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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

Display `systemd` boot sequence

By default on Fedora, the boot sequence is hidden by the Fedora screen. To remove this, we need to remove the rhgb kernel boot option (rhgb stands for "Red Hat Graphical Boot").

I edited the file /etc/default/grub and removed the rhgb option from the line defining the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX variable. Then I regenerated the grub config:

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

And restarted the machine.

Increase character size during the boot sequence

First, I discovered my default grub configuration had the following setting:

GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"

Commenting this line (regenerating the grub.cfg) allows to use the full screen at boot time. Though, as the Apple Retina screen really has a high resolution, everything is very small (although readable by my eyes). It would be great to make the display bigger in case my eyes weaken.

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.

Edit September 2025: With Fedora 42, the problems of display were back. I finally removed the Nvidia drivers and used the nouveau ones without any problem.

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.

wl module tainted the kernel

% dmsg -HP
[...]
[  +0.000003] Unpatched return thunk in use. This should not happen!
[  +0.000003] WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 688 at arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c:3070 __warn_thunk+0x2a/0x40
[  +0.000007] Modules linked in: wl(POE+) snd_hda_codec_generic snd_hda_codec_hdmi(+) kvm_intel(+) bluetooth(+) iTCO_wdt snd_hda_intel snd_intel_dspcfg intel_pmc_bxt snd_intel_sdw_acpi snd_hda_codec mei_hdcp joydev mei_pxp iTCO_vendor_support kvm snd_hda_core applesmc(+) snd_hwdep snd_seq rapl intel_cstate cfg80211 thunderbolt snd_seq_device intel_uncore snd_pcm i2c_i801 i2c_smbus snd_timer lpc_ich rfkill mei_me mei snd sbs bcm5974 soundcore acpi_als sbshc industrialio_triggered_buffer kfifo_buf industrialio apple_gmux apple_mfi_fastcharge loop nfnetlink zram lz4hc_compress lz4_compress crct10dif_pclmul crc32_pclmul crc32c_intel polyval_clmulni polyval_generic ghash_clmulni_intel uas sha512_ssse3 sha256_ssse3 sha1_ssse3 usb_storage hid_apple video wmi fuse
[  +0.000056] CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 688 Comm: (udev-worker) Tainted: P           OE      6.13.11-200.fc41.x86_64 #1
[  +0.000004] Tainted: [P]=PROPRIETARY_MODULE, [O]=OOT_MODULE, [E]=UNSIGNED_MODULE
[  +0.000002] Hardware name: Apple Inc. MacBookPro11,3/Mac-2BD1B31983FE1663, BIOS 478.0.0.0.0 01/13/2023
[...]

This is just a warning.

Fedora 42

I upgraded to Fedora 42 on May 2025. After the reboot, the screen was black and I shutdown the computer. Not a great idea: the upgrade was still ongoing. The Fedora was a mix of FC 41 and 42. The two commands that fixed the whole thing were:

% sudo dnf upgrade --releasever=42
% sudo dnf distro-sync --releasever=42 --setopt protected_package=

Removing NVidia Drivers
I gave a try to the Nouveau drivers because somehow the intermittent blurry screen was back.
```
% sudo dnf remove akmod-nvidia-470xx nvidia-settings-470xx nvidia-gpu-firmware
```

Interesting Remarks

Do not use a Display Manager other than gdm
I tried to use another Display Manager (namely lightdm). That works fine except you cannot lock your computer anymore although:
```
% gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled
true
% gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen
false
```
Gnome requires gdm to be the Display Manager otherwise locking the computer is not allowed.