in the new kernel.

New Build Process

Thanks to the appearance of the deepin-rootfs and deepin-docker projects, now there is a deepin basic environment for packaging the components of deepin-m1. The result is the three build processes currently made, which are used to package rootfs, the kernel and m1n1, and the content of the USB startup disk, respectively.

All three builds are triggered by the push operation, and the rootfs and USB startup content builds also add a weekly timer trigger. Users in need can directly download the packaged image of this week from the latest build history in the Actions of the project page.

In addition, it should be noted that due to the limitations of the github action runner, the packaging of rootfs needs to be streamlined to save disk space, so the packaging of deepin-base is defaulted to be closed. Developers in need can modify the relevant part in bootstrap.sh to open it by themselves.

Next Work

Currently, there are still many problems. One of the most influential ones in daily experience is the bug without sound. Currently, it is being investigated. Users who need to play sound can use the 3.5mm interface to play sound by installing alsa-ucm-conf-asahi.

Not long ago, the Asahi official announced their progress in supporting Vulkan. We will also continue to pay attention and follow up, and update Mesa as soon as the stable version is released.

The current ARM64 software ecosystem is still relatively weak. In the future, we will cooperate with organizations such as deepin-sysdev-sig and deepin-arm-pc to introduce more software packages to expand the available software content.

After version 0.2.6 of box64, it can run on the Mac M series Soc. This means it can support Linux and Windows x86_64 programs through box64 and winewow64. Currently, both of these two software are not packaged. Will try to add to the deepin repository in the future.

TapTechNews attached deepin M1 project address:

Entry of deepin-m1 SIG group: https://www.deepin.org/index/docs/sig/sig/deepin-m1/README

deepin-m1 project address: https://github.com/deepin-community/deepin-m1