On May 13, foreign media 9to5 Mac reported that there were reports last month that Linux was about to receive official support for the new M1 Mac, which is likely to arrive in June with the upcoming Linux Kernel 5.13. The Linux kernel released version 5.13 RC this week, and Linus Torvalds himself confirmed that it supports Apple's M1 chip.
As seen in the release notes for the latest Linux update, the new 5.13 kernel adds support for several chips based on the ARM architecture -- including the Apple M1. This means users can finally run Linux natively on the new M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini and iMac.
It's now possible to run Linux on the M1 Mac via a virtual machine, and even via a port of Corellium, but none of these alternatives run natively -- meaning they don't take full advantage of the M1 chip's full performance. However, some developers have been working on adding native support for M1 to the Linux kernel, which is now gradually becoming a reality.
Despite official support, Linux on the M1 will have limited functionality for some time as not all drivers are implemented. For example, video hardware acceleration does not work yet in this version. More improvements are expected with future Linux kernel updates.
In addition, official support for the M1 chip does not mean (at least for now) that Linux can run on the M1 iPad Pro, as its system and boot loader are more limited than the M1 Mac.
Like Apple's operating system, "RC" stands for Release Candidate, which means this isn't the final release of Linux kernel 5.13. The official release is expected sometime between June and July.