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.
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!
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 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.
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?
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.
