- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Announced in early August and initially planned for the end of the month, the Fedora Asahi Remix distribution is finally here for those who want to install the Fedora Linux operating system on their Apple Silicon Macs.
The distro is based on the latest Fedora Linux 39 release and ships with the KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS desktop environment by default, using Wayland.
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I mean this is what a proper distro loooks like. Tailoring another distro for a true, specific purpose. Kudos to the team.
Yes, it’s not just a DE and default package set but actual system improvements other distros aren’t offering. Kudos to the Asahi team for making this possible!
This is great!! I use macOS for work but I’m sure I can get 90% of the work done on Linux now! Just wondering about GPU perfomance? Video editing is crazy fast on macOS, anyone tried on Asahi?
Unfortunately, the custom graphics driver only supports OpenGL 3.3 (from 2010) and OpenGL ES (embedded systems) 3.2 (via Zink, via Mesa)
Edit: Just realized i forgot to actually answer the question. I don’t believe they’ve yet added support for the video encoding/decoding engine, but once that arrives i believe it should be comparable to MacOS
Great news
I promise I’m not a troll, but I just don’t understand the appeal. That’s a crazy expensive piece of hardware to run a currently only mostly working distro.
Even when the hardware is 100% working, it’s still ARM, so anything that’s not open source won’t run because it’ll be x86_64.
Definitely a chicken and egg problem on availability of ARM software.
I’m asking in good faith - am I missing something?
I have an MBA, from a failed experiment with the Apple ecosystem. I love that it’s passively cooled, and will probably use it as a couch laptop with Asahi until the ARM market heats up in 2025 to 2026.
Been daily driving Asahi (first ALARM then Fedora when they transitioned) and it’s been exciting to experience in real time how far the project has come. When I first installed, audio didn’t work, the graphics driver was incomplete, and battery life left a lot to be desired. Skip to today and it’s evident how committed marcan and other contributors are to not just porting, but making everything feel right. Highly suggest following him or Lina on Mastodon.
Most are talking about the laptops. I have my eyes on a Mac mini to run asahi on. The biggest downsides with Mac hardware is reperability and upgrades. Some issues the Mac mini doesn’t have Vs laptops is ofc is no battery replacement , screen and keyboard webcam, mouse to use. and there are hubs for installing more storage. Ram is ofc a big minus. Looking at m2 16 GB 512 mb. And extend storage with something like this https://www.macworld.com/article/1677460/mac-mini-upgrade-hub-storage-ethernet-sd-card-ports.html 40 Gbs thunderbolt would make it easy to extend storage at least.
As long as it doesn’t break I would take this over any alternative minipc . I use my ThinkPad today but 99% of use is at home anyway so no need for portability. Need to wait some time to get the extra funds for it but something like that…
As long as it doesn’t break I would take this over any alternative minipc
May I ask why though? One of the biggest advantages of using a MacBook is the performance-battery efficiency. If you’re going to get a Mac mini and loading Linux, you lose that advantage.
Unless you’re looking specifically for an ARM64 machine for whatever reason, I think an AMD mini PC, say something like the Minisforum EliteMini UM780 XTX would be technically a better option - you get dual NVMe, dual 2.5G network ports, USB 4.0, Oculink for even more b/w than Thunderbolt, and far more I/O options in general. Not to mention, excellent Linux support.
I will have to look into it , but all reviews/comparisons I have seen has been always that the Mac beats the others. I do not game , I want audio and some video editing besides code.
Power consumption is a point as well as I am planning on going off the powergrid eventually.
I would install this if I had made the objectively wrong decision to buy an apple computer.
It makes a second hand mac viable for me. The hardware is nice, it was always the OS that made me avoid it.
I really wouldn’t touch secondhand Ms. No upgrades, no repairs, horrible components (CPU is ok, everything else is straight from the dumpster in order to cover costs).
So when something dies on your device from a company that has a long history of terrible design and QA (I’m betting on storage) you have to pay another $1000+ to replace the whole motherboard. On top of that, I’m guessing that they’re also ripping off customers when selling those replacement boards, as having usable ram and storage costs an extra $1000+ when buying new.
Legitimate repairability and pricing concerns aside, what parts exactly are you accusing of being straight from the dumpster? The GPU is insane for a low-power laptop, screen, speakers, trackpad are best in class. Keyboard is a matter of preference but by any objective measure it’s not bad, much improved from butterfly switches.
Haven’t dug into it yet, but if that’s right then not great. Then again if something doesn’t break quickly in electronics it usually works fine for years, except maybe overheated GPUs, random RAM and HDDs.
I’m still unsure if I want to replace my 2016 Asus zenbook. Other than the aged CPU/AGPU from Intel, and unusable from the start touchpad it’s fine.
When m1 came out, some tech guy on twitter did a review of MacBook Pro and studio storage. Apple literally used components that are so bad they had to disable data safety protocols to go above HDD speeds. The end result was that losing power is likely to corrupt your data.
Besides that apple was cutting out “unnecessary” parts of the arm specification in order to cut costs. The result is that the first 2(?) generations have hardware level exploit “m1racles” on top of others like “pacman”.
I really wouldn’t trust them to last
Funnily enough, that person you mentioned who discovered that was marcan, one of the Asahi lead developers.
I would never buy something new from Apple as I don’t like them, but I have to admit that their hardware feels great to use. I’m not tech savvy enough to know where that would be coming from, but it makes me wonder how people could say that the components are so bad.
My girlfriend has a 2012 MacBook Pro and I put Fedora on it and it feels like such a great machine. The ram and the hard drive have been upgraded, but it feels incredible for an old machine.
If in 10 years you can get an old MacBook Pro for 200$, I might jump on it even if upgradeability has been lowered.
their hardware feels great to use
I tried using a friend’s m1 MacBook pro, and it’s the worst laptop I’ve touched in a while. Like my oldest budget core2duo laptop has a better keyboard than a brand new $2000+ device. There’s a very good reason it’s permanently docked.
it makes me wonder how people could say that the components are so bad.
I’ve mentioned a few reasons in this thread. They basically used subpar components to offset the cost of developing their own CPU.
If in 10 years you can get an old MacBook Pro for 200$, I might jump on it even if upgradeability has been lowered.
It’s not lowered, it’s absolutely removed, unless you count replacing the entire motherboard as upgradeability.
16gb ram is too small? New motherboard.
Crappy SSD is dying? New motherboard.
I would if the particular hardware had no inherent or user caused issues and the price was reasonable compared to other purchase candidates, but it rarely is. It would also need to be Linux compatible too because the os has always been insufferable and praised by insufferable people that need something to feel superior about with zero justification.
The PowerPC days were pretty crap though even though the hardware was visually pleasing. Nobody made PowerPC compatible software. This time I guess apple is paying fees to arm and at least has arm compatibility. x86 is irritating in its own right too. Man, tech has gone in all sorts of shitty directions.
Current apple systems are objectively superior. The display image quality is better than competition, the touchpad hardware is better, CPU is top 1 in the world in single thread performance and the battery life is unrivaled.
If you talk about the repairability it only matters in case it breaks and it only happens to a small % of the owners. Most people won’t need to repair it. However you do use your device every day, so why would you give up the better user experience? Because of a small chance you would need to pay for repairs later, or even at all? It doesn’t make sense.
The same argument applies to upgrades as well. If you think you’ll need an upgrade just buy a bigger version from the start. It may be more expensive but once again you get a better experience overall.
Exactly the drivel they want you to believe. I’m sorry but even if 8gb of ram performs like 16gb on other computers, which is a load of hot shit, it shouldn’t cost more than 32gb on other computers. The markup on parts for basic specs config is utterly insane. I highly doubt the average apple used actually benefits from the top single thread performance, and all of humanity’s battery tech is still awful at it’s best both in capability and environmental impact, not to mention capability per dollar.
I have used apple hardware and software from the beige plastic days until the first laptops, and tried out Mac os and ios every major update, and found it to be entirely unenjoyable even when ignoring what is essentially DRM for hardware components on the phones forcing you to pay for repairs when it’s an easy diy otherwise.
Really the apple elitism is bizarre beyond belief. You get to be in the cool dude club for getting scammed into paying 3-5 times the cost of each individual component you can choose higher version of in there config before buying. It’s like the million dollar gold bar app on early app store, except apple wants to be the only one making that kind of easy money off of their users.
You talk about high prices however there is no actual competition. High end systems like Dell XPS and others cost the same as M3. You do get some benefits like touch screen or whatever but you get shitty touchpad and 3 hours of battery life.
In regards to the software I agree macOS is not the best, but maybe you noticed the topic is about Fedora Linux so you do have options now.
Their prices for RAM and storage upgrades are dogshit, but Macbooks do have objectively superior audio quality, and some of the best screens available. You just need to pretend the 256GB/8GB models don’t exist and the lineup suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Apple Silicon showed up to wipe the floor with Intel and AMD. Both now have CPUs that beat the M1/2/3, at the cost of huge power consumption and heat generation. With every non-Apple Macbook competitor, you can pick two out of “screen quality, audio quality, battery life, CPU performance” that perform well, and the rest plain doesn’t compete.
You won’t see me buy one of those things, the price is just soo goddamn high, but if you have the money to waste on these things, they’re excellent products. Especially when you’re a normal consumer and don’t plan on running Linux anyway; macOS may be janky as hell (“what’s window snapping?”) but your alternatives are Windows 11 and ChromeOS.
This is in contrast to the Intel Macbooks, which still had great screens and speakers, but were gimped by awful CPUs, comically insufficient cooling, self destructing keyboards, and so many other design flaws.
Hard agree.
