Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is a big step forward for Linux on Macs
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
And this is why I only buy Apple phones. Since I buy pre-owned I want as many guarantees as possible that the insides are genuine. My hope is that one day I can check that every single component is genuine.
Maybe that sums up my aversion to apple; they've become user-hostile, the moment you try to step beyond their gilded cage.
That said, I agree with you - if there was the option to use third party parts but also tell then that’s fine with me, but it would have to be a law to ensure that other manufacturers are forced to spend the engineering effort too. They should also force all manufacturers to support devices for minimum periods too.
I have seen no user-hostile moves from apple in my 20 years of using their devices. I’ve seen lots of people misunderstand some of their moves and wrongly attribute it to hostility however.
That's exactly why apply are tagging their parts crypto-graphically - to ensure that those other parts cannot in fact be compatible, however hard they try.
And indeed, if you've spent 20 years being a good user and obeying apple's proscribed usage patterns, hardware lifetimes, etc, you've probably never experienced user hostility.
People will knee-jerk on any bad news so I can understand Apples concern that third-party components get conflated with their users product experience. If a third party battery burns a house down the headline will still be “iPhone burns down a house”.
You’re right that I have enjoyed the extended lifetimes that apple products afford. For iPhones this has allowed me to move to the second hand market safe in the knowledge of many more years of excellent support. Repairability is great - only if the product is still supported.
My own experiences with Fedora are mostly positive, both with Fedora Asahi Remix on my Mac laptop and normal Fedora Workstation on my desktop.
And as an early Asahi user who remembers when it was based on Arch (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/fedora-asahi-remix/), I can tell you the move to Fedora has been amazing on all fronts. Bottom line: If you want to run Linux natively on your Apple Silicon Mac, Fedora Asahi Remix has you covered.
To give two examples of where it might not be best — running Fedora on a server, or running Fedora on a workstation where you need long-term stability and support for running CAD/CAM or CFD software which doesn’t play nicely with major OS changes every few months.
Half-kidding, this is a normal experience for people with macbooks coming from macos, ie updating the os and praying that all software will be working properly after. So it is probably not such a big deal in this case.
But on long-running machines (i.e. not containers or temporary boxes) I concur. I use either RHEL or AlmaLinux for those. But given that RHEL and AlmaLinux are based on Fedora, I don't really consider them to be different. Everything you know and love from Fedora (for the most part) will be the same there. For example most of my setup scripts I write for Fedora work without change on AlmaLinux, and package names, config files, etc are very (though not entirely) consistent.
Software like CAD/CAM is indeed a lot more painful on Fedora, although IMHO that has basically been solved by distrobox. For softare like that that wants a specific Ubuntu version or whatever, I just install it in a distrobox and export it back to the host. My biggest complaint is that it usually works so well that I sometimes forget it's inside a distrobox :-)
I use Debian and Arch, used to use Ubuntu and Gentoo many years ago ... I like the model of Arch (and Debian and Gentoo) of being minimal by default, you add the components you want when you want them, for some components you can choose between the stalwart classic and the new upstart depending on what you need. Use boring technology where you can, use the new thing where you have a specific need, stuff will work much more reliably, without all sorts of excuses about how it's some other old component's fault.
May I ask why?
My only gripes with Fedora are it's lack of out of the box proprietary codecs, non-FOSS SW and repos, and lacking the creature comforts and user friendly tweaks that ship with the likes of Mint, but that' mostly because it's aimed at corporate workstations rather than home users.
But other than that, it's probably one of the most solid Linux choices you can make right now give the abomination Ubuntu has become.
At the beginning that was a Sony VAIO, only issues were due to the dual integrated graphics. Then a Dell XPS which was perfect, and for the last 8 years a desktop.
It has been brilliant. I have been running it with swaywm for 2+ years now (which brings its own niggles) but I couldn't be happier.
I really want to replicate this on my MBP, maybe in a VM or external SSD if that's even possible.
Every other desktop environment feels like swimming in molasses.
(The reason why I switched to FC16 was because our product was shipping on FC16 (a questionable decision - but it worked out fine) and I wanted to force myself to learn the in and outs, and face any and all problems - and what better way to do that :-)
# Add RPM Fusion repos
sudo dnf install -y \
"https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm" \
"https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm"
# Install additional codecs
# From: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
sudo dnf install -y ffmpeg
sudo dnf groupupdate multimedia --setopt="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin
sudo dnf groupupdate sound-and-videoFor example, I had one computer about a decade ago where the Fedora installation image wouldn't boot properly. It didn't matter if I burned it to disc or used a USB key, and I remember trying a number of different versions of Fedora over the years. It'd lock up very early on, without giving any useful diagnostic information. Meanwhile, I had no problems installing and using distros like Debian, Ubuntu, and Slackware with that same computer. Whatever the problem was, it seemed to be isolated to Fedora, while other distros worked fine.
As software like GNOME since version 3, NetworkManager, PulseAudio, PipeWire, Wayland, and systemd started making its way into other distros like Debian and Ubuntu that I did frequently use, I almost immediately ran into a lot of problems that just didn't exist before.
I find GNOME since version 3 to be very unintuitive, and very inefficient to use. If it's the default desktop for a distro, I have to strip it out and replace it with something else.
Wayland has either not worked, or has been horrifically slow, or has had annoying glitching on the systems I've tried to use it on. X, meanwhile, works fine on the same systems.
I've found software like NetworkManager, PulseAudio, PipeWire, and systemd to be unstable. Too often they will kind of work, but then they'll spontaneously break, often in ways that are a hassle to debug.
These days, I try to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD instead of Linux. They tend to just work for me, unlike Fedora, and unlike the other non-Fedora distros that have started incorporating more software from the Fedora world.
If will Linux ever have its Blender moment it will be thanks all the software you mentioned.
May I ask why? Just curios. What did Fedora do? I use Ubuntu and Debians but I hear good things about Fedora, updated regularly, lots of modern packages, people I know like it, etc.
I mean, some things aren’t working (like touchID or external displays) but everything else is working incredibly well. Everything that still doesn’t work is well identified by the team and they are working on it.
I didn’t stumble upon something that barely works or is unstable.
Even their work with the audio "driver" is amazing since it is capable of overdriving speakers safely which allows the same sound quality as in macOS. It looks like it’s the first time it happens on Linux on any hardware.
I pretty much recommend testing it, you only need some disk space and the installation from macOS is really as easy as running a command line and being asked how much GB you want it to use.
Since it uses the native UEFI bootloader, it’s also pretty easy to uninstall, just delete the partition and you are done.
Really?! Is Slack — a glorified web browser — what people trying to run Linux on Apple hardware are looking for? Personally, I'm happy running Slack in Firefox.
My main concern with the Asahi project is Apple's reluctance to help out. Personally I'd love to give them my money if I they would just stop pushing MacOS and force feeding their app store ecosystem.
I don't mind well intended UX beloved by many consumers, but please make life a little easier on developers.
But that's opposed to Apple's revenue goals. They make far, far more money from services and their app ecosystem than from hardware. It's in Apple's best interest to keep you in their walled garden.
You owning and controlling your own software keeps Apple from making money on you. You're much better off in the long run supporting vendors who make their money from hardware and don't lock you in.
Q1 2024 Share of Apple's revenue by product category:
Services: 19.33% Hardware: 80.67%
(Hardware breakdown: iPhone: 58.29% Mac: 6.51% iPad: 5.87% Wearables, home, accessories: 10%)
Though I’d love to know how that breaks down for actual profit, and likely they expect services revenue to grow more than hardware in the future?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...
Candidate for future Apple CEO is the current head of hardware engineering, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40328699
Running macOS as your daily driver makes buying an iPhone a very easy choice. It’s hundreds of little things like using your iPhone camera as a scanner from Finder on your Mac to scan a paper to the current folder, unified clipboard, using your Apple Watch to lock your screen when you leave your computer, having your AirPods automagically switch from iPhone to Mac when you start a video and instantly switch back to your phone and pause your video when you answer a call … and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Apple software is made to make you buy other Apple hardware so running Linux is pretty much not interesting for them. I’m positively surprised it’s even possible.
Services are only the cherry on the cake, you subscribe to them when you are already tied to the ecosystem because they became pretty obvious. And Apple is smart enough to not force them down your throat like Microsoft.
So yeah, it’s really important for Apple to keep you on their software if they want to sell you more hardware.
A mistake Apple made sure to not allow to happen again on their other platforms.
Macs pre-date app stores.
This kind of gatekeeping is one of many things that keeps me away from the desktop Linux community these days.
Having Slack as a separate desktop app that I can launch quickly and alt-tab to separately is important to me. The standalone app is better at keyboard shortcuts and multiple workspaces, which is also important to me.
If I can’t even use a common communication app, a distro is a non-starter for real work. It’s great that they’ve made so much progress, but every time someone tries to discuss the actual limitations it’s tiresome to hear people jump out and try to shame people for expecting common things to work.
I also use the Slack app (on Fedora). I much prefer it to a web browser because of the reasons you mentioned. Keyboard shortcuts, multiple workspaces, etc. It's also nice to just have it in it's own process so when it gets memory hungry I can kill it, and I don't have to deal with Slack tabs.
The beauty of Linux is the diversity IMHO. GP isn't wrong, you're not wrong, I'm not wrong. Linux is about flexibility and power, and empowerment of the individual (especially the user). Here the user is always right, and I love that. It's where all hackers should live IMHO (but I'm not trying to force anybody to Linux, you do you :-D)