Here’s a nice twist: work done for Apple Silicon Macs could end up helping the old Intel ones.
What’s happening
The kernel’s macsmc driver was written by the Asahi Linux folks to talk to the system management controller (SMC) on Apple Silicon Macs. It handles fans, sensors and the light sensor. Intel Macs use the much older applesmc driver, which crams fan control, sensors, the motion sensor and the keyboard backlight into one hard-to-extend file. Developer Atharva Tiwari sent an RFC patch series on Thursday that adds Intel Mac support to macsmc as a replacement. The SMC works the same on both platforms. Only the way you talk to it is different, so most of the code can be shared.
My take
Plenty of Intel MacBooks are still out there running Linux. Cleaner, shared drivers mean better fan and sensor support for them. It’s still under review, so it’s not in a kernel yet.
God Bless, and Happy hacking!
