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My Review of Asahi Linux

I want to start by saying the folks working on Asahi Linux have done a great job. I have a MacBook Pro 2020 M1, and I have installed Asahi Linux. I choose the KDE install, and everything worked as it should. My only issue, has nothing to do with Asahi, but more with Linux and ARM architecture.

I’ve been using Linux since the year 2000 as a hobby, and then later in the professional world. Linux is great in the production world. I’ve alway had a love/hate issue with Linux as a primary desktop. Usually for years, the issue is with drivers not being available for printers, scanners, etc. I understand why this problem exists.

Programmers and/or companies paying programmers are not going to spend time, which is money, writing software for the minority. More people use Windows and Apple for desktop or laptop use. This leaves people using Linux left struggling to use peripheral products.

With ARM architecture becoming more prevalent, this adds more issues to deal with. Most software is written for 64 bit architecture, so if you want to use zoom on the M1 with Asahi, or Fedora in general, you will be out of luck. If you are a programmer, and you want to use VirtualBox, you won’t be able to use that either. There may be work arounds to these things, such as compiling the software for your ARM, if you have access to the source code, but that is not for most people.

As a developer, these things can be a problem. So you have the same issue going on now. Will software engineers write their software for the minority of people on ARM? Maybe when enough drive for this happens, you will see your favorite software available for your M1 running Linux, however on the Apple side, your software is available because again more people are using Apple and Windows.

If you want to try Linux on your Mac M1, I encourage it, however, you may not be able to use it as your daily driver unless you just watch YouTube and surf the web. I will add you can do development too, if you wish. You can run all of the usual such as MariaDB, Apache Web Server, PHP, Python, C/C++, etc.

Again the Asahi Team is doing a great job.

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