Draft preview

Fedora Asahi Remix

Fedora Asahi Remix - Asahi Linux

Recently, I decided to install Fedora Asahi Remix on my MacBook Air M2. Though I have plenty of space available on my hard drive, it appears that Time Machine backups are problematic so the first thing I have to do is remove them.

Warning: The selected partition has a large amount of overhead space. This prevents you from resizing the partition to a smaller size, even though macOS reports that space as free.

So, I followed the instructions in How to delete Time Machine local snapshots in macOS

I had 23 local Time Machine backups which I removed via the following command..

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2026-08-29-113506

After that, I attempted the install once more. Same error so I restarted to see if that makes a difference. Sure enough, now I am able to proceed.

I had to consider a new size for my existing APFS partition so I decided to go with 80% which will give Asahi ~99 GB.

After about 15 minutes, the resize was complete.

Now I have to choose an OS to install:

1: Fedora Asahi Remix 44 with KDE Plasma 2: Fedora Asahi Remix 44 with GNOME 3: Fedora Asahi Remix 44 Server 4: Fedora Asahi Remix 44 Minimal 5: UEFI environment only (m1n1 + U-Boot + ESP)

I’m going with KDE Plasma. I’ve used that before on an old laptop and I rather liked the experience so let’s pick that one. So, I choose KDE Plasma and then allocate ‘max’ to use all available space.

After a bit I had to enter my Admin password and then…

Installation successful!

Woot!

And then a scary message for good measure..

To be able to boot your new OS, you will need to complete one more step. Please read the following instructions carefully. Failure to do so will leave your new installation in an unbootable state.

When the system shuts down, follow these steps:

  1. Wait 25 seconds for the system to fully shut down.
  2. Press and hold down the power button to power on the system.
    • It is important that the system be fully powered off before this step, and that you press and hold down the button once, not multiple times. This is required to put the machine into the right mode.
  3. Release it once you see ‘Loading startup options…’ or a spinner.
  4. Wait for the volume list to appear.
  5. Choose ‘Fedora Linux with KDE Plasma’.
  6. You will briefly see a ‘macOS Recovery’ dialog.
    • If you are asked to ‘Select a volume to recover’, then choose your normal macOS volume and click Next. You may need to authenticate yourself with your macOS credentials.
  7. Once the ‘Asahi Linux installer’ screen appears, follow the prompts.

If you end up in a bootloop or get a message telling you that macOS needs to be reinstalled, that means you didn’t follow the steps above properly. Fully shut down your system without doing anything, and try again. If in trouble, hold down the power button to boot, select macOS, run this installer again, and choose the ‘p’ option to retry the process. Press enter to shut down the system.

After reading the instructions, I rebooted and chose Fedora Linux.

I then had to enter my password and was informed that I’d be prompted for login credentials two more times.

I then answer Yes to the question if I really wanted to set a custom boot object, entered my username and password one final time and then installation was complete. One more reboot.

Plasma Desktop appeared and I click Begin Setup.

I won’t go into the steps to setup KDE Plasma since I think that’s not the point of this post. I will say that this was a pretty straight forward install and now that I have a dual boot MacBook Air, I’m eager to see how it goes.