I’ve been interested in Asahi Linux for a while and decided to try it out on my own Macbook Air. After having to reinstall MacOS due to a corrupted filesystem, I got Asahi Linux installed and set up. The issue now is that I can’t seem to get past the Plymouth screen; it sits there for a few minutes before restarting. I tried reinstalling it a few times, once after updating my Mac to the latest Tahoe update, but I get the boot loop each time. I also tried the cleanbp script, which also didn’t help.
If anyone has any information to help me get my install working, I would greatly appreciate it. I want to put Linux on yet another one of my machines so badly. I’m attaching my Macbook’s info in case it is necessary. Thank you in advance and please let me know if any additional information is needed!
Hardware and partition information
Product name: MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
SoC: Apple M1
Device class: j313ap
Product type: MacBookAir10,1
Board ID: 0x26
Chip ID: 0x8103
System firmware: mBoot-18000.101.7
Boot UUID: 1D6D5C77-9FF6-4BFF-BAD4-6B6DC2B1B0FE
Boot VGID: 1D6D5C77-9FF6-4BFF-BAD4-6B6DC2B1B0FE
Default boot VGID: 8D0D851A-911E-432F-B573-B20DAEE32AA0
Boot mode: macOS
OS version: 26.4 (25E246)
OS restore version: 25.5.246.0.0,0
Main firmware version: 26.4 (25E246)
No Fallback System Firmware / rOS
SFR version: 25.5.246.0.0,0
SystemRecovery version: 25.4.125.0.0,0 (26.3 25D125)
Login user: light
Partitions in system disk (disk0):
1: APFS [Macintosh HD] (70.09 GB, 6 volumes)
OS: [B ] [Macintosh HD] macOS v26.4 [disk4s3s1, 1D6D5C77-9FF6-4BFF-BAD4-6B6DC2B1B0FE]
2: (free space: 2.50 GB)
3: EFI (524.29 MB)
4: APFS [Fedora Linux with KDE Plasma] (2.50 GB, 4 volumes)
OS: [ *] [Fedora Linux with KDE Plasma] m1n1 v1.5.2 (macOS 13.5 stub) [disk2s2, 8D0D851A-911E-432F-B573-B20DAEE32AA0]
Extra partitions: #5#6#7
5: EFI (524.29 MB)
6: Linux Filesystem (1.07 GB)
7: Linux Filesystem (167.89 GB)
8: APFS (System Recovery) (5.37 GB, 2 volumes)
OS: [ ] recoveryOS v26.4 [Primary recoveryOS]
I would suggest cleaning up your partitions (removing Asahi) and then re-installing. You can uninstall following this guide here using diskutil via the terminal on MacOS:
Make sure you read the prompts throughout the install process in the terminal. There is a startup procedure you have to follow after installing via the MacOS terminal, upon reboot.
I have already tried reinstalling a couple times, like I said in my initial post. I did use the link you said to delete all the partitions and start fresh, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
I have also done the setup process after rebooting. I don’t think I’d be able to boot into Asahi Linux at all without doing that would I?
The only odd thing about your partition list versus mine is the 2.5GB of free space under partition #2, but you look like you seem to have the iBoot\macOS partition under partition #4.
A 2.5GB APFS container, containing the bits of iBoot/macOS we need to boot the machine including a copy of recoveryOS
You mentioned you are able to get to the Plymouth screen, can you press esc when that happens and see what step it stops on?
It should look something like this picture:
Weirdly enough I am not. I read a lot of people saying to do this but pressing esc does nothing for me. The spinner only seems to spin sometimes, with it being frozen other times. I also tried removing the “quiet” boot parameter, but even then, the boot logs only flash for about a second before going back to the usual splash screen. For the most part, everything there seems fine, and the last messages after the Plymouth service is loaded are about apple-dart. Not sure if that is anything helpful unfortunately.
Now that you mention it, I honestly have no idea why it’s like that. This is a fresh install of MacOS and I haven’t done any partitioning besides what Asahi has done and what I’ve uninstalled. I can’t think of a reason that would happen…
Did you re-allocate the free space to MacOS after you removed Asahi, before you re-installed Asahi? The guide says its not required, but the last time I deleted the Asahi partitions, that’s what I did, then re-installed Asahi without issue.
I tried this just now and it didn’t change anything unfortunately ): For some reason I had two Fedora EFI partitions before uninstalling, though. I’m not sure what was up with that.
