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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

Displayport alt mode? Thunderbolt?

At least for M1 they got it working. Seems to be in testing phase now. Promised to come soon.

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-app...

From that video "Our goal is to make this [dp-altmode] generally available to all people sometime early in the next year [2026]"

Is that display port over USB-C? That’s the main showstopper for me to use Asahi on my M1 Pro MBP.

Yes, the test branch works fine for me, should be officially supported soon.

That's cool!

That's great. The only reason I haven't got it on my M1 Air yet.

I wish it were possible to directly fund DP-alt mode support. It is the only thing remaining preventing me from adopting Asahi.

For me https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/tree/fairydust installed and worked without any tweeks. Don't think you can direct funding, but https://opencollective.com/asahilinux contributes to getting this fully officially supported.

No idea what the fairydust kernel is.

For more context, I gooled around and found this Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-EOY-2025-CCC

> On the display side, Asahi Linux developers have been working on the DisplayPort connectivity. For that there are now experimental DisplayPort patches for Asahi Linux via their "fairydust" tree.

That's great news!

and ProMotion, then its a serious contender

Dunno, I don’t care about ProMotion (I’ve got it and I don’t see it), but sleep and battery life are very important to me.

Are you sure you've actually used the higher refresh rate? It might not be enabled by default. I'd be surprised if you can't tell the difference comparing 60hz to 120hz back to back.

Well, I have an M1 Pro MBP so I'm pretty sure.

edit: ok, I've tried toggling ProMotion on and off, and I can see it. However, I still think the improvement is marginal.

I use an M1 Macbook Pro for work and an M2 Macbook Air for home, and I basically don’t see any major difference.

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