Welcome to… being a normal Linux user

Switching distro is something every user does, thinks about doing, then does it again.

It’s normal. You just discovered a new way of using your computer, and opened a ton of possibilities in front of you, from customising your current install to the death thanks to the choice in desktops and display managers to just slap an entirely different distribution on your machine. A ton of possibles.

Try them out! There’s Live USB for about every one out there, but my favorite way is to dual-boot and see fully how the install process turns out, how the software management works, how updates occurs etc.

You’ll notice a lot is the same, a lot is different, and most any feature from a distro can be slapped on another!

To give you a taste, try openSUSE Tumbleweed - not because I think you should switch to Tumbleweed over Ubuntu, but because it’s quite different in a few key points, and I believe it is interesting for you: there’s this Rollback backup feature, a beautiful and quite simple installer, a polished user interface, a different software format, and a powerful admin tool.

Have fun with your hardware. Now backup your files and go crazy! So many out there!

(I started with Ubuntu)

Ultra-specific: soundtracks for theatre plays. I’m happy with the available vst’s, but I am not a musician, I don’t play instruments - I record people or I rip stuff & work from there. That said it means multi-band comps, tube-like preamps, parametric eqs, de-essers, echo/delays etc… It’s OK really.

Maybe all this is a bit like photoshop vs gimp: I mostly only ever used Ardour since forever and I cannot compare / suffer / get my workflow irremediably blocked because it doesn’t work for me like I expect it to.

Ardour is really a powerhouse now, and with the Pipewire audio stack, switching inputs or monitoring in every which way is just a breeze.

There’s tons of Linux musicians advice out there, including on, ahem, reddit. Yeah I know.

Now that we have Steam on Asahi my macos partition gonna get shrinked to minimal functional lol.

So you own a perfect mastering device at home, now you get the ultrathin laptop to wander about. One isn’t so portable, and the other may not be able to hardware-encode AV1 files. It only matters if it can play them decently.

Also, the M chips are good, but not that good. My M2 pro is about like a 12th gen i7, not like thrice quicker in any everyday way.

Eww. I ran into similar trying to build a meson app on Asahi. Fuck that. Since the point of the Fedora-Asahi partnership is to have a max of stuff upstream, I guess it leaves you with whatever fedora is shipping - which may not be good enough for you.

Again, depends in your use case; since the horrible business of having a full ffmpeg on one machine is done, you can use any sync software between them & not care further. I use syncthing to keep my mastering device (mbp 14, Asahi) in sync with a playback machine and a backup machine.

But it is my use case: I use different, dedicated devices for dedicated tasks as to spread out wear, risks and improve redundancy in case of failure.

I ran into issues while exporting (rendering) with kdenlive, where you will notice available formats being different between the Mac version of kdenlive and the Linux one.

But to me it was a matter of compatibility, I don’t really care as long as I get useable files of sufficient quality, so I didn’t pay much attention, works-for-me style I’m afraid.

Same applies to hardware vs software encoding/decoding - the M chipset is quite powerful enough you shouldn’t have to worry about it in a pro context where encoding is something you gotta do and it’s doing it reasonably fast.

Just try it out, it doesn’t kill your mac install, and you can compare.

I use it everyday. Got it with Gnome, which is very mac-y but think ultra-zen, minimalist, early macos style. Also with the spinning cube and the wobbly windows, I just can live without these very important productivity addons.

YMMV but for my use case it just works, period - and my use case isn’t light-browsing-casual-text-editing but multitrack mixing with Ardour over Pipewire and some video editing on kdenlive. Oh and we’ve got steam games now lol, I just started Portal (unavailable on Mac haha) for 0.99!

Good thing about Asahi is that it is dualboot by nature, you won’t loose your macos partition for that pesky proprietary app (fuck u Qlab)

Try it out, you’ll love it if nothing specific arm64-related gets in your way. Software availability is great, there’s Ftapak of course for more stuff… It works and is painless to try out.

The Air macs are the best: light, thin, with awesome batteries. The only words of warning are about the reboot mid-process during install: Mac laptops tend to boot on any keystroke, lid movement anything so be sure to not touch anything & just long-press the power button 'til the appropriate screen shows up. That’s all there is to it, the only risky moment. Just (long-)press that button.

But I run a summer festival on linux!

• Tech drawings on QCad
• Lights & previz on MagicQ
• Emails etc on firefox

Our media servers are W7 (!) but I access them with VNC. And lots of screens/beamers here are on PI computers.

…then of course we need a windows laptop for the wireless mics, for the FoH configuration, the videowall, stuff like that. Mails and docs are google anyway, remote access is teamviewer.

I can’t run it all on linux, even if I sit at a linux computer the most.

Why do you think Immutable Distros are all the rage these days? Beyond deleting shit, there’s always Fucking Up shit.

I built an entire theatre using Linux. Architect was on autocad, that was alright, but engineering was on vectorworks & there I had to ask for .dxf exports.

Qlab (macos) is 100% a no-go, I actually own a macbook just for this piece of software.

Isadora runs on wine, but video play is problematic. Isadora is a video mapper/VJ/mixing software.

Of the big three of lighting console software, only Chamsys’ MagicQ runs on Linux. Infuriating when you know Grand MA consoles are linux-based. ETC? Don’t ask.

It’s niche (how about Enttec or DMXKing interfaces configurator?) but it’s my niche. I survive doing things differently, and, yes, owning a dual-boot AsahiLinux/MacOS device.

That you can “do everything that windows does”. You can’t. You can do similar things, you can do different things, you can do basic things, yes, but Linux can’t do everything that windows does.

disclaimer: on linux since 2006

E16 was better

What’s getting old is continuously asking for a Linux Drive client. I will keep on whining about it, probably until the end of my subscription.

So it is not sarcasm. As I, too, am getting old I just tend to repeat myself. A lot.

Mandatory “I want a Drive Client for Linux” comment. Why should I care about features I won’t be able to access out of a cumbersome web app without even a search tool?

Also, why should I since I won’t be renewing anyway.

Check out Pipewire, which is the modern standard of linux audio

I do not have the same requirements than you, but in audio production I can route anything in any which way I need (useful for switching monitoring or sources), and I did once plug an eq to my movie player because some ripped movie was really sounding bad

There are tons of VSTs available, too

There’ll be research to do, and a learning curve, but today is not the days of Jack anymore, it has become really easy if you go for a modern distro (arch, tumbleweed, fedora,…)

Have fun running your sound your way!

Any modern gnome works great… until you have to type a lot. Also, typing on a wall-mounted screen is usually uncomfortable, not angled right.

So depending on your “obedience”, debian 12, Fedora 40, OpenSuse Tumbleweed or plain old Arch will do it.

Maybe there are.different style/type/propositions of on-screen keyboards out there.

I have a 2-year old android 11 oppo A53, my colleague some small samsung on A10. Installs fine, sync a first time somewhat, then just don’t sync a thing.

Never could get it to work with phones, and that from Arch, Mint, Asahi, Macos all sharing flawlessly between thembut no phone would reliably stay sync’ed.

" KdeConnect": Notifications, messages, clioboard sharing, link sharing, remote control of your pointing.device, keyboard, command inputs on computer… When it works it’s great, but it is hit-and-miss between distros and updates catching up.

I’m using Asahi daily these days; it is dual-boot by nature so you can rock your Linux OS everyday but still have “a macbook” (and be working on a work machine paid by your company, as should be).

I’d be using it more if the keyboard wasn’t so shit. Battery is good, screen too, processing power… really just the keyboard is wrong, wrong and wrong. Oh, and I love the touchscreen on my other laptop.

Did you guess my other machine is a Thinkpad? Yes it is. With a touchscreen!

What would be a configuration to maximize battery life?