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Fedora Notes

As my MacBook Pro edition 2013 fell out of support from Apple and I did not want to use a computer without security updates, I decided to replace the proprietary OS by a GNU/Linux one. And as I wanted to give a try to the Fedora distribution, I did not install my beloved Debian.

This page gathers some notes I took about the configuration and the tools provided by that distribution.

I must say that I had no problem installing the version 38 of Fedora: I prepared a USB stick with the recommended tool I installed on my MacOS MacBook Pro and followed the steps.

Post Installation Setup

Keyboard Layout

Apple keyboard is handled by the kernel module called hid_apple. This one accepts a bunch of parameters amongst which two are interesting to me:

fnmode which controls how the fn key should behave (0=disabled, 1=press fn to access the F1, F2… keys, 2=the converse of 1, press fn to access the alternative functions of the F1, F2… keys). My preference is the option 2.
iso_layout to have the key ~ next to the upcase key (instead of below the Esc key).

So I created the file /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf and added the following:

options hid_apple fnmode=2
options hid_apple iso_layout=0

Next, to make this persistent, I regenerated the initramfs using dracut:

% sudo dracut --force

Fix NVidia Blurry Display on Wake Up

Sometimes, some parts of the gnome desktop display blurry. This is linked to the proprietary NVidia drivers. To work around this, we can restart the display manager by pressing Alt+f2 and entering the r command.

Otherwise, something to test if the issue is too boring is to disable some power management options in the NVidia drivers configuration /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-power-management.conf:

options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=0

Edit February 2025: Since Fedora 41, I have no display issues anymore.

Fix Wrong Battery Percentage

Sometimes, when I wake my computer up, the battery level is wrong showing me a few percents when my battery is actually fully charged.

This is a tiny glitch in upower service. Rebooting it fixes the bug:

% sudo systemctl restart upower

Update February 2025: I did not experience this problem with Fedora 41.

Fix Trackpad

I still did not find out why sometimes, the trackpad does not respond anymore. If this happen, simply reloading the kernel module fix the problem:

% sudo rmmod bcm5974
% sudo modprobe bcm5974

Update February 2025: I did not experience this problem with Fedora 41.

Remap CapsLock key

Keys remapping is not something we can do by default via the Settings panel: those hackers tweaks are accessible with a package called gnome-tweaks. When installed, run the command gnome-tweaks from a terminal or simply run the Tweaks application via the icon.

Then follow Keyboard > Additional Layout Options and in the section Ctrl position select Caps Lock as Ctrl.

Install `mu4e`

The package which provides mu4e is maildir-utils.

Tools

DNF

Listing Package Files

Sometimes, we may be interested in the files that a package will install on your system. This can be achieved with the following command:

% dnf repoquery -l postgresql
Last metadata expiration check: 0:15:20 ago on Sat 21 Oct 2023 06:14:05 AM CEST.
/usr/bin/clusterdb
/usr/bin/createdb
/usr/bin/createuser
/usr/bin/dropdb
[...]

Copying Files from iPhone

The idea is to use the libimobiledevice library. I created a directory ~/.iPhone then ifuse ~/iPhone.

Upgrades

Fedora 40

On 11th, August 2024, I upgraded to Fedora 40 which was released on March 2024. I had a few issues which are listed below with the fix or workaround.

WiFi not working
Update 25th August 2024: the problem is workaround in wl-kmod from version 6.30.223.271-53.fc40. The latest version of the wpa_supplicant provided by default in Fedora 40 now works.

After the reboot, the wife was not working anymore. On my Macbook Pro, the chipset is a Broadcom BCM4360.
```
% lspci | grep -i wireless
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
```
The driver is unfortunately proprietary and has to be installed from the rpmfusion-nonfree repository.

The current issue is tracked in the Fedora bugtracker.

I followed the advice: downgrade the package wpa_supplicant which seems incompatible with broadcom-wl package:
```
% sudo dnf downgrade wpa_supplicant
```
I also pinned it to that version until the bug is fixed.
```
% sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(versionlock)'
% sudo dnf versionlock add
```
NVidia Kernel Module Error

When I boots, the NVidia drivers could not be loaded. That was not a big trouble because in that case, we use the free version of the driver called nouveau. I just removed anything related to the NVidia proprietary drivers.
mu4e Error

When I wanted to start mu4e (in Emacs), I got an error. I enabled the debug mode (with M-x mu4e-toggle-logging) and discovered it was related to a version of indexing schema. This is justified: the previous version of mu was 1.10 and the new one is 1.12. I just re-indexed my mails.

Fedora 41

I upgraded to Fedora 41 in Febrary 2025. All worked fine. I experience no display issues anymore with the NVidia drivers.