Hey everyone! I'm a photographer, backend developer, and currently juggling high school. Recently, I dived into Arch Linux at the suggestion of my science fair mentor, spending a whole week developing on it. This summer, I got myself a MacBook Air M4 and I'm really liking the setup—I've needed to leave Microsoft behind since Lightroom hasn't been stable on Windows 11.
In my home lab, I've got Arch running on an old i5 2400 with an SSD from a discarded school computer. Now, I'm looking to set up Arch on my MacBook for development, but using RDP isn't working out. Interestingly, my school laptop doesn't block port 3389, so I wonder if I can reliably access Arch over the network while at school. I've given neovim a shot and it's pretty cool, especially since I'm moving away from JetBrains PyCharm. Any advice or tips would be super appreciated as I want to keep exploring Arch!
4 Answers
Unfortunately, getting Arch directly running on an M4 Mac is tricky since there's limited support for this chip. If you were on an M1 or M2, Asahi Linux would be an option, but you'll need to be patient for M4 support to roll out. You might want to consider creating a virtual machine on your Mac as a workaround, but it's not the smoothest process on macOS.
Even when Asahi gets rolled out for M4, keep in mind it's built on Fedora, so switching to Arch might take some time. It’s pretty much a waiting game at this point. No easy solution, unfortunately!
If you just need command-line access, why not set up an SSH server? It’s pretty straightforward and outlined in the Arch Wiki. You can also explore the idea of running an Arch Linux ARM virtual machine on your Mac, though the setup does require another Linux system as a base, which can be a bit of a hassle if you're new to it.
Check out the migration page for helpful tips on switching to Linux! You’ll find everything from basic guidelines to keeping the system secure. And remember to be careful with root access—only use it when necessary, stick to trusted repos, and always verify ISO checksums before downloading!
Interesting point! I had thought Asahi was based on Arch—isn't that a misunderstanding?