Modern Mac Revitalization: Supercharge with the Fedora Asahi Remix of Linux

The Asahi Linux project has been hard at work over the past few years, building a usable desktop Linux experience for Mac computers with Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.) chipsets. Fedora Asahi Remix is now available, and it’s the best option yet for running native Linux on modern Macs.

The Asahi Linux team has worked with the Fedora project to release Fedora Asahi Remix, a desktop Linux distribution built specifically for Macs using M1 and M2 chips—older Intel-based Macs can use any Linux distribution built for 64-bit x86 computers. Fedora Asahi Remix is intended to be more reliable and feature-complete than the older Arch Linux-based builds of Asahi Linux .

The release page explains, “Fedora Asahi Remix is the result of a close multi-year collaboration between the Asahi Linux project and the Fedora Project. We’ve worked hard in order to bring you a fully integrated distro, cooperating closely to get improvements and bug fixes to users as quickly as possible. All of our Asahi platform-specific packages are in upstream Fedora and fully supported in Fedora Linux 39. With Fedora’s excellent 64-bit ARM support and mature development process, you can expect a solid and high-quality experience without any unwanted surprises.”

Fedora Asahi Remix is built around the KDE Plasma desktop environment, the Wayland desktop compositor, OpenGL ES 3.1, and limited support for OpenGL 3.3. It also has custom audio components, which promises “the best audio you’ve ever heard on a Linux laptop.” It should be a perfectly usable operating system for normal productivity work and some gaming.

Fedora Asahi Remix currently works on M1 and M2 Macs (no M3 hardware yet), with support for displays, keyboards (including backlights), trackpads, headphone jacks, speakers, cameras, MagSafe charging (only on M2 Macs), USB 3.0 Type-C ocnnections, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. There is currently no support for external USB Type-C displays, Thunderbolt and USB 4.0, built-in microphones, or Touch ID.

Asahi Linux still isn’t as feature-complete as macOS on the same computers, or 64-bit x86 Linux on Intel Macs and traditional PCs, but it is an impressive effort (and certainly better than nothing). If you want to see the project continue improving, consider donating to help cover development costs .

You can install Fedora Asahi Linux from the official download page . You can also run Linux software on top of macOS with applications like Parallels Desktop , VMWare Fusion , and Docker Desktop .