16 ms·

Fedora Silverblue is the closest feeling to the macOS experience I fell in love with that I’ve had on Linux in, well, ever. Very happy with it on my desktop and

by rvrb 1y ago

Fedora Silverblue is the closest feeling to the macOS experience I fell in love with that I’ve had on Linux in, well, ever. Very happy with it on my desktop and laptop. It’s not perfect but it is less imperfect than modern macOS has become. Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however.

rcarmo 1y ago
I have a couple that work quite well with it, including a very nice 10” one - https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 And I run a macOS-like GNOME theme that is pretty great.
- p_ing 1y ago
  This looks great, but not for the US market! https://store.chuwi.com/products/corebook-x-i3-1220p?#descs https://store.chuwi.com/products/corebook-x-i3-1220p?#descs
  - Rebelgecko 1y ago
    Based on past experience, I wouldn't buy chuwi hardware unless you're willing to treat it as disposable
    - p_ing 1y ago
      Good to know... at that price it almost is. I just want a half way decent Linux laptop that isn't FHD or 5 years old. Carbons are more than I want to pay for something 'for fun'. That's less expensive than the ASRock NUC BOX-225H I bought... and that was without RAM/NVMe.
awesome_dude 1y ago
Are you using Fedora on the Mac (via Asahi)? Or are you using Fedora on an Intel/AMD laptop?
- rvrb 1y ago
  If it supported M4 I would be using it on my MacBook, but I am using a ThinkPad P14s gen 6 (AMD) right now. Some issues with suspend that I worked around with a kernel parameter but other than that, everything else worked out of the box
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    Thanks, I wasn't sure from your initial post
kminehart 1y ago
> Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however. It doesn't exist at the moment. :\ I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality. The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. It's so good that it's really hard to justify using anything else right now.
- viraptor 1y ago
  > The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. They're coming. Look for AMD Strix Halo chips. They're in the comparably comfortable efficiency range.
  - benoau 1y ago
    The performance seems to rival Apple's Pro / Max chips but the battery life can only do that for light workloads or videos.
  - srid 1y ago
    > AMD Strix Halo chips Do you happen to know any laptop that has a) equivalent screen quality (retina resolution), b) keyboard, c) trackpad but with full Linux support where all hardware pheripherals just work?
    - scrlk 1y ago
      HP ZBook Ultra G1a? It has Strix Halo, 14" 2880x1800 (242 ppi) 120 Hz VRR OLED, and Ubuntu 24.04 options. Can't speak for the keyboard, but HP ZBooks/EliteBooks tend to be decent.
      - nullpoint420 1y ago
        I'm typing this post on the 395+ 128gb RAM model. IMO, the keyboard is better than the one in the newest Macbook Pro. Just enough travel, and quiet enough so I don't disturb co-workers when I type. I use it for development running Fedora Workstation. My job involves spinning up lots of containers and K8S KIND clusters. I often reach for it instead of my 14" M4 Macbook. However, I will choose the Macbook Pro when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while. The HP, as great as it is, still has bad battery life.
DimmieMan 1y ago
Silverblue is great but regular Fedora is worth a look too if you don't want to deal with the teething issues of managing all your dev-tools with Silverblue's immutable setup, granted that was 2 years ago when i tried so thing's might be better now. Infuriatingly; I have a macbook because a couple years ago I wanted a laptop that just worked while keeping my familiar tools but it really feels like Linux is trending up in polish and macOS on the down with an intersect possibly happening in a couple years.
- wyclif 1y ago
  That Apple would allow this development to happen without any reversal is astounding. If allowed to continue it could seriously damage their MacBook market share. Then again, they may not care that much as long as they have the iPhone customer base.
  - codr7 1y ago
    Apple was once all about creating, lately it's all about consuming. I expect the MacBook to be replaced by the iPad any second now.
- nullbyte808 1y ago
  In bluefin (silverblue based) they have brew preinstalled, which helps alot. Plus now its more mac-like.
anhner 1y ago
Calling gnome's UI better than macOS, even with Tahoe, is wild.
- dham 1y ago
  Gnome still does things way better than MacOS. Multiple desktops can be used with no animations. Built-in hot keys for applications without a 3rd party tool. Gnome extensions, a search that works for finding things (I know this is hard for Mac users to understand)
macco 1y ago
My ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 works absolutely fine. I get about 10 hours of battery life out of it. You can get it with Fedora preinstalled. In my experience, ThinkPads generally work fine.
a012 1y ago
I’ve tried Silverblue but it’s far from Mac experience, on my PC it feels sluggish and bloated. Perhaps I’m too simple but I only need a vanilla Linux just like now dead Intel Clearlinux with linux brew and Flatpak
CraigJPerry 1y ago
Silverblue is very under-rated currently. I see it as a slightly more pragmatic immutable os. NixOS i keep wanting to throw in the bin randomly but i have to admit that when it all works, it's kinda beautiful to own - you can harness a lot of power for comparatively little spent in mental tax
jlvdh 1y ago
I was using Pop!_OS and really loved it. Feature wise it would be an excellent replacement and I love the idea of running Linux. However, one day when I tried to update the Nvidia driver it failed and when I tried to revert back I got a bunch of errors. My computer is foremost a tool to me and I don't particularly enjoy nor have time for stuff like fixing drivers. Despite apple's flaws it gives me something that just works everyday.
- shelled 1y ago
  Sometimes I wonder how the Linux distro landscape would have looked if there hadn't been a new distro for a new use case or design choice or disagreement among lead devs? Could we have allocated the resources better at battling with Wi-Fi not working, USB creaking on the turns? Or those would have stayed the way they are, because these mostly come or should come from the OEMs/vendors? Would this be better for them if the onus was not to make it work on hundreds (or is it thousands?) of flavours?
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    That was my hope, between Slackware 2.0 and around 2010, eventually I got Windows 7 and a laptop that supported virtualization, installed VMWare Workstation, and that was it, my zealot years were gone. Still got an ASUS netbook though, a market killed by tablets and chrombooks.
- bityard 1y ago
  Nvidia has always been a PITA on Linux, whether you're using the open source or proprietary drivers. Decent drivers, documentation, and support for their Linux community has always been somewhere between actively hostile against to barely an afterthought. Go to any Linux distro subreddit right now and browse for people experiencing stability issues, random hanging, or no video on boot. Sometimes they don't mention it upfront but it almost always turns out they have an Nvidia card. AMD and Intel GPUs have much better native open source support and (usually!) work out of the box without any effort.
highwaylights 1y ago
If you haven’t tried openSUSE Aeon, I’ve been really impressed with it. BTRFS I find is a more elegant solution than OSTree for this use case, and it’s got a very minimal and polished happy path. Silverblue covers way more use cases (not least multiple users), but the setup and secure boot encryption setup is very slick and macOS-esque philosophically.

by rvrb 1y ago

rcarmo 1y ago

I have a couple that work quite well with it, including a very nice 10” one - https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 And I run a macOS-like GNOME theme that is pretty great.

p_ing 1y ago
This looks great, but not for the US market! https://store.chuwi.com/products/corebook-x-i3-1220p?#descs https://store.chuwi.com/products/corebook-x-i3-1220p?#descs
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  Based on past experience, I wouldn't buy chuwi hardware unless you're willing to treat it as disposable
  - p_ing 1y ago
    Good to know... at that price it almost is. I just want a half way decent Linux laptop that isn't FHD or 5 years old. Carbons are more than I want to pay for something 'for fun'. That's less expensive than the ASRock NUC BOX-225H I bought... and that was without RAM/NVMe.

awesome_dude 1y ago

Are you using Fedora on the Mac (via Asahi)? Or are you using Fedora on an Intel/AMD laptop?

rvrb 1y ago
If it supported M4 I would be using it on my MacBook, but I am using a ThinkPad P14s gen 6 (AMD) right now. Some issues with suspend that I worked around with a kernel parameter but other than that, everything else worked out of the box
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't sure from your initial post

kminehart 1y ago

> Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however. It doesn't exist at the moment. :\ I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality. The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. It's so good that it's really hard to justify using anything else right now.

viraptor 1y ago
> The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. They're coming. Look for AMD Strix Halo chips. They're in the comparably comfortable efficiency range.
- benoau 1y ago
  The performance seems to rival Apple's Pro / Max chips but the battery life can only do that for light workloads or videos.
- srid 1y ago
  > AMD Strix Halo chips Do you happen to know any laptop that has a) equivalent screen quality (retina resolution), b) keyboard, c) trackpad but with full Linux support where all hardware pheripherals just work?
  - scrlk 1y ago
    HP ZBook Ultra G1a? It has Strix Halo, 14" 2880x1800 (242 ppi) 120 Hz VRR OLED, and Ubuntu 24.04 options. Can't speak for the keyboard, but HP ZBooks/EliteBooks tend to be decent.
    - nullpoint420 1y ago
      I'm typing this post on the 395+ 128gb RAM model. IMO, the keyboard is better than the one in the newest Macbook Pro. Just enough travel, and quiet enough so I don't disturb co-workers when I type. I use it for development running Fedora Workstation. My job involves spinning up lots of containers and K8S KIND clusters. I often reach for it instead of my 14" M4 Macbook. However, I will choose the Macbook Pro when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while. The HP, as great as it is, still has bad battery life.

DimmieMan 1y ago

Silverblue is great but regular Fedora is worth a look too if you don't want to deal with the teething issues of managing all your dev-tools with Silverblue's immutable setup, granted that was 2 years ago when i tried so thing's might be better now. Infuriatingly; I have a macbook because a couple years ago I wanted a laptop that just worked while keeping my familiar tools but it really feels like Linux is trending up in polish and macOS on the down with an intersect possibly happening in a couple years.

wyclif 1y ago
That Apple would allow this development to happen without any reversal is astounding. If allowed to continue it could seriously damage their MacBook market share. Then again, they may not care that much as long as they have the iPhone customer base.
- codr7 1y ago
  Apple was once all about creating, lately it's all about consuming. I expect the MacBook to be replaced by the iPad any second now.
nullbyte808 1y ago
In bluefin (silverblue based) they have brew preinstalled, which helps alot. Plus now its more mac-like.

anhner 1y ago

Calling gnome's UI better than macOS, even with Tahoe, is wild.

dham 1y ago
Gnome still does things way better than MacOS. Multiple desktops can be used with no animations. Built-in hot keys for applications without a 3rd party tool. Gnome extensions, a search that works for finding things (I know this is hard for Mac users to understand)

macco 1y ago

My ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 works absolutely fine. I get about 10 hours of battery life out of it. You can get it with Fedora preinstalled. In my experience, ThinkPads generally work fine.

a012 1y ago

I’ve tried Silverblue but it’s far from Mac experience, on my PC it feels sluggish and bloated. Perhaps I’m too simple but I only need a vanilla Linux just like now dead Intel Clearlinux with linux brew and Flatpak

CraigJPerry 1y ago

Silverblue is very under-rated currently. I see it as a slightly more pragmatic immutable os. NixOS i keep wanting to throw in the bin randomly but i have to admit that when it all works, it's kinda beautiful to own - you can harness a lot of power for comparatively little spent in mental tax

jlvdh 1y ago

I was using Pop!_OS and really loved it. Feature wise it would be an excellent replacement and I love the idea of running Linux. However, one day when I tried to update the Nvidia driver it failed and when I tried to revert back I got a bunch of errors. My computer is foremost a tool to me and I don't particularly enjoy nor have time for stuff like fixing drivers. Despite apple's flaws it gives me something that just works everyday.

shelled 1y ago
Sometimes I wonder how the Linux distro landscape would have looked if there hadn't been a new distro for a new use case or design choice or disagreement among lead devs? Could we have allocated the resources better at battling with Wi-Fi not working, USB creaking on the turns? Or those would have stayed the way they are, because these mostly come or should come from the OEMs/vendors? Would this be better for them if the onus was not to make it work on hundreds (or is it thousands?) of flavours?
- pjmlp 1y ago
  That was my hope, between Slackware 2.0 and around 2010, eventually I got Windows 7 and a laptop that supported virtualization, installed VMWare Workstation, and that was it, my zealot years were gone. Still got an ASUS netbook though, a market killed by tablets and chrombooks.
bityard 1y ago
Nvidia has always been a PITA on Linux, whether you're using the open source or proprietary drivers. Decent drivers, documentation, and support for their Linux community has always been somewhere between actively hostile against to barely an afterthought. Go to any Linux distro subreddit right now and browse for people experiencing stability issues, random hanging, or no video on boot. Sometimes they don't mention it upfront but it almost always turns out they have an Nvidia card. AMD and Intel GPUs have much better native open source support and (usually!) work out of the box without any effort.

highwaylights 1y ago

If you haven’t tried openSUSE Aeon, I’ve been really impressed with it. BTRFS I find is a more elegant solution than OSTree for this use case, and it’s got a very minimal and polished happy path. Silverblue covers way more use cases (not least multiple users), but the setup and secure boot encryption setup is very slick and macOS-esque philosophically.