On: Apple: No Macintosh Forks. But the iPad...

[sa1]

It doesn't lock out linux from using it. They deviated from the NVMe spec, and it took time(and somebody to actually investigate) for the linux guys to figure it out:

https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/issues/71

It's not a lockout by any means, and your next version of linux kernel will support it just fine(assuming the NVMe patches are merged).