The timing couldn’t be more ironic. Just as I finally install and start running Asahi, not only did the cofounder leave the project, but a couple weeks later the GPU dev also left. Oh and they’re both based in 東京.

It may be the project loses a bit of steam and allure and is never able to fully recover. On the other hand, Apple products are “popular.” They don’t necessarily make an ideal hardware ecosystem. Is it took much to just have them release hardware specs for others to build on? People would still be buying your hardware.

So the future of the asahi linux project is unclear, and looks somewhat weakened and tarnished in the short term. I’ve chosen not to get my hopes up about the long term viability of the project. It is what it is. To some degree then it might be kinda stupid to sell off a perfectly OK 15” ×64 Dell that’s more or less running Fedora fine.

Again, getting back to the M1 running Asahi, there are definite limitations as will always be the case when running something a bit hacky. But then it’s not like Linux on x64 is perfect.

There are a few hardware issues that I’ll restate:

1. No video output — nothing I can do about this one. So it’s either accept and wait for a solution, buy an m2 with HDMI output, or don’t use Asahi. I’ve decided that I don’t need video output, which is a bit ironic because I just sold a Lenovo X Carbon because video output was broken. But TBH, maybe it’s because I use a macbook for work all day, I find the feel of the macbook a bit better. Also that was about a 2 year older computer. There are some good hardware features of the Ms that outshine x64. Battery life, cool n quiet, and they generally seem pretty fast. In my experience Fedora always feels quite zippy on a fresh install, but then starts to feel a bit laggish after 6-12 months. :shrug:

2. No internal mic — this is mainly nice for calls. Headphones work fine, so there is a workaround. They’ve also just released mic support for some Ms. So I’m a bit more optimistic that mic support might happen.

3. GPU video acceleration — ironically, as someone that probably would like to do some video editing ultimately, I’m not “feeling” this one at the moment. I don’t expect this to see a breakthrough. For my regular use so far, it has been fine, but I should do some video edit tests to see how that feels.

4. Touch ID — I missed this feature last time I was using linux on mac. For some reason, this time around, I don’t see it as a bit loss. I guess it’s because without biometric support in linux for a password manager, it only helps so much to be be able to authenticate the actual device. I don’t expect this to be supported.

5. Suspend power management drains the battery — this has always been an issue for linux. But as someone who’s not on the go much these days, it’s closer to the nice to have then deal breaker. I think they’ll find ways to make modest inroads, but probably tough to get that breakthrough battery life. For me, just having the battery able to last as long as it can while using it is already awesome. Not sure if I can get that on any x64 linux laptop.

If I have to guess, I think we see mic support this year. External monitor is unlikely, but we can hope. GPU might happen eventually depending how far along they were, and how much demand there is for someone else to step in and help. And Touch ID ain’t holding my breath (don’t think it’s even been cracked for linux on mac).

So worse case scenario,
——

Running ARM instead of x64 also creates some issues with software that maybe isn’t all well supported. This will usually be cross platform products. Currently I’ve run into issues with:

1. Signal
2. Ente
3. Trezor
4. Exodus

I think all Electron based(?). I’ve heard there might be a Chromium/Electron bug that is impacting Linux ARM until it’s fixed upstream.

Oddly, each has a slightly different solution.

Signal – I was able to compile an RPM following this guide: https://github.com/BarbossHack/Signal-Desktop-Fedora
Interestingly, I just came across this: https://github.com/kenballus/asahi-signal-desktop?tab=readme-ov-file

Ente actually has an ARM binary. It’s running a tad glitchy ATM. Does some kind of UI “reload”.

Trezor, I think also has an ARM binary. I than randomly found someone mentioning an argument to add to address the Chromium bug, and that helped:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/useidel-signal-desktop/26257/11

I also had to make a couple other simple tweaks.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libz.so.1 /usr/lib64/libz.so
sudo dnf install fuse
./trezor_suite.appimage —js-flags=”—no-decommit-pooled-pages”

After I read there’s also a fedora package:
sudo dnf install trezor-common

Exodus
No ARM solution for this one so far. I’m using the FEX, which seems to be some kind of x64 emulator for ARM64.

sudo dnf install fex-exu

And then have to run Exodus

muvm /full/path/to/executable

It does launch, but it’s slow and seems to usually end with a black screen after moving around the wallet a couple times. But I think in a pinch you might be able to get to work well enough to complete a task.

——

I updated to Fedora 42 beta, thinking it might give mic support (it didn’t for me).

I’m experiencing an issue external (USB) hard drives. They attach and work fine. However, when the laptop suspends, they are not there when awake.

I’m not sure if this is a known Asaha issue, something related to the 42 beta or just specific to my devices.

I had been curious for a while to try installing Asahi on an M1. There are some nice things about the “M#s.” Long battery life, run cool, quiet.

Other than that it’s about the same as the Intel macbook 13 that I ran Fedora on for about a year before upgrading to a Dell for more standard Linux support, larger screen and easier to upgrade.

Now I have a 2 part dilemma:
1. Do I go back to the MBP as the daily drive and move past the Dell?
Main reasons for this, in addition to benefits mentioned above are that the Dell battery isn’t great (but relatively easy to improve), it’s heavy, and perhaps a bit slower than the M1. Actually I’m not sure how they compare on specs. Pretty similar on paper aside from the CPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD. The big bulky weight of the Dell is tempting to move on. I also don’t love how it types or feels.

One thing I’m not excited about is the migration process. Although to be fair, I used the program SaveDesktop, and it made it surprisingly easy to move a lot of the settings over.

I need to migrate files and set up a few accounts, and I should be good to go (hah).

2. Asahi has a few limitations that prevent it from being rock solid. For me those are:
A. No video out support (yet).
B. No internal microphone (yet).

They just released support for internal mic on a different M*. That makes me think it gets supported later or sooner.

External monitor support I’d say is probably 1+ year away. So I might not even be using this laptop by then. There’s always a chance it comes out sooner than later.

There was some recent drama with the project, with the founder stepping away. So it’s to see if the project will be better off, or won’t have the same level of progress.

—-

In terms of what tweaks I’ve made with Asahi on this macbook:

1. I messed up the install the first time (Little Snitch network monitor in macos prevented the download, the process failed and then it required me to delete partitions, but I wasn’t sure which to delete, so I have a few redundant ones. The take away is that it would make sense to:
A. Clean up MacOS. Probably a full reinstall to shift it from a work to personal laptop
B. Reinstall Asahi — perhaps once 42 is out, any day now, and I’ve had time to ensure I don’t need the work laptop, I can have the double fresh start

2. tiny-dfr
Copy the config file from ``/usr/share/tiny-dfr`` to ``/etc/tiny-dfr/`` and then change the media default option from ``false`` to ``true``.

3. Adjust speaker audio
For some reason, this didn’t play nicely. It was just staying on, no way to lower or mute.

I read a suggestion to boot into macos, turn the volume all the way down and then boot back into Fedora. For the moment, it seems to have worked. But no idea if it’s a final solution, or an intermittent issue.

4. On the initial software update, it failed from the GUI. ‘‘sudo dnf update’‘ worked fine.

5. Webcam
It doesn’t seem to work in the default app, but I tested it in Mozilla for web based calls, and seemed to work there, which matches what I read online.
—-

Software installed
I’ve switched back from Betterbird to Evolution. Why? I guess Betterbird feels clunky and ugly. Mainly ugly. But let’s see if Evolution is actually good enough. I recall there was something that wasn’t ideal when I used it last time. Maybe search?

SaveDesktop
It copied over all of my flatpaks data. This then caused Gnome to install the missing flatpak apps. Some seem to launch, some don’t. It’d probably be nice to just remove the ones that I don’t feel I need.

—-

Takeaway.
At the moment I guess I’m leaning towards seeing if I can make this laptop a daily driver. It might turn out to be a big mistake. Perhaps the reason to switch back to a macbook from the Dell is not exactly clear. I would just prefer to not have so many devices to maintain.

It’s possible I could just leave this dualboot for my better half and continue using the Dell. I guess part of trying to use it as a daily driver is to see if I prefer the pros of this: battery, cooler, lighter, smaller;
Or prefer the Dell benefits, standard hardware, already up and running, larger screen.

A way to search/filter photos by Camera type.

A photo count next to each Event.

For HEIC:

$ sudo dnf install libheif-tools

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/14eys74/i_finally_figured_out_how_to_make_heic_thumbnails/

For RAW support:

$ sudo dnf install rawthumbnailer

This automatically had support for CR2 Canon and ORF Olympus files I have. But it was not supporting Fujifilm RAF.

Opening up /usr/share/thumbnailers/raw.thumbnailer I could see that RAF was not included as a recognized mimetype.

Luckily, all it took was adding:

image/x-fuji-raf;

And voila, Gnome began showing thumbnails for RAF!

ProtonVPN was up and running. Linux crashed. :(

Upon reboot, internet was no working. No Wifi, no Ethernet!

$ nmcli connection delete pvpn-ipv6leak-protection

I also read that how the Proton GUI turns on and off the VPN might not be the cleanest. Can instead use the VPN tool built into Gnome (or OpenVPN).