Asahi Linux Ships Installer Automation, ALS Support Alongside Linux 7.0

The Asahi Linux project has pushed its first installer update in nearly two years, coinciding with the Linux 7.0 release. The previous manual release process required tagging, bundling a stripped-down Python interpreter with m1n1 stage 1 and the installer itself, then uploading to a CDN with admin credentials — friction that left the bundled Devicetrees badly out of sync with upstream kernels. Kernel 6.18’s changes to m1n1 and Apple USB subsystem bindings broke booting from live media entirely, forcing the issue. The fix: GitHub Actions now builds and deploys on every push to main (to alx.sh/dev) and every tag (to alx.sh), with the image manifest split into its own asahi-installer-data repo for independent updates.

Version 0.8.0 bumps m1n1 stage 1 to 1.5.2, adds Mac Pro support, and introduces a firmware update mode. That mode unlocks ambient light sensor support, which runs on Apple’s Always-On Processor and requires a calibration blob extracted from macOS — non-redistributable firmware that previously caused painful manual EFI partition surgery (as seen with the webcam saga). Users can now reboot into macOS Recovery, rerun the installer, and pick “Rebuild vendor firmware package” to refresh blobs cleanly. The post also begins documenting idle power consumption work on Pro/Max/Ultra SoCs, where the opaque interplay between PMGR and the Power Management Processor has been a persistent drain.