Fedora Asahi Remix 41 for Apple Macs is out The Fedora 41 version of Asahi Linux is out – the go-to Linux distro for Apple Silicon Macs. Fedora Asahi Remix 41 is the latest version of Fedora for Macs with Apple's M1 or M2 SoCs. As we covered last year, Fedora is the official flagship version of Asahi Linux, which is the effort to make Linux a first-class native OS for …
To answer my own question, the Asahi Wiki says support for M3 is partially done, presumably they are working on M4 as well.
Which implies an odd lack of backward compatibility, but perhaps there's something new on the M4 chip package that breaks compatibility? I think the actual CPU cores are largely the same, at least as far as the instruction set?
GJC
I'm also interested in an M4 version - I suspect the limitation is down to GPU drivers, but there's bound to be other things as well.
I seem to recall watching a video about "device trees" that explained a lot of the difficulties - still, I suspect there will be support at some point in the future.
the cores may or may not be the same, but it probably does not matter given that they are implemented to comply with an ARM spec.
I believe the other hardware inside the SoC does change around. All the audio, video, network/wifi drivers, graphics etc are on-chip and I imagine they're continuously updated.
> I wonder if this would run on the M4?
No. Nor on an M3 either.
It takes a lot of reverse-engineering for each release, and of course Apple is not helping in any way.
I reckon in a year or so and another couple of versions, there's a decent change that maybe an M3 Mac Studio might be supported, but M4 is some way off past that.
At that point they were as close to PCs as they ever got. From 2015 they started to diverge, and the differences increased significantly a couple of years later with the arrival of the T2 co-processor which handled the boot process so made use of "unathorised" OSs a lot harder.
The OP was promoting Elementary as an alternative on an intel CPU system. That is what I guess the AC who uses Rocky was replying to.
At the moment Asahi the distro to go to got Apple Silicon. Others have ARM versions of their distro's already available. One or two of them might port what Asahi have done with the boot process to their distros in time.
Because this is an entirely new platform, with no interest from the platform vendor of assisting Linux development. Because the boot and install process is different from what is required or wanted on x86_64 UEFI systems. Because the GPU driver, while super impressive, is still not stable. Take your pick.
With Apple's move to proprietary storage and soldered-on memory, I've put any new Apple hardware purchases on hold. I've got Linux installations on older Mac intel hardware and the better efficiency of the OS makes them feel up to date and it's a great use for older hardware. I'm not seeing why it's a good move to buy the latest Apple tangibles and put Linux on. There's more flexible hardware out there for far less money.
If you have say... an M1 or M2 based Mac and it is going to be replaced with an M4 device then it makes sense to repurpose the old device with Linux.
I didn't think that they used Soldered on memory with the M* series. Isn't the storage and ram part of the SOC? That is most of the reason why they got such a performance leap over X86.
The ram is soldered onto the same package as the SoC, or rather on top of it. Given that electrical signal travels at between 15 to 30 cm in 1ns the close proximity to the SoC is not all that important for performance, it might help slightly lower the power usage though. Methinks it's mainly to get a compact design that's convenient across their product line.
Apple is rumored to be investigating moving the RAM off the package to the motherboard as it may allow for more signal lines and thus higher bandwidth. That's just rumors though.
At this point it doesn't make any sense to repurpose even a base M1 to Linux, unless you just want to play around with Linux on a very good ARM machine. The performance Is still excellent. I have an M1 Mac mini bought when it was first released, and it works really well and runs all the latest macOS stuff. Four years old it might be, but boy the performance is still good.
Flexibility is only really an issue when you are banging up against the limits of your budget, and so might want to upgrade some elements to a better spec later.
The new Mac Mini is a great package at a mid-range price off the shelf, so long as you stick to the base spec. I could easily see me getting 6-7 years out of one as a desktop workstation, so the only real impediment to buying one is the dreadful MacOS that it comes with. Hence, I'm watching Linux builds with great interest.
GJC
"The new Mac Mini is a great package at a mid-range price off the shelf, so long as you stick to the base spec. "
If you want anything more than base spec, you pay Apple pricing for memory and storage. I have a 2012 i7 and a 2023 of unknown spec Mac Mini's I'm going over right now to resell for a customer of mine since he doesn't know about MacOS. The older one I can just remove the drive, wipe it and reinstall an OS and put it back. The newer one doesn't allow that and if the drive is kaput, chances are that it would have to go to Apple to be repaired and not worth my time to mess with it. The former owner passed away and we have no way to access his old computers as they stand as we dispose of his estate for his mother. Going by what was on several of the external drives I've gone through, I don't want to know although there was a good sized folder of feature films I might "back up". The mom wanted a quick look to see if there was any personal information on the computers that might aid in wrapping up the estate, but that's only to make sure there were no surprises. If it was quick, cheap and easy, fine. If it took time and money, she is good with just wiping data and reselling the lot. The M4 MBP will fetch some decent coin. All of the DJ gear sold at auction for good money.
Quite so, I would not buy Apple gear if I needed anything above base spec, in most cases the extras make it utterly uneconomic. In the case of the new Mac Mini, base spec is 16GB, and it has Thunderbolt for external local storage if needed, so that base spec should be very usable indeed.
Securely wiping old gear is increasingly a problem. My solution is generally a pillar drill, but if I need the hardware to be reusable there's normally a solution involving reinstalling the OS and running a program to fill the storage with junk data. I have no idea if this can be done with MacOS, but I would assume so.
GJC
I was looking at some Louis Rossman videos the other night and he points out that when NAND chips fail, they often fail shorted so a dead integrated SSD = a dead computer. Not only do you lose the data, you lose the whole computer as well. It drives him nuts as charging a customer when they can't make a successful revival is hard to do.
But why? It's a pretty meaningless distinction when memory demands haven't changed materially in the last decade and plug in storage is so cheap and fast.
You're just now spouting abitrary reasons not to buy a mac you had no intention of buying in the first place.
In theory upgradability is great - in practice for 99.9% of consumers its irrelevant.
but you like Apple hardware, surely a good solution?
A base model mac mini M4 is a compelling option or even a second hand M1.
Ditto for laptops.
Of course the caveat being you like the hardware, but if you didn't, moot point given the context.
... Waits for someone to mention soldered ram... Oh wait, they already have...
> with all things Linux on the external drive
I do not believe so, no. Not canonical, just what I've gathered from a lot of reading.
Arm64 Macs will not simply boot from removable media, whatever is on it, including macOS.
You can install another copy of macOS on an external drive, but in advance; the firmware needs to know about it.
Asahi has basically had to do something quite close to jailbreaking the machines to get this to work.
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