I’ve been running Linux on my MacBook Air M1 for a while now, thanks to the Fedora Asahi Remix project, which ports Fedora Linux to Apple Silicon. Every version gets more stable and capable, and Fedora 44, the latest version, is no exception. There are quite a few changes in this release, but one stood out the moment I read the release notes. Fedora Asahi Remix 44 finally redited its custom, forked graphics driver and included builds from the upstream Mesa source (the drivers the rest of the Linux world uses). For M1 users, that single change has a bigger effect on long-term stability than almost anything else in this release.

What Mesa is (and why Asahi had its own version)

The graphics layer your desktop depends on

Mesa is the open-source graphics library that goes between your apps and your GPU on Linux. Every window you open, video you play, or UI element you interact with goes through Mesa. It provides implementations of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics APIs, then translates those into instructions your specific GPU hardware understands. If Mesa breaks, your computer is unusable. That’s how important it is.

When the Asahi Linux project brought Linux to Apple Silicon, the M-series GPU required driver work that the standard Mesa project hadn’t yet incorporated. The Asahi team wrote their own GPU driver (AGX, which stands for Apple’s GPU architecture), and maintained a custom vendored fork of Mesa that bundled it. A vendored package means the project ships its own modified version of a dependency rather than building from the shared upstream source. That gave Asahi full control over the graphics stack, which was important at the time.

The only trade-off there is the burden of maintenance for the team. Every time the main Mesa released improvements or bug fixes, teh Asahi team would have to manually track and integrate the changes. Plus, any time a kernel update changed how the graphics subsystem worked, there was a real risk of the Asahi Mesa fork and the new kernel code getting out of sync, which could break things pretty significantly.

What changed in Fedora Asahi Remix 44

The AGX driver graduated to upstream

Now, though, Asahi’s AGX GPU driver work has been accepted and merged into upstream Mesa itself. Fedora Asahi Remix 44 retires that custom fork and just builds its Mesa packages directly from that upstream source. The packages are still distributed tvia Asahi’s own Copr channel (Apple Silicon aarch64 builds need Asahi’s kernel patches to compile correctly), but the suctom mods are gone. I verified this after upgrading: rpm -qi mesa-dri-drivers showed version 26.0.6, built from mesa-26.0.6-2.fc44.src.rpm, the same upstream source tarball Fedora uses. And glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" returned Apple M1 (G13G B1) — the M1 GPU rendering natively through an open-source driver.

This is great for stability, since when upstream Mesa ships a fix, Fedora Asahi Remix users get it built right into the next Copr package instead of waiting for the Asahi team to port it from its separate fork. There’s much less potential for error this way, too. Plus, it signals maturity, since the AGX driver’s acceptance into mainline Mesa proves that it’s production-quality code. Asahi Linux started as an amazing reverse-engineering project with no help or documentation from Apple; getting their GPU driver into the Mesa codebase proper is a pretty meaningful milestone.

What actually works on the M1 after upgrading

More than you might expect

Once I upgraded to Fedora 44, I ran through the hardware to make sure it all worked. The Wi-Fi connects reliably (though I had to forget and re-add my network after upgrading). Bluetooth paired my MX Master 3S and Keychron 81 keyboard without issue. The speakers and headphone jack work well, and the volume and brightness control keys worked right away. The battery reports accurately in the GNOME status bar, and YouTube plays back smoothly in Firefox full screen, showing off the AGX driver in a real-world task. Without comparing to before, I know that the graphics stack is healthy, the driver is active, and typical use feels solid.

Two things still don’t work: USB display output and Touch ID. Thunderbolt and USB4 controller support is still in development over at Asahi, so my external monitor didn’t light up connected through my Thunderbolt dock or directly connected to my monitor via USB-C. If either of those are a deal-breaker, then Linux on the M1 Air still isn’t ready to be your only OS.

How to upgrade

Use the terminal, not GNOME Software

GNOME Software doesn’t support the Asahi upgrade path, so you’ll want to use DNF from the terminal instead. If you’re on a fresh machine and haven’t installed Asahi yet, start here. For existing installs, if you have a Hyprland or other Copr package installed, add --allowerasing to handle any dependency conflicts. Run these one at a time, going to the next command once the previous one finishes.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

sudo dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=44 –allowerasing

sudo dnf system-upgrade rebootOn an M1 Mac, that final reboot defaulted back to macOS, so I had to hold the power button to turn the laptop off, then press and hold it to get the startup OS picker. I selected my Fedora partition and finished the upgrade from there.

A more stable foundation

Running Linux on Apple Silicon has always meant dealing with a few rough edges in exchange for a rull Linux desktop on Apple’s high-end hardware. The Mesa transition makes it a little less rough, as it builds from the same upstream source as the rest of Linux. Graphics updates will arrive faster and with less risk of breakage. The Apple M1 (G13G B1) renderer string staring back at me from the terminal is a good reminder of just how far this project has come.