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Linux Mint arm64

Jeroen Diederen

Jeroen Diederen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Hello,

My name is Jeroen and I am the developer of MintPPC, a port of Linux Mint to the powerpc architecture.

I have now ported Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 cinnamon to arm64. The stable release of 1 September 2025 is based on packages from Linux Mint "Xia" in a Debian "Trixie" base. Shelf life is until June 2035.

edit April 1 2026: LMDE 7 based on Zena is available for arm64. It runs great natively on Mac M1 or on any arm based Mac in Parallels or UTM.

If you are interested to install or try the live system, contact me.

Regards,
Jeroen
 

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Some update to the project: the disk image is working in Parallels Desktop. I am still porting the remaining programs which were not done yet.
 
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Screenshot from 2025-07-11 15-36-38.png


This system was built on top of Debian Trixie, without altering base-files. Therefore you see Debian as os-release. In the official release, it will be LMDE 7 with Linux Mint base-files. The latter has not yet been made as LMDE 7 as well as Debian Trixie have not yet been officially released.
The current release is based on Trixie, which will be supported for many years to come. Even if you were to install this release, you will be able to get all the new packages which will become available once the next release will be made, as the same repository is used. The packages will be installed automatically.
I am working on a way to get users to purchase this disk image on my website. Keep tuned.
 
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I give you guys the first review of someone who is testing the disk image I created in Parallels on an M3 Mac:

“I've played a bit with Mint this morning. It's very fast on my laptop (M3 Max). I gave the VM 4 processors and 8 gig of RAM. A pretty "minimal" configuration, but the VM is still really fast.
I personally wouldn't see the advantage of running Linux bare metal. Parallels VMs run very fast under Mac OS without a lot of CPU overhead. It's much better than the Intel processor days when VMs really slowed the machine down.
I can run Firefox no problem complete with video on web pages.
I'm more used to the KDE environment so I installed KDE. To my surprise, the install went very well and I'm able to run that environment no problem.
I also have a Kubuntu VM and a VM running my usually favorite distribution: Gentoo. The Ubuntu distribution is a little glitchy and has some issues. I'm not impressed. The Mint environment seems more stable to me.
If people want to run the Mint environment, I think they'll be very happy with the performance under Parallels.“

I want to add that running Linux bare metal on silicon Macs may brick the computer. Some people reported this. I therefore think it would be great to run Linux Mint at native speed in a VM on these machines using my disk image.
 
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These are live iso files, for amd64.


These do not work on an Apple silicon Mac, but filenames show all debian supported desktop environments.

Let's assume you want Debian Cinnamon. You download an arm64 debian .iso from here:



and select cinnamon during installation in a virtual machine.

Do not try to install Linux directly on an Apple silicon Mac, because it will fail.

Only Asahi Linux aims to install on an arm64 Mac, but I would not suggest it.
 
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johnprogrammer said:
These are live iso files, for amd64.


These do not work on an Apple silicon Mac, but filenames show all debian supported desktop environments.

Let's assume you want Debian Cinnamon. You download an arm64 debian .iso from here:



and select cinnamon during installation in a virtual machine.

Do not try to install Linux directly on an Apple silicon Mac, because it will fail.

Only Asahi Linux aims to install on an arm64 Mac, but I would not suggest it.
Click to expand...
What are you trying to say?
 
Jeroen Diederen said:
Hello,

My name is Jeroen and I am the developer of MintPPC, a port of Linux Mint to the powerpc architecture.

I have now ported Linux Mint to arm64. I have several versions running, i.e. one is LMDE6, one is xia in an Ubuntu base. They all have their pros and cons.

I don’t own a silicon Mac. I am looking for some people to test a very rough version based on xia in a Debian trixie environment in a virtual qcow2 disk. I only need to know if it is possible to boot such an image in utm or any of the commercial programs out there for virtualization.

This is a pointer of how to import qcow2 in utm:
man.ilayk.com

utm - hitchhiker's guide

man.ilayk.com man.ilayk.com

Please contact me if you want to test this.
Click to expand...
I can test it.

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The problem is not the Linux porting. There are already several distro’s ported to Aaarch64. I have recently created a full blown Arch from a minimal console stub iso. The real problem is getting full blown graphics acceleration. UTM and parallels provide upto Mesa 2.1. There is also version of QEMU using SDL with OpenGL but still only Mesa 2.1. Asahi as good as it was in the beginning now the development for M3 and M4 is stalled and will probably be in that state forever. If someone develops Vulcan drivers one can get Mesa upto 4x. Even pure Windows XP emulation with 3dfx graphics drivers is blazing fast for gaming.
 
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A working NETINST ISO is available. The image is able to install Linux Mint Debian Edition in a virtual machine via the net. It has been tested in Parallels and works very fast.
I also have it running bare metal on my Mac Mini M1 which I purchased recently but there is not a big advantage as the VM is practically as fast.
 
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There is progress in the project. I succeeded in making a Linux Mint arm64 Live ISO, which installs Linux Mint arm64 from within the live environment using the Calamares installer. I am still working on fixing some small things.
To summarize, I have now two installer ISOs, one is a NETINST image, which installs the packages from the net. The second is a Live image containing a live system which can be copied onto a hard drive or boot into Debian Installer and install the system from the ISO directly to the drive. Using the Debian installer, a user has more options with regard to partitioning and stuff. Calamares is a user friendly installer which does not offer many expert options.


I added videos on my channel to show you how to install Linux Mint arm64 Edition in UTM on Apple Silicon.

m.youtube.com

Jeroen Diederen

This channel is dedicated to running Linux Mint on arm64. If you want more info you can go to my website.
m.youtube.com m.youtube.com
 
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Very interesting, indeed: and it would be great if your achievements could eventually become an official Linux Mint for ARM “flavour”. BTW, I have tried to run Linux Mint 22.1 and 22.2 beta x86_64 in Parallels Desktop 20.4 via emulation: but, contrarily to other distros (for example, Mageia 9), it was really too slow to be usable: so, it would be cool to have a native ARM variant, even if initially only unofficial. Looking forward to downloadable (live and net) installers… 😎🙂
 
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base-files package has been fixed and fastfetch now shows the right distribution information (see picture). Soon I will start working on upgrading all packages to gigi, once LMDE 7 is released.
 

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I released the final version of lmde6-cinnamon-arm64.iso. It is available to download for free for the first 10 respondents.

Note that this version of LMDE 6 has a Debian Trixie base and is based on the Xia Mint packages. It is therefore more up to date than LMDE6-x86-64 and has a longer life, as security updates will continue until June 2035.
 
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Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 Beta has been released(1) and I am up to date with the changes. When a stable version is released, the arm64 version will follow suit soon thereafter. I will not give away this release for free anymore.

1. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4893
 
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Jeroen Diederen said:
I released the final version of lmde6-cinnamon-arm64.iso. It is available to download for free for the first 10 respondents.

Note that this version of LMDE 6 has a Debian Trixie base and is based on the Xia Mint packages. It is therefore more up to date than LMDE6-x86-64 and has a longer life, as security updates will continue until June 2035.
Click to expand...
I'm happy to respond on this! And thank you for your work on it. I would like to try it in VMWare Fusion on my MacBook Pro M1 if that is possible.
 
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