MacBook Air Intel HD Partition Size for Fedora Workstation Plasma 41

Ask Fedora
1

I have a MacBook Air (A2179), having a 1.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i3 , and a 256GB hard drive. I want to create a partition in which to install Fedora Workstation Plasma 41. How much space should I allocate for the partition?

2

Hi and welcome to :fedora: .

It depends on your use-case, and on how much are you willing to sacrifice from your existing macOS installation. I would consider the recommended requirements as the bare minimum for desktop usage.

Please be advised that Fedora Workstation edition comes preinstalled with GNOME desktop. If you prefer Plasma, then I would recommend using the Fedora KDE spin (or Fedora Kinoite, if atomic variants are more appealing).

I see that your MBA is a 2020 generation. If so, several components might not work out of the box. You can get a feeling about what works and what doesn’t by booting into a live ISO session. You can take a look at the t2linux.org project as well.

I am using a bare-metal installation on an old MacBook, but on newer macs (both Intel and Apple chips) I am running Fedora in virtual machines (not the same experience as a bare-metal installation though), using the open-source UTM app for mac with Apple Virtualization.

3

Thank you for your prompt and helpful response.

After trying out various Linux variations and desktop types, I decided that Fedora Workstation Plasma would be the best fit, so I downloaded the Fedora KDE spin.

Although, as you correctly point out, some components did not work when I booted from the iso disk, I am hoping that when I actually install the system on the hard drive, they will work.

While the MacBook has enough memory and disk space, it has only half the processing power (1.1GHz Dual Core, instead of 2 GHz Quad Core).

I hope to eventually be using only the Linux system with the Mac hardware. I have already backed up my MacOS as an image, and separately saved my files, including web browser profile, fonts, and apps list (most of which are FOSS versions of Mac apps.

I hope to check out t2linux.org shortly.

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4

I tried out T2-Fedora Plasma on a boot disk, but it could not update because it said there was not enough space, even when the boot drive had 128 GB! How do I fix this?

5

Do you mean you tried to update while being in a live session booted directly from an external media (USB drive)? If so, note that the purpose of booting from a live ISO is to get a feeling of the OS one is about to install, and, in case of Fedora, to launch the Anaconda Installer[1]. It is not recommended to keep a live ISO up to date directly on the external media, as it wasn’t designed for that purpose.

I would also add that the T2Linux variants of Fedora are not supported by Fedora itself, the kernel being patched and other components being added. This means that you’ll have to trust the project owners, and address certain issues on their support channels[2]. So I would recommend to try the official Fedora editions/spins first.

It is also recommended to keep the macOS installation, even if not used, for licensing, firmware and backup purposes.

  1. In addition, there are specific use cases where a live ISO is used to perform certain administrative or troubleshooting tasks upon existing installations. ↩︎

  2. Fedora-specific issues can still be discussed on this forum. ↩︎

6

I understand the point about not updating on an external disk.
I was planning to keep the MacOS - just the OS (and the native apps) on the Mac partition, while my files and Linux OS, with curated Linux apps on the Linux partition.
I think I might wait for the next Fedora Plasma spin and try a few others in the meantime before I decide which one to go with.
Thanks for your help.

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7

Actually, the recommendation is not to update from within the live session. But installing Fedora on an external disk (SSD or NVMe) connected via USB port is a good idea. You get near-native experience, without affecting the existing macOS installation. Then you can decide at a later point if you’d like to go installing Fedora on the internal disk.

8

Got it. Thanks for all your help.

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9

By the way, the github pre-install instructions say to create a new partition NOT a new volume. On this MacBook Air Intel, even when I selected “new partition” as opposed to “new volume,” it created a new volume anyway.

10

It might not be that relevant. You can check how it is recognized when you boot into a Fedora live session. If it’s presented as a partition, it is fine. It will need to be deleted (as to appear as unformatted empty space) anyway.