[testing needed] Installs to Intel-based Macs no longer use mactel-boot customizations

Ask Fedora Common Issues Proposed Common Issues
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1

Problem

Installs of Fedora 42 to Intel-based Macs no longer use specialized customizations provided by the mactel-boot package, because it has been retired. This means:

  1. The existing FAT32 EFI System partition is now used, instead of a new partition formatted HFS+ and dedicated for Fedora.
  2. The user now sees an EFI boot volume in the firmware built-in boot manager, instead of a Fedora Linux volume.
  3. The user no longer sees a Fedora Linux volume in the macOS Startup Disk panel.

Cause

The mactel-boot package was retired due to lack of maintenance, so these customizations can no longer be applied.

Related Issues

Bugzilla report: #2347153

Workarounds

No workaround is possible.

5

mactel-boot is unretired but the bug is still happening, see the bug for details.

Also, likely related bug 2354671, we could use owners of Intel Macs to read 2354671 – thinks Windows is installed, but it's macOS run the requested command and post info.

7

I’m moving this back to Common Issues > Proposed Common Issues , because mactel-boot is present on F42 media, and some of the reported bugs were fixed. But we would still need a confirmation whether the mactel-boot actually has the desired effect or not. Feedback welcome. See the main bug report here:

8

I can confirm that this still happens as of Fedora-Workstation-Live-Rawhide-20250620.n.0.x86_64.iso:

IMG_3322 2
IMG_3322 22392×1912 282 KB

(generic “EFI Boot” boot option and without the Fedora logo)

For reference, this is what it looked like when installing Fedora 39 (the last known version where the boot option is “Fedora” with the Fedora logo, presumably indicating that mactel-boot is being used):

IMG_3276
IMG_32761920×2321 338 KB

I also added a comment in the Bugzilla. Though I wasn’t able to add screenshots.