Why did Asahi go from arch to fedora? I have such negative associations with fedora (though maybe they’re outdated).
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.
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.
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? 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.