MacBookPro11,x
The MacBook Pro 11,x consists of models with Retina display shipped by Apple In Late 2013 and Mid 2014. Like its predecessors, it is based on Intel chipset, although some manual configuration might be required in specific cases in order to deal with Apple-related features.
Like previous MacBook models, the MacBook Pro 11,x supports UEFI. This page will cover the current status of hardware support on Arch Linux, as well as post-installation recommendations.
Overview
Specifically, the procedure for installing Arch Linux on a MacBook is:
- #Firmware updates: It always helps to start from a clean, backed up, and up-to-date install of OS X.
- #Partitioning: Resizing or deleting the OS X partition to create partitions for Arch Linux.
- #Setup bootloader: Making sure that the new partition is bootable.
- #Installation: Actually installing Arch Linux.
- #Post installation: MacBook-specific configuration.
Firmware updates
Before proceeding with the installation of Arch Linux, it is important to ensure that the latest firmware updates for you MacBook are installed. This procedure requires OS X. In OS X, open the App Store and check for updates. If your Mac finds and installs any updates, make sure to reboot your computer, and then check again for updates to make sure that you installed everything.
It is advisable to keep OS X installed, because MacBook firmware updates can only be installed using OS X. However, if you plan to remove OS X completely, make backups of these files, which you will need in Linux for adjusting the color profile:
/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/*
Partitioning
MacBooks are partitioned using the GPT scheme by default. For MacBooks running OS X versions up to and including 10.12, the partition layout will typically look like this:
- EFI: the ~200 MB EFI system partition
- Macintosh HD: the main partition containing your OS X installation, formatted using HFS+
-
Recovery HD: a secondary HFS+ partition containing utilities for restoring backups, formatting and re-installing OS X, typically booted by holding
Cmd+rwhile your MacBook is starting up
For 2013/2014 MacBooks running macOS 10.13 or later, the partition layout is simpler:
- EFI: the ~200 MB EFI system partition
- Macintosh HD: an APFS container partition containing volumes for Apple's EFI loaders, the macOS system/user files, the recovery image and for swap in macOS.
As a general rule, partitioning is no different from any other hardware that Arch Linux can be installed on. If you plan on keeping OS X for the purpose of dual booting, you need to manually shrink the main OS X HFS+/APFS partition from within OS X's Disk Utility program.
diskutil list. Alternatively, if you have already launched the Arch installation media, you can retrieve similar information by running fdisk -l.Installation
Installation is similar to any other standard laptop. Please refer to the official Installation guide for more detailed instructions, as the following content mainly describes deviations from those instructions that are specific to this MacBook model.
As this Mac model does not include a CD or DVD drive, you may wish to copy the Arch installation media onto a USB flash drive. With the Arch installation media on a flash drive, you can boot it by holding down the Alt (or Option) key while your Mac starts up, and then selecting the applicable EFI Boot option when the Apple boot manager appears.
As this model of notebook has a high DPI display, the console font displayed will be extremely small and depending on your preferences is likely to be uncomfortable to use. You may wish to change this for a more legible font, an example of which is;
$ setfont sun12x22
Internet
Thunderbolt Ethernet adapters and USB-to-Ethernet adapters are usually picked up automatically. In case you use a Thunderbolt ethernet adapter, you may have to power on the machine with the adapter plugged in for it to be picked up by the system.
Another easy option is to use USB tethering with an Android device. For more information, see Android tethering.
If you have neither, the only option is to use the onboard wireless adapter. Depending on your model, you may have the Broadcom BCM43602, which is supported by the open source brcmfac module that is built-in to the Linux kernel and typically enabled by default. If this is the case, you should have wireless available from the installer with no further configuration necessary.
Other BCM43XX chipsets may only be supported by a proprietary driver such as b43 or wl. The broadcom-wl package is included in the Arch installer media, but may need to be manually enabled before the chipset will function correctly. The b43 driver is also built-in to the kernel and included in the installation media, but it requires external proprietary firmware from the b43-firmwareAUR package which will need to be downloaded from another machine connected to the internet.
You can list the network interfaces available from the installer environment by running ip link show. If you can see your wireless interface in the list, you should now be able to use wifi-menu to select and connect to your wireless network.
If the Linux loopback device is the only listed interface, you may need to load an alternative Broadcom driver. To do this, begin by ensuring that all Broadcom drivers have been unloaded.
$ rmmod ssb $ rmmod bcma $ rmmod b43 $ rmmod wl
Then try loading brcmfmac again.
$ modprobe bcma
Wait a few seconds and then list your network interfaces again. If you still cannot see your wireless interface, unload brcmfmac again and try reloading wl.
$ rmmod bcma $ modprobe wl
If the wireless interface is still not listed, you will need to compile the b43-firmwareAUR package on another computer with pacman installed, put the generated package file on a second USB storage device, install the package within the Arch live environment and then load the b43 module, much like above. See Broadcom wireless and makepkg for more information.
wl or b43 drivers, they will need to be manually installed to your new Arch system, this can be done by synchronising the broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl-dkms or b43-firmwareAUR packages as necessary, either during setup or after booting into your new Arch system.Setup bootloader
MacBooks can be easily configured to use systemd-boot or GRUB directly from the Apple bootloader, without the need for third-party tools such as rEFInd. Systemd-boot is the recommended way for systems that support UEFI.
- First, make sure you mounted the EFI System Partition at
/boot(that is within the chroot, so mount it as/mnt/bootwithmount /dev/sdXY /mnt/boot) - Proceed with Installation guide normally
- Once inside the chrooted enviroment, type the following command to install systemd-boot:
# bootctl --path=/boot install
The above command will copy the systemd-boot binary to /boot/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI and add systemd-boot itself as the default EFI application (default boot entry) loaded by the EFI Boot Manager.
- Proceed to systemd-boot#Configuration in order to correctly set up the bootloader
At the next reboot, the Apple Boot Manager, shown when holding down the option key when booting the MacBook, should display Arch Linux (it will be displayed as EFI Boot as a possible boot option).
$ wget -O /tmp/archlinux.svg https://archlinux.org/logos/archlinux-icon-crystal-64.svg $ rsvg-convert -w 128 -h 128 -o /tmp/archlogo.png /tmp/archlinux.svg # png2icns /boot/.VolumeIcon.icns /tmp/archlogo.png $ rm /tmp/archlogo.png $ rm /tmp/archlinux.svg
Obviously, you can replace the Arch logo with any other icon you like.
$ diskutil mount disk0s1
Keep in mind, however, it is also possible to load OS X from systemd-boot.
Post installation
See General recommendations for system management directions and post-installation tutorials.
Additionally, you might want to have a look at the Power management page for useful tips in power management and battery-saving software.
Kernel parameters
acpi_osi parameter with an empty value causes battery to be undetectable. See this forum thread for more information.
It is required to specify acpi_osi=Darwin as a kernel boot parameter in order to let suspension/hibernation work properly.Due to this bug, it might be required to add acpi_osi= as a kernel boot parameter in order to improve battery life.
Due to this bug, it may be necessary to disable GPE06 by adding acpi_mask_gpe=0x06 as a kernel boot parameter. To verify that this is required, check cat /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06. There should be a rapidly increasing number of interrupts registered, and one of your cores should be pegged at 100%.
Fan control
Install mbpfan-gitAUR or macfanctldAUR and enable the mbpfan.service in order to prevent laptop overheating.
Console
Largest console font can be achieved by adding FONT=sun12x22 to /etc/vconsole.conf:
# nano /etc/vconsole.conf
... FONT=sun12x22
Graphics
MacBook Pro with integrated Intel graphics and no discrete GPU are supported out of the box. See Intel graphics for additional details and configuration options.
Versions which include a discrete Nvidia GPU should need additional configuration:
- MacBook Pro 11,3:
- MacBook Pro 11,5
- The xf86-video-nouveau package seems to be stable. Switching to VTs and back works fine from MATE and GNOME. SOmetimes Chromium causes a "kernele rejected pixbuf" error which freezes the desktop.
- The nvidia-dkms driver has been crashing a lot.
- The nvidia driver seems to be super stable, but GNOME desktop will not like to start, showing you a "Oh no! Something has gone wrong" message. Cinnamon Desktop is buttery smooth with the nvidia driver, and if you want your GNOME desktop, you can run `gnome-shell --relace &` while in cinnamon desktop to switch to Gnome Shell as a workaround.
Note that the video output ports (HDMI and DisplayPort) are hardwired to the Nvidia GPU, so they will not work if you use the Intel GPU and power off the Nvidia GPU. Switching GPUs requires a reboot, so if you primarily keep the laptop docked at a desk, configuring switchable graphics may not be worth the hassle of setting it up and then rebooting every time you need to switch. However, the Nvidia GPU does use significantly more power than the Intel one, so you will take a significant hit to battery life.
Getting the integrated intel card to work on 11,3
By default the integrated card is powered off. To fix this we need a grub function called "apple_set_os". This function has not officially been merged yet, so we need to build grub ourselves. Download the grub-gitAUR package from the AUR. Using something like:
$ packer -G grub-git $ cd grub-git
Get the patch from [2].
Put the patch contents into a file labeled something like "apple.patch"
Add this patch to your PKGBUILD and run:
$ makepkg -si
Reboot into OS X and download gfxCardStatus v2.2.1 (newer versions do not work properly) run the app and specify the integrated card.
Reboot and at the grub prompt type 'c' to get into console, followed by "apple_set_os" at the prompt.
You should now be able to install xf86-video-intel and get your card running.
Note that the HDMI port and MiniDP are soldered to the nvidia card meaning that to run external displays you need to use the dedicated card.
Alternative method to disable NVIDIA card
While the above method for switching graphics works, there is a more effective method that does not require the use of gfxCardStatus or a patched GRUB installation (but it can be used if desired).
First, the Intel GPU will not function without a patch called apple_set_os. You can either use a patched GRUB (as seen above) or use the apple_set_os.efi patch via rEFInd or chainload it via GRUB, the EFI patch can be download here, https://github.com/0xbb/apple_set_os.efi, this tricks the machine into thinking that it is booting a Mac OS X installation, making the hardware behave as such, allowing the Intel GPU to be used. rEFInd should automatically detect the patch as described on the application page. This will need to be loaded before each boot of Arch or else the Intel GPU will not function, to load it automatically it can be chainloaded via GRUB. Also, download and install the Intel drivers as described above.
Then you will need to download an application called gpu-switch for switching the GPU on dual MacBook Pros, it is fairly easy to use as well. It can be downloaded from here, https://github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch.
Secondly, once you have downloaded gpu-switch, extract the application to your home directory and open up a terminal emulator and cd to that directory. To switch to the Intel graphics, run gpu-switch -i as sudo, and the card will be active on reboot. Conversely, to enable the dedicated card instead, run gpu-switch -d as sudo. You must have booted with the aforementioned patch for this to work.
Next, gpu-switch will not completely power down the dedicated card. To do that, you will have to create a custom grub menuentry and compile a program that will power off the dedicated card.
To do that, please refer to the following article, MacBookPro10,x#Graphics_2.
You should now have working integrated graphics and the dedicated GPU should now power down. If you get a blank screen after doing this, wait and see what happens, if it stays blank for a prolonged period of time, try resetting the SMC, and then booting back into Arch.
I noticed that afterwards VGA switcheroo disabled the nouveau driver, if this workaround still does not work, try installing a cronjob package, and adding the following:
@reboot echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
@reboot echo IGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
I'm not sure if the vgaswitcheroo commands actually do anything, I need somebody to test this workaround and let me know how it works for them.
To see if you dedicated GPU is actually disabled, run:
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
Microcode
You may need to install intel-ucode, especially if you have Nvidia drivers. Read the wiki page to learn more about Microcode.
HiDPI
See HiDPI for information on how to tweak the system for a Retina screen.
Sound
- Headphones work
- Speakers work (tested with kernel 4.8)
If you do not want to hear the annoying sound at system start-up, one way to get rid of it is to turn sound off while under Mac OS.
Volume keys can be made to work with xfce4-volumed (if you are using Xfce).
Also, if you are using PulseAudio, sometimes it thinks HDMI is the default sound card; to solve this problem, install pavucontrol and set Analog Stereo as the fallback device.
Touchpad
One method is to install xf86-input-synaptics and configure to your liking in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf:
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "touchpad catchall"
Driver "synaptics"
# 1 = left, 2 = right, 3 = middle
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "3"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
# Palm detection
Option "PalmDetect" "1"
# Horizontal scrolling
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
# Natural Scrolling (and speed)
Option "VertScrollDelta" "-100"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-100"
EndSection
Ctrl-Click as Right-Click
Using this SuperUser receipt [3] I got Ctrl-click working as right-click. I had to increase the sleep time to 0.1 though.
input-mtrack
Another method is to use xf86-input-mtrack-gitAUR. If you like to have a thumb resting on the touchpad, this driver is the right choice, because it has an option for IgnoreThumb.
With this config the touchpad behavior becomes more osx-like.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-touchpad.conf
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "Touchpads"
Driver "mtrack"
Option "Sensitivity" "0.64"
Option "FingerHigh" "5"
Option "FingerLow" "1"
Option "IgnoreThumb" "true"
Option "IgnorePalm" "true"
Option "DisableOnPalm" "true"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "3"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
Option "TapButton4" "0"
Option "ClickFinger1" "1"
Option "ClickFinger2" "2"
Option "ClickFinger3" "3"
Option "ButtonMoveEmulate" "false"
Option "ButtonIntegrated" "true"
Option "ClickTime" "25"
Option "BottomEdge" "30"
Option "SwipeLeftButton" "8"
Option "SwipeRightButton" "9"
Option "SwipeUpButton" "0"
Option "SwipeDownButton" "0"
Option "ScrollDistance" "75"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "-111"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-111"
EndSection
Swap Opt and Command Key
Swapping opt and cmd is supported by the hid_apple module:
$ echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/swap_opt_cmd
To make the change permanent add the option to /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf and rebuild initramfs.
$ echo options hid_apple swap_opt_cmd=1 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf
Keyboard backlight
- Works, see Mac#Keyboard Backlight
- On KDE controlling the backlight with the increase or decrease brightness keys work fine, but they need upower to start before the desktop. To do this create the file
/etc/systemd/system/kdm.service.d/kbd_backlight.confwith this content (you might need to create the directory as well)
[Unit] Requires=upower.service After=upower.service
Screen backlight
- Intel, works on Linux 3.13
- Framebuffer, works for MacBook Pro 11,1 and 11,3 via
/sys/class/backlight/gmux_backlight/brightness. - Brightness in
/sys/class/backlight/gmux_backlight/brightnesscan be modified comfortably via the gmux_backlightAUR utility without root privileges. Requires thesetpcisetting below. - Nvidia, does not work using default settings. Try executing as root
setpci -v -H1 -s 00:01.00 BRIDGE_CONTROL=0. It may be worthwhile to create a systemd unit to execute this on boot. - AMD models may require a patched kernel for the backlight to be adjusted. The linux-macbookAUR kernel fixes this.
i915.invert_brightness=1 to the kernel. Suspend
- Works from Linux 3.13
It may be necessary to disable USB's wakeup ability by by echoing 'XHC1' to '/proc/acpi/wakeup' in order to prevent immediate wakeup on suspend. This also holds for MacBook Air 2013. To make this permanent create /etc/systemd/system/fix-spurious-wakeups.service file with the following content.
[Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=sh -c "echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup" RemainAfterExit=true [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
And then execute sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl enable fix-spurious-wakeups
- No backlight after suspend with Linux 3.12
Use hibernate instead
Powersave
Disabling the internal cardreader and bluetooth controller may save battery life. When not using them, create the following udev rules:
/etc/udev/rules.d/99-apple_cardreader.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="05ac", ATTRS{idProduct}=="8406", RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/remove_ignore_usb-device.sh 05ac 8406"
/etc/udev/rules.d/99-apple_broadcom_bcm2046_bluetooth.rules
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="05ac", ATTRS{idProduct}=="8289", RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/remove_ignore_usb-device.sh 05ac 8289"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0a5c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4500", RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/remove_ignore_usb-device.sh 0a5c 4500"
As udev's OPTIONS=="ignore_device" may not work reliably, the above rules use a script to manually remove the usb device from /sys/bus/usb/devices/.
If battery life is not satisfactory, it may help to use power saving utilities, such as tlp, and/or powertop from the official repositories. To better optimize battery life, TLP also has a configuration file located at /etc/default/tlp that you can edit to suit your machine. For more information, visit the wiki pages for these tools, TLP and Powertop, respectively.
SD Card Reader
- Disappears sporadically after suspend as of Linux 3.18. Workaround is to create
/etc/modprobe.d/xhci-reset-on-suspend.confwith:
# Reset XHCI USB devices on suspend/resume, fixes SD Card reader vanishing after suspend options xhci_hcd quirks=0x80
Note: As of Linux 3.18.6-1 (and possibly earlier versions post-3.18), this fix may not be needed and might cause issues ranging from failed suspend to the SD card not being recognized at all. Test with and without the fix to determine which works best for you.
Repurpose the power key
By default systemd handles the rMBPs power key as defined in /etc/systemd/logind.conf. By setting
HandlePowerKey=ignore
systemd ignores power key events.
Now the power key can be repurposed as keycode 124. For example in i3 conf:
bindcode 124 ...
Web cam
A reverse engineered driver is being developed here: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/ . It is marked experimental, but basic functionality seems to be working. Install bcwc-pcie-gitAUR.
What does not work
General
Wi-Fi
-
broadcom-wl or broadcom-wl-dkms works
- Stability is an issue for some, look at Broadcom wireless for possible fixes (e.g. downgrading kernel works if your card is BCM4360)
- If stability is still an issue after the above, a possible alternative is to connect on a 802.11g network. More recent standards can cause the BCM4360 to disconnect randomly.
Backlight keys / Suspend support
linux-macbookAUR is an AUR package created specifically for MacBook laptops that includes patches for these issues, as well fixing powering off correctly and CPU frequency scaling with the intel_pstate driver.