Linux 7.4 Is Set to Add Initial Apple M4 and MacBook Neo Device Trees

Asahi Linux developer Sven Peter has prepared Apple SoC device-tree changes for the Linux 7.4 development cycle, including the first minimal device trees for Macs based on Apple's base M4 SoC. The work gives the kernel a hardware description for early bring-up; it is not equivalent to complete Linux support for M4 Macs.

The underlying M4 patch series identifies the SoC as t8132 and covers six base-M4 machines: the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro, two 24-inch M4 iMac variants, the 13-inch and 15-inch M4 MacBook Air, and the M4 Mac mini. The series was applied to Asahi Linux's apple-soc/dt-7.4 development tree before the upstream merge window.

The M4 device trees target Apple's j604 14-inch MacBook Pro, j623 and j624 24-inch iMac configurations, j713 and j715 MacBook Air models, and the j773g Mac mini. The patch author described the hardware coverage as deliberately minimal and largely similar to the earlier M3 bring-up.

The patch discussion also documents an important boot boundary: a base-M4 Mac mini could boot a stock kernel on a single CPU core with appropriate Apple firmware, while symmetric multiprocessing required additional handling around WFI and WFIT idle instructions. That is development progress, not evidence that an ordinary Linux distribution is ready for these Macs.

A separate series adds initial device-tree bindings for the A18 Pro, identified as t8140, and the MacBook Neo. Sven Peter reported that this work was also applied to the apple-soc/dt-7.4 tree. Its initial scope is narrower than the base-M4 set and is intended to unblock further platform development.

Both series depend on additional low-level work, including changes to the m1n1 bootloader for practical bring-up. Device trees tell Linux what hardware exists and how it is wired; they do not by themselves provide every driver needed to make that hardware usable.

Getting stable device descriptions into the kernel development path creates a shared base for later driver and platform work instead of keeping all M4 knowledge in downstream experiments. It also expands the Apple Silicon bring-up sequence after earlier M-series support reached mainline Linux.

For M4 Mac owners, however, the practical recommendation is unchanged: do not interpret the Linux 7.4 device-tree work as a promise that a mainstream distribution will provide a complete accelerated desktop on release day. The meaningful news is that the foundational hardware descriptions are moving into the kernel pipeline.