Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is a big step forward for Linux on Macs

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/fedora-asahi-remix-40-is-another-big-step-forward-for-linux-on-apple-silicon-macs/

by repelsteeltje • 2 years ago

48 41 2 years ago

arstechnica.com

pipo234• 2 years ago

Most software outside Fedora's own repositories isn't available in 64-bit ARM (or "AArch64"), at least not without some deeper compilation and configuration work. That means no Slack or Steam for the time being.

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.

fader2• 2 years ago

I'd love to give them my money if I they would just stop pushing MacOS and force feeding their app store ecosystem.

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.

ludwigschubert• 2 years ago

far, far more money from services […] than from hardware.

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...

atlas_hugged• 2 years ago

They did to a degree with changes to the bootloader. Hector Martin explained it but basically they did this for no other reason than to help the project along without also needing to invest very much development time on it.

sam_bristow• 2 years ago

I remember a discussion back when the first M1 chips came out where someone observed that it was quite likely that they had the Linux kernel running before they got XNU ported. The theory was that the hardware engineers would've probably used Linux during the hardware validation phase before the MacOS kernel team got their hands on it.

jwells892• 2 years ago

Mac users aren’t beholden to the App Store the way iOS users are. There’s some things people get from there but the bulk of useful third party Mac software is distributed outside the App Store.

Rinzler892• 2 years ago

the bulk of useful third party Mac software is distributed outside the App Store

A mistake Apple made sure to not allow to happen again on their other platforms.

Aurornis• 2 years ago

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.

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.

freedomben3• 2 years ago

The Linux community is huge and diverse. One person's opinion shouldn't keep you away from the community, anymore than having a comic-con attendant be rude in the grocery store should keep you from comic-con. Also I don't know how you get that GP is "gatekeeping" with their comment. I don't see anywhere they said you shouldn't be able to run Slack as an app, merely that they personally don't do it and they are very surprised that other people do. I also don't see where they have any power to limit you, should they even want to (which most Linux people don't want to limit anybody). Can you elaborate more on why you feel this is gatekeeping?

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)

leoh• 2 years ago

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

mort96• 2 years ago

My understanding is that a lot of the reason is simply that Fedora stepped up. With the Arch-based distro, they were in the unfortunate position of working both on everything involved with developing and maintaining an Arch-based Linux distro and on everything related to getting Linux working on these machines (and Arch Linux ARM proved to be a fairly shaky foundation as well). Now, Fedora is taking care of the Linux distro development stuff, and the Asahi team can focus on drivers and what not.

My own experiences with Fedora are mostly positive, both with Fedora Asahi Remix on my Mac laptop and normal Fedora Workstation on my desktop.

jasoneckert• 2 years ago

That is exactly the reason - Arch Linux ARM maintainers just didn't support it properly (https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109971521711413167). But Davide Cavalca and Neal Gompa of the Fedora project did.

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.

tokai• 2 years ago

Why do you have a negative view of fedora? It's been the best distro for almost a decade.

ceinewydd• 2 years ago

Best for what, and for whom? Just saying “Best Distro” feels like an extraordinary claim.

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.

ploxiln• 2 years ago

Fedora First (tm) - they are always trying to push the NEW HOTNESS way before it's ready. PulseAudio, wayland, systemd, all the extra systemd features that shouldn't be part of an init system, Gnome 3, there's always jank new thing they're pushing. 3 to 5 years later this stuff is fine, but Fedora is always First.

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.

Rinzler892• 2 years ago

I have such negative associations with fedora

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.

lttlrck• 2 years ago

My daily development machine has been on Fedora without interruption since FC16.

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 :-)

freedomben3• 2 years ago

I've been using Fedora now for 10 years (over a 15 year period due to some distro hopping and a love affair with Arch that lasted a few years and still kindles inside of me and pokes it head up every so often), and I often forget about the lack of proprietary codecs and stuff out of the box. Early on after installation I always add the RPM Fusion repos, which have much of the creature comforts.

    # 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"

Then to install the codecs (I have this is a bash script that I run on new installs):

    # 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-video

VancouverMan• 2 years ago

In my case, I've repeatedly had bad experiences with Fedora itself, and bad experiences with a lot of other software coming out of that part of the Linux ecosystem.

For 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.

rdtsc• 2 years ago

I have such negative associations with fedora

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.

jacknews3• 2 years ago

I do laud the effort here, but personally I will not buy apple again, even with linux. The software is not the only problem with apple's closed system - the hardware is all but irreparable, locked to approved parts and so on.

thebruce87m3• 2 years ago

locked to approved parts

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.

jacknews3• 2 years ago

It would be fine, and also serve your purpose, if apple merely flagged non-apple parts as such, with warnings and so on. Rather than refusing to use them, or to even boot, or degrading the quality with software, or otherwise f*ing around with the experience in a user-hostile way.

Maybe that sums up my aversion to apple; they've become user-hostile, the moment you try to step beyond their gilded cage.

pjerem2• 2 years ago

I tested it some days ago and I’m really impressed by the quality and usability.

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.

technofiend• 2 years ago

Walmart recently had a blowout sale on M1 MacBooks for $399. Absolute bottom-spec machines but based on the good things I'm hearing about Asahi I plan to keep an eye out for future sales, particularly with the M4 refresh coming we should see something like that happen again. So I'm sharing in case anyone else wants to know about relatively impulse purchase sale prices for Mx MacBooks for use with Asahi.

Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is a big step forward for Linux on Macs

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