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Build notes — road to a testable arm64 ISO

New installer and YouTube guest pass — 2026-10-18

Run 39128555434 built the factory Brave image from 5c0c60e. Independent checksum, blank-disk installation and default installed generic UKI boot passed. The installed launcher, YouTube dock logo and 480p/1080p video with decoded audio passed in an ARM64 KVM guest with virgl. Receipt and limits. Fairydust was disabled for this build; physical Apple qualification remains pending.

Where upstream stands

elementary/os main already builds both arches in CI (ubuntu-26.04 + ubuntu-26.04-arm, outputs iso_amd64/iso_arm64), and mkosi.conf.d/arch.arm64.conf wires base, sysupdate, liveiso, ext-sdk, ext-virt, driver-nvidia*, modules-db. So the arm64 live ISO exists as a build artifact — the Apple Silicon question is whether it boots on and drives M-series hardware, not whether arm64 builds at all.

Bring-up order (proposed)

Implementation started 2026-10-13: the manual OS 9 M-series experimental build workflow saves installer/checksum artifacts and logs without upstream publishing credentials. The arm64 liveiso/sysupdate consumers now install the pruned hardware overlay's runtime packages explicitly. The first full image build succeeded in run 38396499561. Hardware qualification remains pending; see FIRST-ISO-BUILD.md. See OS9-HANDOFF.md.

  1. Kernel decision (see KERNEL-REPORT.md). Resolute's generic 7.0 arm64 kernel should boot M1/M2 unaccelerated, but GPU/DCP, AVD decode, sleep, and audio need an Asahi-flavoured kernel — evaluate Ubuntu Asahi (https://ubuntuasahi.org/) kernel debs for version pinning + apt source.
  2. Build wiring — first arm64 build passed. mkosi.images/apple-silicon/ (Format=directory, arm64-only) ships modprobe/initramfs config, the Wi-Fi resume unit + script, and appends HID modules in postinst; it is wired into arch.arm64.conf Dependencies, the liveiso aarch64 profile (ExtraTrees), and sysupdate (ExtraTrees + HID KernelInitrdModules in mkosi.images/sysupdate/mkosi.conf.d/arch.arm64.conf). The first arm64 build succeeded; next qualify the generic-kernel boot path and verify the produced installer (see FIRST-ISO-BUILD.md).
  3. Asahi-origin packages. asahi-audio, alsa-ucm-conf-asahi, and speakersafetyd are available from Ubuntu resolute/universe. The factory image now packages and enables speakersafetyd alone; the first-boot DSP chain remains excluded until its volume behavior is qualified. The transformed desktop passed an output check with the matching PipeWire LV2 filter plugin, which does not qualify factory-image audio. avd-fw and libva-v4l2_request-avd still need a confirmed Ubuntu source (see packages.arm64). Focused receipt. The October 21 artifact-only run resolved speakersafetyd 1.1.2-4 and passed the liveiso payload check, but failed later in sysupdate repart (Verity signature partition is empty); it did not produce a complete ISO. The release recipe masked the mkosi failure until checksum generation. Fix that build path before claiming a completed artifact.
  4. Bootloader on real hardware. Apple Silicon boots via m1n1/u-boot; verify grub-efi-arm64 + shim path works from USB on a test machine, or document the Asahi-installer + chroot route as the interim install path.
  5. Hardware test matrix on a spare machine: display (notch), keyboard/ trackpad across 20+ reboot cycles (the HID race is intermittent), speakers + mic, Wi-Fi connect + suspend/resume, video decode (mpv CPU comparison), brightness keys, USB-C dock video + downstream USB (blocked on DP Alt Mode — see mseries/USB-C-DOCK-DP-ALT-MODE.md).
  6. apt pinning for the Asahi source once it exists (Ubuntu analogue of omarchy's Usage = Sync edge policy), in repos/common-files/etc/apt/preferences.d/.

Deliberately not in this project

  • Intel Mac support (T2, SPI keyboard, NVMe D3cold, brcmfmac feature_disable) — see PORT-MAP.md.
  • Hyprland/Omarchy desktop behavior — this is Pantheon/Gala.
  • Touching this Mac's bootloader or macOS install — builds happen in CI or containers; installs happen only to external media or a spare machine.

October 18 factory build and installed-boot corrections

The factory builders run through build-in-image.chroot because the build tools and target development libraries are installed by BuildPackages inside the image; the mkosi tools tree is a different execution root. Builder pins and output paths are unchanged.

Ubuntu ARM64's vmlinuz may be an EFI wrapper containing a .linux payload and DTB resources. Nesting that relocatable wrapper inside a generated systemd UKI fails the inner-kernel relocation check. The ARM64 overlay supplies prepare-uki-kernels; sysupdate runs it before generating UKIs. Original vendor bytes and hashes are retained under /usr/share/doc/mseries-kernel-inputs. Plain Linux EFI images and complete existing UKIs are left alone. Unexpected initrd/command-line payloads and invalid inner EFI images fail closed. The live ISO's GRUB/casper kernel path is unchanged. Apple DTB/boot qualification remains open; the installed generic-kernel diagnostic was performed only in QEMU/KVM.