Linux which Distro?

[Yael-S.]

I think Lollypop is the best offline Linux music player... Great audio quality, 10 band equalizer, plays any file format.... I'ḿ using it in Mint, now... I hear jazz, the most, on bluetooth 5 headphones, or a 2.1 stereo..... FLAC is kind a Log Raw footage, you need a equalizer to contrast the tones! ; - D

Out of the box, FreeBSD and OpenBSD have better sound quality than any Linux system. At least on the analog connectors. Linux can only produce decent sound if you use HDMI or SPDIF, but most people use the green analog audio jack.

I learned a few operating systems and I usually see which one works best for the hardware and for the specific purpose.

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/fr/downloads/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

For Linux gaming:

ChimeraOS

 

[MacinMan]

Hey all, wanted to come on here and let everyone know I've finally settled on a Linux Distro for my iMac 17,1. Monterey is ending support this fall, and Open Core legacy patcher has some things that would make upgrading past Monterey hit or miss for me. Anyway, I am currently using Ubuntu 24.04 Cinnamon edition. I'm also happy to report they fixed the audio issues 22.04 had, and they also fixed the grub issue in the new installer. So was able to install to an external drive and run completely from that drive while keeping the install of macOS on the internal fusion drive separate. In fact, I am typing this post from Chrome on Linux.

 

[MacinMan]

I also setup a Kubuntu 24.04 install on a second external drive so i can toggle between the two. I know I could install both DEs in one install but wanted to keep things simple while i'm trying to decide for sure which I want to stick with. Then I'll take time to enhance my chosen install. Overall it's been a good experience though when I ran linux before it was on a non Apple branded computer. It was on an old HP tower. That was when Ubuntu 14.04 was current.

Someone had mentioned a while back Fedora is good on Macs too, but since they don't have an LTS (As far as i know) I chose Ubuntu, might also try the latest Mint that's based on Ubuntu 24.04 when it comes out.

 

[MacinMan]

Hey all, got a question. This doesn't seem to be Ubuntu specific, nor is really a deal breaker, but after testing a Fedora 40 Live USB stick, it seems like while audio works in Linux with the iMac's built in speakers, I get Monaural stereo vs distinct left and right separation like I do in macOS. I paired a Bluetooth headset, and got crisp stereo sound. I was wondering, does Apple do something specific with the iMac's built in audio hardware to get true stereo that Linux can't?
I was just curious. I really don't have any complaints as audio works, and it sounds good it's just not the distinct stereo i get in macOS unless i switch to something externally. If anyone has been able to solve this, please let me know. Thanks. i would be curious to try the fix.

 

[ThrawnTHX]

Hey all, got a question. This doesn't seem to be Ubuntu specific, nor is really a deal breaker, but after testing a Fedora 40 Live USB stick, it seems like while audio works in Linux with the iMac's built in speakers, I get Monaural stereo vs distinct left and right separation like I do in macOS. I paired a Bluetooth headset, and got crisp stereo sound. I was wondering, does Apple do something specific with the iMac's built in audio hardware to get true stereo that Linux can't?
I was just curious. I really don't have any complaints as audio works, and it sounds good it's just not the distinct stereo i get in macOS unless i switch to something externally. If anyone has been able to solve this, please let me know. Thanks. i would be curious to try the fix.

Look up the specific audio chip in your iMac—Apple has used a few over a short span of time. I’d also recommend reading this article https://studiofuga.com/blog/2023.04.13-audioofimac181linux/

If that isn’t the exact driver in your iMac, at least it will arm you with the necessary information to narrow your search.

 

[MacinMan]

Look up the specific audio chip in your iMac—Apple has used a few over a short span of time. I’d also recommend reading this article https://studiofuga.com/blog/2023.04.13-audioofimac181linux/

If that isn’t the exact driver in your iMac, at least it will arm you with the necessary information to narrow your search.

Thanks, I took a look at the link, and while helpful, my iMac is a 17,1, not 18,x as it's the late 2015 27" 5K. According to system profile, the audio manufacture is listed as Apple, Inc. There is no chipset reported such as Intel HD, or Cyrus, etc. Also, audio works in Linux, I just don't have the distinct Stereo separation like I do on macOS, but if I use Bluetooth, stereo audio works fine. The built in stereo speakers are reported the same in Linux as they are in macOS. The only difference is core audio isn't reported. Is there a tool I can run in terminal under macOS, or a piece of software I can download that will give me more detailed hardware specs than what's built into macOS?

Thanks.

 

[MacinMan]

Hey all, I have a few lose ends to tie up and was wondering if someone could help here. I am going to have to keep a dual boot setup around for a while because there are just one or two things Linux won't do, an it's mainly because they're apple specific features such as iMessage (text messaging forwarding, etc) I am working with a late 2015 27" iMac, and it has a fusion drive. Currently I've split the fusion drive and have Monterey (last official os) on the SSD, and Kubuntu 24.04 on the the 2 TB HD. the SSD is 128 GB, and right now for the basic macos setup this will probably be OK. My question is, can I rejoin the Fusion drive at some point, and give each OS 1 TB using boot camp and then install Linux to the partition boot camp creates while still allowing macOS access to the 1 TB remaining of the fusion drive?

Thanks. I'm just trying to come up with the best solution with the internal storage as external takes a hit, even if it's minor.

 

[th0masp]

Question regarding fan control (not mac hardware related):

I'm trying to keep a Ryzen-based mini-PC from ramping up and down the fan speed all the time. You know the kind where you dare to drag a scrollbar in the file manager or a window across the desktop and suddenly your machine becomes audible for a while.

Pop-OS here if that's relevant at all. And sadly the BIOS of this mini-PC doesn't offer fan control options like you would find on a desktop-sized machine with an Asus or Gigabyte board or the like.

Is there a simple fan control utility besides fancontrol (ideally with a GUI) that doesn't come with a lot of prerequisites and has support for new-ish hardware (2023-era mobile Ryzen here)?

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Hey all, I have a few lose ends to tie up and was wondering if someone could help here. I am going to have to keep a dual boot setup around for a while because there are just one or two things Linux won't do, an it's mainly because they're apple specific features such as iMessage (text messaging forwarding, etc) I am working with a late 2015 27" iMac, and it has a fusion drive. Currently I've split the fusion drive and have Monterey (last official os) on the SSD, and Kubuntu 24.04 on the the 2 TB HD. the SSD is 128 GB, and right now for the basic macos setup this will probably be OK. My question is, can I rejoin the Fusion drive at some point, and give each OS 1 TB using boot camp and then install Linux to the partition boot camp creates while still allowing macOS access to the 1 TB remaining of the fusion drive?

Thanks. I'm just trying to come up with the best solution with the internal storage as external takes a hit, even if it's minor.

To reset your fusion drive --

1. Reboot into Restore mode
2. Bring up the Terminal session
3. Enter the command 'diskutil resetFusion'
4. Restore your MacOS to the rebuilt fusion drive

See this webpage

I find it simplest to put Linux on an external SSD and select it by holding down the Option key at boot up.

When you use Bootcamp to split a fusion drive, it leaves the fusion drive (SSD plus HDD) for the MacOS and makes a separate partition of the HDD. Because of that what ever you install onto that partition (Windows, Linux, another MacOS) will only ever run at HDD speeds. That's why I put the other OS (Windows, Linux, whatever) onto an external SSD. That way the MacOS runs at full fusion speed and the external OS runs at full SSD speed.

PS.
I realised later that running Linux in VMWare is also an effective alternative. You can now get a free personal licence to run VMWare. The Linux runs at full speed, and you have access to everything except the sum total of RAM in your computer. However, I generally find that running Linux in 4Gbytes is perfectly acceptable.

 

[it wasnt me]

OpenBSD (on Silicon) users beware: The Sonoma firmware can break your boot process.

Fix:

Important message for Apple Silicon OpenBSD/arm64 users

 

[DCBassman]

Macbook Pros, 2011, one early, one late. Both have busted GPUs, so will not run macOS at all. Or at least, I cannot make them do so...
So, MX Linux. This got chosen out of a huge download-and test-fest, mentioned up there ^^^ somewhere. It is the ONLY distro I could get to boot, install, AND run on these crippled machines. And they both run it extremely well, to the extent that the higher-specced late 2011 model is now my backup daily driver. And quite aprt from that lack of choice, I find I'm rather liking it as a distro.
So,Linux, which Distro? MX.

 

[it wasnt me]

Or upgrade to OpenBSD.

 

[MacinMan]

To reset your fusion drive --

1. Reboot into Restore mode
2. Bring up the Terminal session
3. Enter the command 'diskutil resetFusion'
4. Restore your MacOS to the rebuilt fusion drive

See this webpage

I find it simplest to put Linux on an external SSD and select it by holding down the Option key at boot up.

When you use Bootcamp to split a fusion drive, it leaves the fusion drive (SSD plus HDD) for the MacOS and makes a separate partition of the HDD. Because of that what ever you install onto that partition (Windows, Linux, another MacOS) will only ever run at HDD speeds. That's why I put the other OS (Windows, Linux, whatever) onto an external SSD. That way the MacOS runs at full fusion speed and the external OS runs at full SSD speed.

PS.
I realised later that running Linux in VMWare is also an effective alternative. You can now get a free personal licence to run VMWare. The Linux runs at full speed, and you have access to everything except the sum total of RAM in your computer. However, I generally find that running Linux in 4Gbytes is perfectly acceptable.

Thanks for the feedback, I currently own a professional license for Fusion 13, and I followed your suggestion and reinstalled macos on the fusion drive. I think you may have misunderstood though that when Monterey support is finished I would be replacing macOS on this iMac with Linux. However, in doing research in some of the things I'd like to switch over to Linux from macOS to don't play nice with AMD GPUs which this iMac has, so I think i''ll be looking at a new computer specifically designed to run Linux so I have the best experience. I only have so much flexibility with the iMac I currently have. For a while, a dual boot will work because I can run my steam games on Linux with the iMac and do most everything else without issue. If I want to run VMware Workstation on Linux though, will need a new computer as they don't support 3D acceleration on Linux with AMD GPUs.

Thanks again for the feedback, and help. I have a better idea of what to expect now, and what I need to do after this iMac is no longer supported by Apple and I may need a newer OS. I can't just buy a new M Series mac to fix the issue as some of the legacy stuff I like to do requires 32-bit support, and while I could stay on Mojave for most things, I think Linux would be safer as it will have current updates and still support 32 bit at the same time. That's also why a dual boot will do ok too as Games never played nice in a VM for me so I prefer just to run on bare metal for those.

Thanks again.

 

[garibaldo]

a suggested read:

Ultramarine Linux Flagship is a contender for desktop of the year

Looking for an elegant, highly configurable Linux desktop distribution? Consider my new go-to, which ships with a beautiful and user-friendly Budgie environment.

www.zdnet.com

this is a review of Ultramarine with Budgie desktop... But it have a Gnome desktop version, too, and others...
Most people using Macs (and PCs too) don´t know about using other desktop environments, they think: Finder is the Mac...
In Linux you can have many DEs (Desktop Environments), and all highly customizable to your needs...
I'm typing this on Cinnamon DE on Mint, but Mint is distribuited with other DEs, like Mate...
My favorite DE is GNOME.... WAY better than Mac OS Finder and Aqua....

 

[ThrawnTHX]

a suggested read:

Ultramarine Linux Flagship is a contender for desktop of the year

Looking for an elegant, highly configurable Linux desktop distribution? Consider my new go-to, which ships with a beautiful and user-friendly Budgie environment.

www.zdnet.com

this is a review of Ultramarine with Budgie desktop... But it have a Gnome desktop version, too, and others...
Most people using Macs (and PCs too) don´t know about using other desktop environments, they think: Finder is the Mac...
In Linux you can have many DEs (Desktop Environments), and all highly customizable to your needs...
I'm typing this on Cinnamon DE on Mint, but Mint is distribuited with other DEs, like Mate...
My favorite DE is GNOME.... WAY better than Mac OS Finder and Aqua....

I do love GNOME aesthetics but wish it were more optimized for gaming (lacks VRR, sketchy HDR, etc.). COSMIC from system76 is the DE I’m most keen to get my hands on when it enters alpha soon.

 

[MacinMan]

Hey all, I wanted to provide a fix I am testing for Linux and (currently a 5K iMac issue) with AMD graphics.
If you encounter slow startup / shutdown with a 5K iMac with an AMD graphics card, try adding the following to your grub configuration. In your editor of choice, edit the default grub config at: /etc/default/grub (backup the file first) before making changes in case things go wrong.

Open the file and look for the line that starts with: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= and add the this argument amdgpu.dpm=0. You can add it before, or after existing arguments, but make sure there is a space between arguments between the quotes. So this is what the line in my grub file looks like with this change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="amdgpu.dpm=0 quiet splash"
This will also fix slow display wakeup from standby as well as slow startup / shutdown.
When looking for a solution, I tried to find official documentation, but wasn't able to find anything but mostly forum posts. Anyway, I think the main problem is, the hardware ins always configured fully / correctly out of the box due to lack of documentation or experience with apple hardware on the linux development side. Also when reading it seems like Linux doesn't support everything macOS does in terms of what the hardware expects, or it does it differently.

Anyway, if anyone here has a mac with AMD graphics and experience slow shutdown / wake /restart, try this fix. I'd be curious if this will help mac with amd graphic, but my focus here was a late 2015, 27" iMac, which this fix was targeted for.

Have a great day

I forgot to add, when you're done editing the file and save it , run "sudo update-grub" to apply the changes.

 

[Yael-S.]

I do love GNOME aesthetics but wish it were more optimized for gaming (lacks VRR, sketchy HDR, etc.). COSMIC from system76 is the DE I’m most keen to get my hands on when it enters alpha soon.

In terms of fps performance, xmonad, FVWM and bspwm score the best in the tests I have done. Gnome and KDE also score well in some games, but they are usually slower than the above-mentioned window managers if you test many (>15) games and calculate the average fps values.

Apart from gaming, I am most productive in bspwm and xmonad, but tiling managers are simply more productive in general.

I'm using bspwm on OpenBSD and it works very well as you can see here:

 

[bogdanw]

CachyOS June 2024 Release
"In the default CachyOS Edition, we have now added support for the T2 MacBook. The configuration needed for required packages is done via the hardware detection."
https://cachyos.org/blog/2406-june-release/

"CachyOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It focuses on speed and security optimisations - the default Linux kernel is heavily optimised using the BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) scheduler, while the desktop packages are compiled with LTO, x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4 optimization, security flags and performance improvements."
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=cachyos

 

[DCBassman]

Might just try that!

 

[MacinMan]

Here is my Mac-Like desktop but also Linux so it's similar and different at the same time. I also have an install of Kubuntu on a different drive. I like the windows look as well, so i have the traditional bottom panel on that one.
This one is gnome with Ubuntu 24.04

 

[MacinMan]

Has anyone been able to boot Linux with the OpenCore boot loader vs Grub? I'm asking because I was reading the github page(s) for Dortania and the OC project, and it suggests the only way to get the full 5K resolution on an iMac over the 4K compatibility mode is to use a different boot loader. However, I wasn't able to Open Core to see Linux on my external drive above the grub boot loader. Everything works with 4K, but I wanted to try to get full 5K resolution to work since it seems to be possible. Thanks for any help people can give.

 

[ugru]

Good day guys,

I got an old MacPro 6,1 (4 cores, D300, 1TB SSD) really cheap and I am having trouble installing linux on it. I am not by far an expert in linux, but I got several other machines up without any particular headaches. I have Monterey on it so it should have the last firmware/bootrom avaliable.

For my specific use case, I need a Debian based distro. I tried some of them (Spiral Linux, MX, LMDE) and every time I get the same error. When the system is booted live from the USB stick it works, but then when I install it on the internal SSD and reboot the screen after GRUB stays black...

As far as i can understand, the new linux kernels removed support for the old GPU used in the MacPro 6,1 (D300 = Pitcairn GPU = AMD FirePro W7000).

After reboot I also tried to set "safe graphic mode" as an option but no luck. Apparently I found elsewhere that one should set GRUB to "nomodeset" but i do not know how...

Any Debian based linux works out of the box in this Machine?

 

[DCBassman]

Im mx live, at the initial screen, make sure you're on the top line, then press e.
Move the cursor to insert nomodeset after 'quietsplash', once that's done, press F10. Do not press enter. Machine should boot as before, although there maybe no splash screen. Do the install and your modification should be included in the installed GRUB. I'm not promising it will work, but it got my busted-gpu macbook pros running just fine. There's a possible gotcha in that the MBPS have an integrated GPU to take over. If your Xeons don't, then another route must be taken. But try it anyhow first, you never know...

 

[ugru]

Im mx live, at the initial screen, make sure you're on the top line, then press e.
Move the cursor to insert nomodeset after 'quietsplash', once that's done, press F10. Do not press enter. Machine should boot as before, although there maybe no splash screen. Do the install and your modification should be included in the installed GRUB. I'm not promising it will work, but it got my busted-gpu macbook pros running just fine. There's a possible gotcha in that the MBPS have an integrated GPU to take over. If your Xeons don't, then another route must be taken. But try it anyhow first, you never know...

Thank you,

I did find at least a temporary solution on Spiral linux (which is essentially Debian).

I did what you said, pressed e and added "nomodeset", it booted. I installed it then I edited grub conf file with nano to put permanently nomodeset as a grub option, it installed I rebooted and worked.

But then after an apt update && upgrade I rebooted, grub is updated with "ro nomodeset quiet splash", but after grub it boots to an empty screen with the flashing cursor in the upper left corner....I am going crazy.

Maybe the new version of the kernel (6.9.something) installed after the update broke it again?

I will try again this procedure in MX, the first time a standard install did not work.

 

[ugru]

Apparently with MX linux and "nomodeset" procedure it worked....fingers crossed!