A quick look at https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux makes one lose hope, but it is way better than it looks at first.
This note is primarily for myself, if I have to reinstall Linux on this machine again. Low effort alert.
If you want to share some information with me, for example if something is wrong here, please email me.
I tried to install Debian using its installer, it froze… I had to install Ubuntu.
Do not uninstall Mac OS without backing up the EFI partition contents, or the T1/iBridge device will not be able to boot! The EFI partition has the chip’s firmware.
You will be getting
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ac:1281 Apple, Inc. Apple Mobile Device [Recovery Mode]
instead of
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05ac:8600 Apple, Inc. iBridge
(If you wiped Mac OS already, it’s fine, you’ll have to reinstall it, it is perfectly possible to reinstall)
You need to back up the EFI/APPLE/ folder from the first partition on the NVMe. After you installed Linux, put the folder in the same place.
From the kernel bug 193121, download the attachment of comment 74,
change boardflags3=0xC0000303 to boardflags3=0x00000303,
and save the file as /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt.
(I have it saved here also, already with the modification, just in case)
Then run rmmod brcmfmac_wcc && rmmod brcmfmac && modprobe brcmfmac && modprobe brcmfmac_wcc.
It is a Firefox issue; in about:config, change mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y and mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_x from 100 to 25-ish
Add to /usr/share/libinput/50-system-apple.quirks:
[Apple SPI Touchpad]
MatchName=*Apple SPI Touchpad*
ModelAppleTouchpad=1
AttrTouchSizeRange=50:30
AttrPalmSizeThreshold=1100
[Apple SPI Keyboard]
MatchName=*Apple SPI Keyboard*
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal
and relogin.
(I changed AttrPalmSizeThreshold from the suggested 800 to 1100 because I had weird behaviors when e.g. dragging windows or selecting text, which turned out to be palm detection kicking in too soon; it can be debugged with libinput measure touch-size)
I found this on the mailing lists.
It would benefit from someone addressing the round 2 review comments and resending these; I doubt I will have the time for it anytime soon. And first, the following unbind/probe issue needs to be resolved (unless it is my fault).
I fixed this driver up a bit for 6.8.0 here.
The unbind/probe issue is basically that I have to run these commands on boot:
sudo modprobe apple-ib-tb
sudo bash -c 'echo -n "1-3" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind'
sudo bash -c 'echo -n 1-3 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers_probe'
I created a systemd oneshot service to run them After=multi-user.target and WantedBy=graphical.target.
Why are those unbind + probe needed? I needed them because otherwise the apple-ibridge driver is not expanding the /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3 device.
Maybe it is because the generic usb driver steals the device? There was a patch to implement some “anti-stealing” functionality for the “generic” usb drivers, but I am not knowledgeable enough to say for sure why it does not work in this case. My suspicion is that the apple-ibridge driver needs to have a usb_driver entry as well? It only has a HID driver, which also kinda manages the usb_device.
But to be honest, even when I run the reprobe, and I get the touchbar to work, /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/driver still points to bus/usb/drivers/usb, so I don’t understand at all what is going on there.
This driver is strange because it creates four virtual HID devices. If lsusb -t does not show four interfaces appearing on 05ac:8600, then apple-ibridge.ko didn’t do its job right.
If the devices are there, but the touchbar still doesn’t light up, try to restart the laptop…
Why I didn’t use the roadrunner2 macbook12-spi-driver code? Because I looked at it quickly, and it was bundled with the MacbookPro SPI Keyboard/Touchpad driver, forked from a driver that has nothing in common at all with the Touchbar functionality. I only saw later that the Touchbar-related parts are basically the same as what I pulled from the mailing list (they are the same person!). Still, what I used works well and does not pull an unneeded driver.
Moreover, the roadrunner2 repo is not being maintained.
Some people are trying to merge in a touchbar driver for T2 Macs, but I am not sure if it is supposed to support T1 Macs as well or not at all (I saw no indication of T1 Macs being considered there).
The snd_hda_macbookpro driver actually supports Macbook Pro 14,2, contrary to what is mentioned in https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux.
It just works if you run the scary script.
This does not work for me:
echo 0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/d3cold_allowed
(source)
It probably fixes the NVMe issue, but something else is also broken for me. Maybe some of the weird kernel modules I added is the culprit.
Neither deep nor even s2idle sleep modess let me wake the laptop up.
I don’t care much about suspend at the moment, but maybe I will fix it in the future. I disable suspend in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf:
[Sleep]
AllowSuspend=no
AllowHibernation=no
AllowHybridSleep=no
AllowSuspendThenHibernate=no
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