Fedora Asahi Remix | Hacker News Reader

Fedora Asahi Remix

asahilinux.org

229 pointsVinnl81 comments

Without diminishing how cool I think the Asahi linux project is, can I shout out the panel at the bottom of the page for device support.

As a tech enthusiast, that's exactly the kind of page I would want if I were buying a new Apple device today. It doesn't show everything, but it's excellent for comparing across Apple's whole Mac Silicon lineup.

Even being at the bottom of the page, I still think that panel is one of the most effective ways of marketing Apple devices -- to me, personally -- vs. anything I've seen.

Device Support Section

I couldn’t agree more the device support section is amazing.

Its simple. Clear. Conveys exactly what you need to know quickly. Bravo.

It is good. One gap in the coverage visualization is Magic Keyboard with Touch ID (Which is what I use for my Mac Studio)

You might like even more: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support which breaks it down by CPU and has some more detail.

It used to be rendered on the site, but it seems to have had a reshuffle with this release/announcement, or I can't find it now anyway.

Congrats Asahi team! I can't wait until Vulkan support is ready; it'll be cool to see what Apple's hardware can achieve when it's no longer restricted by Metal and macOS.

I am misunderstanding your comment.

How is Apple hardware in any way constrained by highly optimized versions of a graphics hardware library specifically for that hardware and an operating system optimized also for the hardware?

I think the implication is that the hardware is being constrained by what software is able to run on it. That there is a wealth more of Vulkan applications that a user would want to run, and they are currently unable to do that, since MoltenVK cannot support everything a Vulkan application may need.

I understand and that would make sense. Personally, I absolutely loath the font rendering on macOS, and I just installed the Asahi Linux a year or so ago myself because the fonts are much easier on my eyes, or my ability to control the font settings that is.

I do miss subpixel antialiasing on large screens that are 4K or lower.

It annoys me that Apple picks a non-integer scaled resolution by default, but HiDPI 2x looks great on a MacBook Pro and on 27" 5K and 32" 6K. If only there were more, and more affordable, monitors in those two spaces...

They probably want a mashup of Proton + Rosetta2 for gaming. I know I do.

Apple's Game Porting Toolkit is tantalizing (as is Crossover) but Proton seems to work really well (at least natively on x86.)

>it'll be cool to see what Apple's hardware can achieve when it's no longer restricted by Metal and macOS.

Metal is special built for the hardware and more optimize for it than anything, by the people who designed the hardware. Anything else would be less performant.

This is so close to being usable for me on my M1. I just need mic and usb-c screens to work and I'm switching over.

Can't wait to finally liberate this nice piece of hardware - I gave the OS an honest try, but it feels... limiting to me.

i think, you can almost get there already with hdmi support, which was done (iirc) couple of weeks ago.

Unfortunately M1 Air doesn’t have HDMI.

I don't have an M[1-3]{1} right now but as soon as hear that Linux is usable on it I'm gonna purchase one right away.

I'm in the same boat. Apple hardware is perhaps the best available. The software that comes with it leaves a lot to be desired. I would rather just run a standard Linux system.

Yes. I've been a long time Linux PC user (Thinkpads and Dell mostly) so without any shame, I have to admit that the quality of Apple devices is miles ahead anything else I've tried. Also yes, I simply cannot stand MacOS. I can recognise its virtues (and its limitations) but it's just not for me.

As a PC user you’ll have to get used to the extra control key which comes in addition to command and option.

PC has Ctrl, Alt and the Windows key.

What 'extra' does a Mac have, except the Fn key?

wait, it says HDMI, does that mean HDMI works via type-c adapter?

No, that is specifically for the dedicated HDMI ports.

Exactly, here is the source of the announcement:

https://social.treehouse.systems/@AsahiLinux/111515422125309...

Posting because it's now been officially released: https://social.treehouse.systems/@AsahiLinux/111607682159825...

I've been daily driving Asahi for over a year and a half now. I started with the first release on Arch Linux ARM last year, and switched to Fedora Asahi Remix in August of this year (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/fedora-asahi-remix/).

And I must say that it's been a pleasure watching this project progress over that time, and the amount of effort put in by so many people on the Asahi and Fedora teams.

Article says OpenGL 3.1 but it's actually supported OpenGL 3.3 since November. That's a big difference as 3.2 is baseline for a lot of apps that use OpenGL.

I think 3.1 is certified, and 3.3 is working, but without paperwork.

The certification is only OpenGL ES 3.1, a completely separate thing. In either case, both pieces of information are newer than the blog post they sourced which only notes OpenGL ES 3.0. I think the root is there wasn't a full blog post about either of these events so they just saw that and assumed it was the latest update.

This article gets the GPU info and sources for it spot on: https://news.itsfoss.com/fedora-asahi-remix-39-release/#:~:t...

I wrote it, but no, I did note the date and I didn't assume it.

It would be really good if projects actually documented what they do better, but as a former tech-docs writer for 2 software & 1 hardware company, I know very well that there's never the money and it's usually an afterthought.

glxinfo will always give an authoritative answer if you need! If you didn't assume it was the latest can I ask what the newer source was so I can get it updated? An outdated Wiki page perhaps?

(This was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38719349 so "article" means https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/21/fed39_asahi_remix/ - we've since merged the threads.)

Can’t wait to install on my M2 Pro MacBook. I was a long term Arch user on a Thinkpad years ago and then switched to MacBooks. Apple Hardware and Linux is best of both worlds for me.

Congrats to the Asahi team!

Does Asahi (or any Linux DE) use the command key in the same way as Mac OS for keyboard shortcuts, leaving my Ctrl key free to just be a Ctrl key in the terminal?

I ask because this has become very important to me, and workarounds like Kinto[1] aren't quite good enough for my taste.

1: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

I did a quick look and found this, had to find something that would work on KDE/wayland, the Asahi Fedora default. Could you give it a try and report on it? I’m the same boat and this is important for me as well.

https://toshy.app/

Windows Managers, such as i3 and Sway do, if I understand your request.

Pretty amusing having a diehard mac user review installing linux on their mac

Great in one way as they don't sugarcoat things like the defaults for the key mappings but not great in another with things like Gnome not supporting middle click for window titles is a problem for someone so aligned with macOS :p.

Edit: KDE->Gnome

Actually KDE supports middle click actions for titlebars and frames (the settings window is open in front of me). Maybe it's different for X11 and Wayland? I'm on X11.

Sorry, got Gnome/KDE flipped from the article.

Oh, OK. No worries. :)

Good catch!

Wait, this is my first time using this on my KDE install. When I middle click the titlebar, it just gives me a sort of "quick menu" (for many apps, it's just a quick link to some settings modals). What is the "UX consistent" intended use paradigm for the middle click and the macOS action/event chain?

I wrote and submitted the Register article.

I am a long-term Mac user, sure, but I am not a "die-hard" one and my normal role at the Reg is as the Linux guy.

As an example: I am typing on the MacBook Air I used right now. It has a horrible keyboard and a poor trackpad, not enough ports, is not nearly repairable enough, and I would never spend my own money on one of these things.

Few more details over on: https://fedoramagazine.org/introducing-fedora-asahi-remix-39...

To me the downsides on installing on pure metal are bigger than running over something like UTM.

On my maxed out M1 Max I have a VM with Ubuntu 22.04. Runs flawless, I can expose IPs, share folders and multitask with macOS. And it runs very well with 10Gb of RAM and 3 CPU's.

Maybe in a few years an outdated mini could be my home server with Linux on bare metal but for work and play I prefer the flexibility of running on a VM.

To me there are only upsides: I don't like the Mac operating system but I love the hardware and running Ubuntu natively with all hardware supported would probably get me to upgrade. But I'm patient, the oldies are doing just fine, sooner or later that will just fall into my lap so no need to start taking risks running fresh stuff.

Cool. Wonder if virtualising macOS would potentially work?

Mainly wondering because macOS has a limit of 2 running VMs, which is ludicrously low given the power of the hardware.

We (sqlitebrowser.org) have an apple silicon mac mini running build server tasks, but it's only lightly used due to this limit. There's no way we're buying new mini's just in order to run more jobs. :/

Does anyone know if speaker support is now live? The splash page has a section about it, but it's always been in a "alpha" state / not available without doing some hands on things to enable it. It's really the only blocked for me from using Asahi as a daily driver (and also being based on Fedora...can't wait for a fully baked Debian variant!)

Unless Fedora has patches that haven't (yet?) been upstreamed, you could probably find that information on https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

the second sentence of the section titled "The best Linux laptop audio you’ve ever heard" says "Just install Fedora Asahi Remix and enjoy high-quality audio right out of the box, no setup needed."

The page has per-machine lists of available and unsupported features. The only mac that doesn't have audio right now are the M1 imacs, due to their speakers working differently than the laptops. They're not that different though, so I expect they'll be working in a couple of months.

Haha, I know this was already answered, but just to cement it, I wanted to quote this Fedora toot:

> The speakers work, baby!

https://fosstodon.org/@fedora/111608377792618573

This is awesome!!!

Edit: Not working on my M1 MBP :c

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-Series-Feature-Su...

According to this page it should work on M1 MBP, but there is also a note about a specific patch released next week.

Can anyone comment on how battery life compares when running Linux on M1/M2? (I haven't been a mac person in many many years but I do love the Air and would consider getting one now that I wouldn't have to use their os)

It's difficult to compare as things like whether your keyboard backlight were on the whole time start to have significant impacts in the runtime for more efficient machines and with certain things like hardware video decoding not being implemented watching high res videos compounds with the previous note while another use case may not.

For me on my typical day I'd say something around 75% the time I get on macOS though. Can make it about 10 hours full to empty.

I don't even know if that's true. I have an AMD laptop that dual-boots Fedora KDE and Windows 11. When I watch videos (local files) on both, I can get about the same battery life. But Linux, in general, is much worse with OpenGL/Vulkan applications (games, primarily). With Chrome, Windows is slightly better; with Firefox, Linux is significantly better. But Chrome on Windows is generally "best". Etc.

So it's going to be application specific as much as small things like hardware configuration differences in each OS (which can be tailored to match).

>We’ve worked together with the PipeWire and WirePlumber projects to add support for fully automatic and transparent DSP configuration I just hope this isn't only for apple silicon

they don't really make clear if this install script replaces MacOS, or if it installs Asahi/Fedora alongside or inside it. Does anyone know which it is?

afaik there has always been the option to install alongside during the installer. It might not even be possible to do otherwise if you're installing from macOS itself.

The installer prompts you for how much you want to shrink your macOS partition and then installs Asahi to a newly created set of partitions.

You still need macOS to do any sort of firmware upgrade, so there is no blessed install process that completely replaces macOS.

Always alongside.

IIRC from one of the early posts that Marcan posted a couple of years ago, it's essentially impossible to completely get rid of MacOS due to the way the Apple Silicon boot process works.

If you're talking about the Reg article, I did make it clear, and it only supports dual-boot for now.

TouchID and Microphone not supported on Macbook Air and Pro. How am I supposed to justify installing Linux on a Mac without these two?

Depending on your needs. It's not ideal, but if your use case demands Linux and performant ARM hardware this is your only option right now.

Curious, is there’s a way to install Asahi on an external NVME and boot from there, while leaving the Mac OS untouched?

Apple Silicon Macs don't support booting from external drives so you need to touch the macOS partition to make room for the boot files regardless. After that, you're free to mount your main directories on other drives as you would on a standard Linux install.

Oh they don’t?

I never knew that, and I have Apple silicon Macs. I guess I never bothered to check and just assumed that they do support booting from external drive.

That’s a bummer..

So they ditched the Arch based distro to Fedora in favor off?!?!? How do we transition from the old distro to the new one?

Reinstall unfortunately, but it didn’t take too long for me..

Thanks mate

Thank you Asahi team this is awesome.

They block HN incoming links to the blog because "HN is increasingly a haven for alt-right trolls and hateful abusers"?

This is some new low (for FOSS website maintainers).

Is there support for external monitors?

Depends on the box. In general if there is a hardwired HDMI port it works, if it's an alt mode it doesn't yet. The feature pages give detail by hardware, heres a direct link to the M2 page https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M2-Series-Feature-Su...

is it possible to dual boot keeping macOS ?

Yes, by default the installer slices off a partition for linux and installs to that, it looks like another version of macOS to the boot picker

It is only possible to dual-boot, for now.

this is nothing short of amazing, thank you. is there a lot of work needed for external display support?

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