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by KennyFromIT 1048 days ago
So other than less battery performance, what other notable differences should I expect from Fedora on M2 vs the native MacOS. (I'm not being snarky, just trying to get a feel for how similar I should expect the performance and peripheral support to be; not focused on differences between gnome and the MacOS UI)
2 comments
Espionage724 1048 days ago
I think getting information about devices in and connected to the system would be easier from Linux; might be nice for device and board programming or diagnosing USB devices.

I don't remember specifics but terminal use felt odd on macOS to me. I do Terminal no problem from Linux, but maybe it was the file structure or command syntax on macOS that felt different.

Niche hardware stuff is likely cheaper to manage on Linux. I had to buy SwitchResX to set a higher resolution for my monitor, but I can do it from kernel parameter (video=), xrandr, or EDID override all for free on Linux.

eGPUs acted notably differently from macOS vs Linux on the same laptop, and iirc it had to do with the Apple firmware doing something differently when booting non-macOS. I preferred it on Linux because it shut-off the iGPU completely but required full shutdowns to switch to internal; hot-swap worked fine from macOS even on unsupported TB2. Iirc there was also some EFI binary that could be booted first before Linux in order to trick the Apple firmware in keeping macOS-specific config, and I kept that on a flash drive to boot from the rare times when I wanted dual graphics. Windows was even more different in that the eGPU straight up didn't work.

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sbuk 1048 days ago
> I don't remember specifics but terminal use felt odd on macOS to me. I do Terminal no problem from Linux, but maybe it was the file structure or command syntax on macOS that felt different.

That'll be the GNU coreutils vs macOS's BSD userland. You'd likely have a similar frustration if you were to use FreeBSD. You can replace these with coreutils from Homebrew or MacPorts on the Mac. Also, the file system layout is different, again, much like the BSDs vs Linux/GNU. Even Linux distros vary slightly.

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stirlo 1048 days ago
Unfortunately no Asahi release has support for Thunderbolt currently so eGPU will not work yet
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Aldo_MX 1046 days ago
There's a matrix where you can find which hardware is supported in a specific model: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

My non-educated guess is that the hardware currently in WIP (like Thunderbolt or DP Alt Mode) is the one they'll release at the end of August.

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