I highly recommend EndeavourOS for old MacBooks.

I have a 2008 iMac, 2015 iMac, 2012 MacBook Pro, 2016 MacBook Pro, 2013 MacBook Air, 2017 MacBook Air, and 2020 MacBook Air all running EOS (last one uses a special kernel because of the T2 chip).

They all run flawlessly including the Broadcom WiFi. The Arch kernel is the only one I have found where these drivers work well and EOS sets them up automatically during install.

CachyOS is also an option but the video is wonky on my older MacBooks. EOS is flawless.

“I didn’t betray the client and get killed”

Betrayed the client and lived? /s

There is not hypervisor. So, no hypervisor to update.

I would have gone with GrubCraft but awesome otherwise.

There is no stauncher enemy than a friend denied

I do not want Flatpak to replace distro packages.

I use both pacman and apk and they are both far better package managers than Flatpak is. Apk 3 is awesome. And I do not want sandboxes for native packages.

The role of Flatpak is as a distribution method for app developers to target Linux as a platform with a single build. It is a place to get things that may not be in my distro repos. It can be a method for commercial distribution. It is the cure for the “fragmentation” problem that makes it difficult to develop software for Linux.

I hate snaps but snaps could actually be used to replace packages. You could distribute GCC as a snap. In its current form, Flatpak is only targeting GUI applications

I really hope we see an acceleration in GIMP releases now that 3.0 is out. Seeing “new contributor” here is a good thing.

At the very least, these improvements get into the hands of GIMP users sooner instead of languishing in a dev release for years.

GNOME mostly abandons their old apps. However, in some cases, the Xapps project has taken over these older code bases.

https://linuxmint-developer-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/xapps.html

Why do you think Panama and Canada came up on the same day. Yea, Northwest Passage.

Thank you for clearly outlining the depth of your analysis.

Honestly a lot of it is just momentum and familiarity although I also think US vs Europe is a factor. Linux was popular in North America first and Red Hat was one of the most successful distros early on. The fact that SUSE uses the Red Hat package manager reflects this. Fedora is backed by Red Hat, the de facto standard Enterprise Linux.

Both have their fans though and trying to argue that one is better than the other would be a war of preferences. Many people believe that Tumbleweed is the best rolling distro.

I am a big RISC-V fan and often write how it will eventually push ARM down but let me do the opposite here.

Apple Silicon uses the ARM ISA but Apple designs the chips themselves and TSMC makes them. This makes it a very different situation from PowerPC.

TSMC offers more advanced manufacturing than Intel does. This is not changing anytime soon. From that perspective, Intel looks to be more in the PowerPC seat this time around. Their recent troubles are going to hang a serious anchor on their R&D. It is not at all clear what their future looks like.

Add to this the timing of Intel stumbling just as the Qualcomm X Elite chips enter the market and we have a very interesting competitive moment. Power and battery life matter a lot these days. Will it matter enough to counter speed bumps in app compatibility? We will see.

Independent of Apple, ARM may become viable in the Windows space and that would be entirely new. If it does not happen, it does not really hurt Apple. However, if ARM does take a cut of the Windows market, it does hurt Intel and puts them more into the place PowerPC was historically. If X Elite ( ARM ) does not fail on Windows, it will probably become the preferred option on laptops. If that happens, maybe it reduces Apple market share as well but not enough to push Apple off their own silicon.

As long as Apple sells enough volume, they can continue to design their own chips. It does not even matter how well ARM themselves are doing. If Apple continues to be good at it, there is no reason to switch.

So, while it sounds like you and I may agree about RISC-V vs ARM, remember that Apple does not buy their chips off of ARM. Apple gets its chips from TSMC and, far from being “old tech”, they are buying manufacturing process superior to anything Intel has access to. Also, Apple’s market is not just laptops and desktops. They are using Apple Silicon in all those iPhones and iPads at volumes that dwarf the PC side.

The reason that Apple moved away from PowerPC ( and Motorola before that ), was because of the economics. With only 15% of the PC market, Apple was the primary driver of PowerPC and had to fund all its innovation ( including manufacturing ). Now, they have control of the design and use it to serve much higher volumes while TSMC ( biggest in the world ) drives the manufacturing at the forefront of the industry. Most importantly, Apple is not really impacted at all by the success of the rest of the ARM space. If ARM fails, it does not really hurt Apple. If ARM is very successful, maybe it helps Apple a bit with more software available, especially on alternative OS like Linux. But alternative OS options for Apple hardware are a mixed blessing for them anyway.

It is a very different world m.

https://www.pinta-project.com/