Out of curiosity, how recent is this? I haven't owned my own macbook since the pre-touchbar era (I think the last model I had was the early 2015 Pro), and I had heard that Linux had gotten harder to boot since then due to newer firmware (I remember hearing for a time the newer models were yet to get wifi support on Linux, although I don't know how long that lasted), but at least up until then I was able to use a fairly typical Linux setup dual booted alongside MacOS. I remember using a blogpost I found as a reference, but I think the order of the steps I used were turning off FileVault, shrinking the main MacOS partition by the amount I wanted to use for Linux, doing the Linux install the way I normally do (one FAT ESP partition with refind installed, then the rest as a LUKS volume with LVM root and swap), turn off SIP by booting the macbook into recovery, booting into MacOS and running the `bless` command to set the refind partition to boot by default, rebooting back into recovery to turn SIP back on, and then finally booting back into MacOS and turning FileVault back on. Essentially, by temporarily turning off SIP and FileVault, I was able to get Linux booted by default with my usual LUKS/LVM setup but also have the option to select MacOS from my refind menu and have that booted with the usual FileVault/SIP protections. Based on what I'd read about the efforts to support Linux on the new ARM macbooks and Apple seemingly not going out of their way to block this, I would have thought that this method would still work, although maybe there's something I'm missing.
Oh wow, that is a big change! Even though I know Microsoft influenced and pushed the UEFI standard, my first macbook was my first introduction to EFI booting (since I had used legacy BIOS on my PCs up until college), so I've always associated it with Apple hardware.
Some snarky people would even say that modern Macs are in fact iPhones, just with a different form factor.
The unification of the operating systems for both devices continues with every macOS release. (And that's not only about the unification of the naming scheme…)
It absolutely can. Fedora uses HFS+ for the ESP on Macs because it integrates more cleanly into the Apple boot menu you get when you hold down command on boot, but the firmware handles FAT just fine.