15 ms·
Fedora Asahi Remix first impressions
- mixmastamyk 3y agoNice post. Wondering if/when dependence on macOS will be eliminated? I don’t mind a small recovery partition on disk for… what, firmware updates? But otherwise would prefer macOS get completely out of the way. Is that a thing that is possible, or will we always be reliant on an “activated” macOS?
- CharlesW 3y agoIf I understand it correctly, that partition is not loading macOS, and is necessary for loading any OS — Asahi Remix, macOS, etc. https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot
- pacifika 3y agoYou’ll need it for firmware updates.
- pxc 3y agoCan you not do that from recovery on external media, just like installing the OS?
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoNope. iBoot doesn't support USB at all (including for OS installation), presumably to reduce the vulnerability surface area. While annoying, this makes sense, as the USB stack is quite complex. Apple Silicon Macs can boot from USB, kind of, depending on your definition of "boot"--they have to first boot an OS from the internal hard drive and then boot the OS on the USB.
- jasoneckert 3y agoIt is technically possible to remove macOS after installing Fedora Asahi Remix, leaving Linux as the sole OS, but this is not recommended to ensure that you can always update the firmware and recover the system. To install Fedora Asahi Remix, however, you must have macOS to run the installer script and prepare the system for use. So, the best solution is to shrink macOS to the minimum possible size during installation and use the remaining space for Fedora Asahi Remix should you wish to forget about macOS altogether.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoThanks. How does Apple bootstrap the system in the first place when inserting a blank SSD? Or perhaps you bought a replacement part? I don't see how that could be done if it is true—that the system is bricked/unrecoverable if the macos partition is lost. Surely it can boot from USB or something? Perhaps not, this wiki page linked above implies the iboot can't handle usb or external storage: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot
- nullindividual 3y agoRead further down. DFU prevents bricking.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoYes, just got to that part, thanks. Investigating DFU, apparently it needs a second laptop to bootstrap it, like a mobile device. I don't like the idea, but it won't happen often, hmm.
- skydhash 3y agoOnly happened once to me, when i wanted to get out of beta builds.
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago>my peripheral devices work I would live a little more detail on this.
- pacifika 3y agoAlso which year of Mac Studio are we talking about here.
- jasoneckert 3y agoThe answer you seek is in the output of neofetch in the screenshot ;-)
- jasoneckert 3y agoI use a Lenovo TrackPoint II Bluetooth keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3 Bluetooth mouse, as well as a massive Bose sound system.
- throwawaykk4 3y agoWhy help Red Hat at all when they are becoming more like IBM each day?
- RealStickman_ 3y agoFedora contributors are the ones maintaining the packages and they might have more work now if something breaks on the M1. This only "helps" Red Hat in that they can get more testing on ARM.
- throwawaykk4 3y agoExactly. And users help them by testing and submitting bug reports, posting on forums/lists, etc. So my question stands, why help IBM at all in any way when you know what that is feeding into?
- dralley 3y agoFrom TFA "But the main reason is that there have been many issues surrounding the maintenance of ARM packages for Arch Linux, and that the Fedora team is both capable and willing to provide provide the support needed to provide a truly polished Linux experience on modern Macs (the main goal of the Asahi Linux project). By moving to Fedora, the Asahi team can focus on reverse engineering Apple hardware while the Fedora team can focus on maintaining the distribution itself on the Apple Silicon platform. This combination of Fedora with the Asahi boot components and drivers for Apple Silicon is called Fedora Asahi Remix." This is a bidirectional relationship, the Asahi linux developers also benefit from the people and infrastructure in Fedora.
- throwawaykk4 3y agoI'd rather help Debian and not see my work help IBM sell RHEL based on Fedora in the future.
- jamespo 3y ago
- znpy 3y agoFedora has been really doing an incredible job at creating a great distro for everyday use. I kinda regret going back and forth between debian and ubuntu when ubuntu started getting shitty, should have moved to fedora eons ago.
- Octabrain 3y agoFedora is definitely a great distro that I've used a lot in the past. However, there are two main caveats from my POV: 1. The release of a version every six months. (I would prefer at least a yearly release for being sure that things are gonna be matured enough) 2. The fact that Red Hat is behind. (At this point, having seen the CentOS debacle, I don't trust them long term that much)
- jbotz 3y agoRe point #1; ``dnf system-upgrade'' just works.
- dralley 3y agoAlso, if you're concerned about stability you can just follow one release behind. That is, upgrade to Fedora 38 after Fedora 39 comes out - after it has gotten 6 months of polish.
- JetSpiegel 3y agoSure, use unsupported OS. You can always install Windows XP for maximum stability.
- andrewmutz 3y agoWould Asahi linux on an apple laptop be the best Linux laptop experience these days for someone who prioritizes fanlessness? It seems the other ARM option is the ThinkPad X13s, which presumably has lower performance. Anyone have experience running linux on these machines and can compare the experience and hardware compatibility?
- jasoneckert 3y agoI believe so, but I would stick to the M1 models currently as they have a larger set of supported features complete at this time: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- hbbio 3y agoI think so, X13s can become extremely hot and are slower. Only things still lacking for single machine use is speakers, microphone and webcam: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- valianteffort 3y agoI have never used Fedora, I use Arch on my desktop and really enjoyed it on my macbook. It's kind of sad the Arch developers didn't want to put more effort into supporting alarm. If Arch is totally dropped by Asahi team it's unlikely I'll continue using linux on my macbook at all. I just have better things to do than manage multiple distros.
- sosodev 3y agoShouldn’t this distro require little management?
- rekoil 3y agoAFAIK, the main Arch Linux project isn't very interested in supporting the ARM architecture at all. This decision probably has more to do with that than anything else.
- TillE 3y agoArch is unusual in that it's x86-64 only, so going from 1 to 2 is probably a lot harder than other distros just adding the nth new architecture.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rekoil 3y agoThe world is moving away from the AMD64 architecture fast, and Apple Silicon M-series chips are the high end of the current state of the art in ARM chips. If Arch Linux is ever to adopt ARM, working with Asahi would have been a smart move.
- bdavbdav 3y agoHaving used Arch heavily in the past, “better things to do” is heavily at odds with “using arch”
- extr 3y agoWhat's the status of sleep mode/battery life/trackpad feel on Asahi at this point? Last time I tried it those were the biggest blockers.
- jasoneckert 3y agoYou can find all that information here: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support I will say the the battery life on my Mac Studio sucks - as soon as I unplug it from power, it turns off.
- slekker 3y agoDoes the Mac Studio have an internal battery?
- jasoneckert 3y agoTo quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No.”
- wtallis 3y agoA coin cell, presumably for the clock and not much else: https://youtu.be/TYF527DqnwY?t=139 https://youtu.be/TYF527DqnwY?t=139
- IshKebab 3y agoIt doesn't really say if the trackpad works properly there and I didn't see anything about battery life. Frankly I find this statement from the blog post extremely hard to believe: > All the hardware works Really? The webcam? Touchpad gestures? Fingerprint reader? Bluetooth? Thunderbolt?
- h4x0rr 3y agoRIP stability for Asahi
- photonbeam 3y agoThat font is difficult, had to force it to change in the browser
- yborg 3y agoPage completely unreadable in dark mode. Very Web 1.0 website, in the worst sense.
- honeybadger1 3y agoI have been playing with Asahi since the day it became available but it does take much away from the hardware purchase not having internal audio support. Work in progress as expected and perhaps one day I can daily drive it.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoWhat does "container" mean in this context? It is used often and it seems to mean partition, but perhaps not exactly. Is this new overloaded APFS terminology?
- pxc 3y ago> seems to mean partition > Is this new overloaded APFS terminology? Yes and yes. It's like a PV in LVM, or a partition in ZFS or BTRFS. What Apple calls an APFS volume is like a logical volume in LVM, or a BTRFS subvolume. Edit: Had this backwards, at first.
- jasoneckert 3y agoHere's an explanation with graphics: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups However, if you've used ZFS, APFS containers are essentially identical to the concept of a ZFS dataset.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoThanks. As far as I can tell, a "container" is simply a GPT partition and APFS allows logical volumes to be created within. Not unlike LVM, ZFS, BTRFS, etc.
- pxc 3y agoNo, this is inside-out. APFS containers are the partitions, and the APFS volumes live within them. ZFS datasets don't live on the partition table but within a ZFS filesystem. Your link makes this clear as well. (When I tried to go from memory I wrote it out backwards at first, too.)
- jasoneckert 3y agoIt's not inside out - a ZFS filesystem lives within each ZFS dataset (including the root one), and the root ZFS dataset can be comprised of other ZFS datasets, each with their own ZFS filesystem and properties (yet have access to all the space available in the root ZFS dataset). For example, if you create a 'data' ZFS dataset that uses some storage device (which will be mounted to /data and contain a ZFS filesystem), then 'data' is the root ZFS dataset for that associated storage. And if you then create a 'data/stuff' ZFS dataset, then the /data/stuff directory is a separate ZFS filesystem that shares the same underlying storage as the 'data' ZFS dataset. This is also why the root ZFS dataset (e.g., 'data') is always displayed separately in the output of the 'zfs list' command (which displays all datasets on the system). An APFS container is like the root ZFS dataset (e.g., 'data'), and the APFS volumes within this APFS container are like the ZFS datasets within the root ZFS dataset (e.g., 'data/stuff'). However, unlike ZFS (which can create a single dataset from virtually any number of devices/partitions/files), APFS containers are normally just created from a single big partition (slice) on the Apple SSD. And because APFS containers aren't just partitions, you can't just delete the container using 'diskutil erasevolume' - you must instead use 'diskutil apfs deleteContainer'.
- solomatov 3y agoIs anyone aware of plans to port Asahi changes to make other linux distros, i.e. Ubuntu, and others, to be able to run without additional setup on M1 Macs?
- fragmede 3y agoAsahi changes are being done in such a way as to be upstreamable, at which point any kernel derived off of mainline will pick up their fixes, so eventually detault Ubuntu will run on Apple Silicon. Expect a custom kernel that can be setup with a bit of work before then though.
- jlpom 3y agoAn Ubuntu port already exists
- estebarb 3y agoUnrelated with the main topic, but I had years without seeing a website with its own personality. I liked it :)
- waithuh 3y agoFor any HN users struggling to read, blocking Google Fonts or Fontawesome absolutely demolishes the website.
- mazugrin2 3y agoSorry. Why would this ever be a thing? I'm so confused.
- mazugrin2 3y agoOh shite! It turns out it is actually a thing. Asahi is going all in on Fedora. I'm definitely surprised and also now a person who is not at all interested in Asahi Linux anymore. Good luck I guess?????
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blinkingled 3y agoI put it on my M1 MBP for all of 15 minutes before giving up - I did not have high expectations as I am aware it's cutting edge stuff but it wasn't even remotely usable for me as a daily driver - the touchpad was wonky, konsole kept crashing and also anything drawing on the screen was annoyingly slow. Maybe the desktops work better? Good on them for trying and I don't mean this as a discouragement but realistically I just don't believe there will be a day anytime soon where it works even as good as standard Linux distro on a x86 laptop now a days. After all not even recent Intel Mac Laptops worked well with Linux.
- darthrupert 3y agoKonsole keeps crashing everywhere, though. Don't use KDE.
- blinkingled 3y agoHmm I have used KDE on all my other desktops for quite some time now and maybe it has crashed couple times and always when using some obscure feature, not open and crash like here.
- toomim 3y agoAsahi works well on desktops, but isn't ready for laptops IMO. Sleep isn't stable yet, for example.
- majestic5762 3y agoYou should go to jail for using that font haha