Although mesa code for Apple M1 has made progress in running basic tests (such as glmark2), it has always been an effort to run under MacOS and its kernel driver. This week, the Asahi Linux team celebrated their first triangle rendering run using a fully open source driver stack.
Since last year, Asahi Linux developers have had an early [Apple] in Mesa( https://apple.pvxt.net/c/1251234/435400/7639?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fcn%2Fmusic%2F ) M1 code, and Alyssa Rosenzweig led this graphic reverse engineering work. Most of the early OpenGL driver work was carried out under MacOS. Because of the reverse engineering work that took place there, apple did not release any specifications or drivers for other platforms. In addition, for the work of gallium3d/mesa, for example, let the shader compiler work and compare the results with the MacOS driver stack. Before getting the drm/kms linux driver, it is certainly very useful to use the MacOS kernel driver.
For users using Asahi Linux today, the graphics acceleration is poor. There is only one basic frame buffer driver, and OpenGL acceleration can only use llvmpipe. But this week, as Asahi developers are studying the latest experimental Linux kernel and mesa code, they have now successfully rendered their first triangle with this fully open source driver stack. Unlike previous achievements, it does not rely on existing MacOS kernel drivers. (however, it turns out that the first triangle seems to come from their m1n1 based environment, which is not a suitable linux driver stack, but it is still good news.).
Although it will take some time before we can expect to play OpenGL games with modern GL functions and good performance on Apple M1 hardware, the Asahi Linux team is making good progress and hopes to have a good open source Vulkan driver stack at an appropriate time in the future.