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I 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

I 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 ago
Shouldn’t this distro require little management?
- rekoil 3y ago
  AFAIK, 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 ago
    Arch 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 ago
      The 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 ago
Having used Arch heavily in the past, “better things to do” is heavily at odds with “using arch”
- imdoor 3y ago
  Doesn't match my experience at all. I love that packages are always up to date. Also, in my experience, having a rolling release cycle leads to significantly fewer issues than having to upgrade everything at once. Using Arch has been a net time saver for me compared to something like Ubuntu where I've wasted a lot of time fighting package upgrade issues and trying to get newer package versions than the distro provides.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    In my limited experience, how Arch works out depends on how you're using Linux. If it's your daily driver and you stay on top of updates it's probably going to be fine, but on the other hand if it's a secondary OS on a multiboot system or a VM or something that only gets updated occasionally, chances of things breaking are much higher and something like Fedora might make more sense.
    - imdoor 3y ago
      There would definitely be issues with the keyring being outdated which you have to know/search how to work around. And from time to time Arch also requires some manual interventions in the package update process (that are posted on archlinux.org) – you'd have to deal with those all at once if Arch wouldn't have been updated for a very long time. But, other than that, I can't think of other reasons why having a less often used Arch installation would give you trouble. Then again, I haven't used Arch in such a manner, so you might as well be right.
      - c-hendricks 3y ago
        I use arch and update sporadically and this hasn't really failed me: sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && sudo pacman -Syu There were two times something went wrong: - when Arch moved plymouth to their main repos - when switching from a 1070 to a 4070 I needed to recompile my nvidia drivers
    - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
jasoneckert 3y ago
As I mentioned in my blog post, I also really like Arch. And I definitely understand the benefits to sticking to a single distro on multiple systems. But as a long term Fedora user who used Arch as a daily driver for a year and a half because of Asahi, and now just switched back to Fedora because of Asahi, I have a solid appreciation for the benefits that Fedora provides over Arch. In short, I like Fedora more than Arch (and I really like Arch). Of course, everyone is different, but if you start using Fedora Asahi Remix, there's a good chance you'll put Fedora on everything after a few weeks... just like me, Linus Torvalds, and everyone else who joined the dark side ;-)
- frankjr 3y ago
  Just curious, is there something similar to AUR on Fedora? It's a big selling point for me.
  - jasoneckert 3y ago
    The AUR and PKGBUILDs are pretty much just an Arch thing. But on a distro like Fedora, where the default repo is fairly complete and well-groomed (with the odd package hosted in a 3rd party repo), having something like the AUR is a moot point IMO.
  - user1205394 3y ago
    Fedora has "Cool Other Package Repositories" or COPR. They're a place for community members to build and publish arbitrary RPM packages. Some are well curated and high quality, others less so.
    - jasoneckert 3y ago
      Thanks for mentioning this! I heard of COPR a while back but never really explored it until this morning after I saw your mention. It definitely could be considered an alternative to AUR/PKGBUILD for Fedora (and it has >24,000 packages already hosted on https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/).
    - 3y ago
coldtea 3y ago
Why would you have to "manage" them? Install it, then use it.
totallywrong 3y ago
I love Arch, don't even know how many years I used it. But Fedora really is more polished, if only because it's the distribution with more paid contributors, by far. I suggest you give it a go. Also, in practical terms, Fedora has better ARM support.
EdwardDiego 3y ago
I used Fedora on my last laptop, really enjoyed it, it does adopt the bleeding edge quickly though. E.g., the default files filesystem was Btrfs, and no X just Wayland. But it was really stable, I think I only hit one issue that was fixed within a week or so. Guess it's a benefit of Red Hat's "patch upstream first" philosophy.

sosodev 3y ago

Shouldn’t this distro require little management?

rekoil 3y ago
AFAIK, 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 ago
  Arch 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 ago
    The 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 ago

Having used Arch heavily in the past, “better things to do” is heavily at odds with “using arch”

imdoor 3y ago
Doesn't match my experience at all. I love that packages are always up to date. Also, in my experience, having a rolling release cycle leads to significantly fewer issues than having to upgrade everything at once. Using Arch has been a net time saver for me compared to something like Ubuntu where I've wasted a lot of time fighting package upgrade issues and trying to get newer package versions than the distro provides.
- jwells89 3y ago
  In my limited experience, how Arch works out depends on how you're using Linux. If it's your daily driver and you stay on top of updates it's probably going to be fine, but on the other hand if it's a secondary OS on a multiboot system or a VM or something that only gets updated occasionally, chances of things breaking are much higher and something like Fedora might make more sense.
  - imdoor 3y ago
    There would definitely be issues with the keyring being outdated which you have to know/search how to work around. And from time to time Arch also requires some manual interventions in the package update process (that are posted on archlinux.org) – you'd have to deal with those all at once if Arch wouldn't have been updated for a very long time. But, other than that, I can't think of other reasons why having a less often used Arch installation would give you trouble. Then again, I haven't used Arch in such a manner, so you might as well be right.
    - c-hendricks 3y ago
      I use arch and update sporadically and this hasn't really failed me: sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && sudo pacman -Syu There were two times something went wrong: - when Arch moved plymouth to their main repos - when switching from a 1070 to a 4070 I needed to recompile my nvidia drivers
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago

jasoneckert 3y ago

As I mentioned in my blog post, I also really like Arch. And I definitely understand the benefits to sticking to a single distro on multiple systems. But as a long term Fedora user who used Arch as a daily driver for a year and a half because of Asahi, and now just switched back to Fedora because of Asahi, I have a solid appreciation for the benefits that Fedora provides over Arch. In short, I like Fedora more than Arch (and I really like Arch). Of course, everyone is different, but if you start using Fedora Asahi Remix, there's a good chance you'll put Fedora on everything after a few weeks... just like me, Linus Torvalds, and everyone else who joined the dark side ;-)

frankjr 3y ago
Just curious, is there something similar to AUR on Fedora? It's a big selling point for me.
- jasoneckert 3y ago
  The AUR and PKGBUILDs are pretty much just an Arch thing. But on a distro like Fedora, where the default repo is fairly complete and well-groomed (with the odd package hosted in a 3rd party repo), having something like the AUR is a moot point IMO.
- user1205394 3y ago
  Fedora has "Cool Other Package Repositories" or COPR. They're a place for community members to build and publish arbitrary RPM packages. Some are well curated and high quality, others less so.
  - jasoneckert 3y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this! I heard of COPR a while back but never really explored it until this morning after I saw your mention. It definitely could be considered an alternative to AUR/PKGBUILD for Fedora (and it has >24,000 packages already hosted on https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/).
  - 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago

Why would you have to "manage" them? Install it, then use it.

totallywrong 3y ago

I love Arch, don't even know how many years I used it. But Fedora really is more polished, if only because it's the distribution with more paid contributors, by far. I suggest you give it a go. Also, in practical terms, Fedora has better ARM support.

EdwardDiego 3y ago

I used Fedora on my last laptop, really enjoyed it, it does adopt the bleeding edge quickly though. E.g., the default files filesystem was Btrfs, and no X just Wayland. But it was really stable, I think I only hit one issue that was fixed within a week or so. Guess it's a benefit of Red Hat's "patch upstream first" philosophy.