Linus Torvalds Releases Linux 5.19, First ARM64 Release on Apple M2 via Asahi Linux
Linus Torvalds announced the stable Linux 5.19 kernel, built on an Apple M2‑based ARM64 MacBook with Asahi Linux support, highlighting new features such as LoongArch support, FAT32 timestamps, AMD BRS sampling, RISC‑V 32‑bit compatibility, Zstd firmware compression, and a substantial increase in graphics driver code.
Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 5.19, the latest stable version of the Linux kernel.
The release work was carried out on an Apple MacBook equipped with an M2 SoC (Arm64 architecture), made possible by the Asahi Linux project, marking the first time a new Linux kernel is published on ARM64 hardware.
Although ARM64 hardware has long been used to run Linux, it remains challenging for kernel development; this release only involved testing, building, and publishing Linux 5.19 without any new feature development.
This is the third occasion Linus has used Apple hardware for Linux work: the first was on the vintage ppc970 (IBM PowerPC) processor, the second over a decade ago on a first‑generation MacBook Air, and now on an M2‑based MacBook.
Linux 5.19 introduces many new capabilities, including:
Support for the LoongArch CPU architecture (developed by Longxin).
Ability to report creation timestamps for FAT32 files.
Introduction of AMD "BRS" branch sampling.
RISC‑V support for running 32‑bit binaries on 64‑bit systems.
Support for Zstandard (Zstd) compressed firmware.
Nearly 500,000 new lines of graphics driver code.
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