1. Best Linux For Macbook Pro
2. Best Linux For Macbook Pro 2013
3. Best Linux For Macbook Pro Mid 2009
4. Best Osx For Macbook Pro 2011
5. Best Linux For Macbook Pro 2017
6. Best Version Of Linux For Macbook Pro

When I installed Apple's MacOS Mojave, it slowed my formerly reliable MacBook Air to a crawl. My computer, released in 2015, has 4GB RAM, an i5 processor, and a Broadcom 4360 wireless card, but Mojave proved too much for my daily driver—it made working with GnuCash impossible, and it whetted my appetite to return to Linux. I am glad I did, but I felt bad that I had this perfectly good. Installing Linux on a Mac. Yes, there is an option to run Linux temporarily on a Mac through the virtual box but if you’re looking for a permanent solution, you might want to completely replace the present operating system with a Linux distro. To install Linux on a Mac, you’ll need a formatted USB drive with storage up to 8GB.

Translation(s): русский

This page describes how to install Debian on a MacBook Pro.

Most points are the same like the MacBook so we point out the differences only.

Contents

1. Install Debian
2. Kernel
3. X Window System
4. Sound
5. Touchpad
6. Keyboard
7. Debian 6 (squeeze) on MacBookPro7,1
8. Appendix: Santa Rosa/LED MBP

• Mar. 4, 2010, Debian testing on MacBookPro5,1: Installer works, but you might have to use dd to blow away the gpt tables from the BOTH the beginning and the end of your disk first, if it was once formatted by os x.

• Feb. 10, 2010, Debian 5.0.4 on MacBookPro5,1: Default install runs error-free, but does not result in bootable installation. When machine tries to restart, screen fills partially with garbage and hangs. On manual hard restart, mac firmware shows flashing question-mark folder. -?AndrewWagner

• July. 20, 2010, Current D-I(Debian 5.0.5 and testing) can not install on MacBookPro7,1. Because Linux kernel does not support MCP89 chipsetLinux:Bug 15923. (But this supports Linus/HEAD.) I backported this patch and made D-I. Work fine, Yay! -NobuhiroIwamatsu

• July. 23, 2010, For MacBookPro7,1 use the Kernel since version 2.6.35-rc3.

• Nov. 26 ,2010, 2.6.32-28 support ?MacBookPro7,1 and Macbook Air3,1.

• Feb. 12, 2011, Debian 6 (squeeze) contains the kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64. The installation works out of the box for MacBookPro7,1. Nothing has to be patched manually to work properly. But there are some configurations to be done: Bluetooth, Wireless, Synaptics, Suspend to RAM. So I made up a new section for squeeze on MacBookPro7,1.

• MacBook Pro specific bugs can be found at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=macbook-pro;users=kraai@ftbfs.org.

• Ubuntu wiki page on the MacBook Pro

• Gentoo wiki page on the MacBook Pro

• Odi's documentation of Gentoo on the MacBook Pro

• iDebian Blog with some tips for getting LIRC or the Mighty Mouse running

See the MacBook Install Debian section.

If the kernel panics when you press return at the ISOLINUX prompt, enter 'install noapic' at the ISOLINUX prompt (the kernel may panic while enabling the IO-APIC IRQs, bug 381719).

For MacBook Pro 13 (7,1)

(Obsolete with squeeze) Current installer can not install. But you can use Iwamatsu's D-I.

For MacBook Pro 13 (8,1)

First of all, it is important that you read carefully the MacBook Install Section of Debian Wiki, so that you can prepare your Macbook Pro, and understand the terms needed for proceeding with the installation.

Note that the current Debian installer can not install, because it is not able to load the components from the cdrom (I was able to install Debian in Dualboot scheme). However, it is possible to proceed using a usb driver in which you'll dump all the archives of the same iso image used for burning the cdrom for making the installation and 'cheating' the debian installer by mounting the USB in /cdrom as follows:

1. Prepare the USB driver. For this, you'll need the same ISO that you used for burning the cdrom and execute (I did it with netinst image of Debian Testing): Where /dev/disk1 correspond to your USB. Note that you can do this even in Mac OS X or other linux machine.

2. Proceed with the installation following the MacBook Install Section of Debian Wiki. It is important to boot with the USB attached to your Macbook Pro (if you don't do it like this, it may fail for mounting the device in /cdrom). But for installing, you are going to choose the cdrom as installer medium and not the USB.

3. When the installer tries to load the components of the cdrom, it will fail. Now, open a TTY by executing Ctrl + Alt + F2, and mount the USB in /cdrom as follows: Where sdX should correspond to your device. Sometimes it can fail to mount the USB drive. If it doesn't work for you, then try to unplug the USB and plug it again. It should work.

   Note: If you boot directly from the USB medium the installer automatically detects the components as it were a CDRom, no need to mount it manually, no need for a CD at all.

4. Go back to the installer by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1, and keep doing the installation process up to GRUB or LILO. If you install either GRUB or LILO without syncing first, Linux won't boot. So, do not install any bootloader yet, and follow next step.

5. At this point, you are going to sync the partitions using refit. Open again a TTY (Ctrl + Alt + F2) and install refit and gptsync (I downloaded the 2 required debian packages in another USB from http://packages.debian.org).

   Note: I didn't try by doing modprobe tg3, and use the internet connection (actually I didn't have idea about the module used until now ;)), but it should be worthy to try it (Instead of using other USB drive).

6. Mount the USB containing refit and gptsync in /mnt: Copy the deb archives of refit /target/tmp:
7. Chroot in /target and proceed to install refit and gptsync, and sync the MBR and GPT:

8. Once you have synced, get back to the installer (Ctrl + Alt + F1) and proceed to install GRUB (I did it and it worked. I didn't try with LILO). It is really IMPORTANT that you select as partition /dev/sdX3 (Where X correspond to your partitioning scheme). If you install GRUB in the MBR, this won't work. Anyways, if you do it by error it is possible to erase the MBR in Mac OS X.

Done!, enjoy Debian in your MacBook Pro 8.1!

For MacBook Pro 15' (8,2)

Here's a step by step tutorial on how to setup Debian in EFI mode on the late 2011 ?MacBookPro8,2: http://dentifrice.poivron.org/laptops/macbookpro8,2/

linux-2.6 2.6.22 should work out of the box.

linux-2.6 2.6.18-3 supports MacBook Pros out of the box, but you'll need to ensure that the appletouch module is loaded before the usbhid module. You can do so by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf that contains the following line:

For some reason, this doesn't always work.

The MacBook instructions suggest that you use the kernel parameters 'noapic irqpoll acpi=force'. I found that on a March 2008 MacBook Pro, the irqpoll option caused the CDROM drive (HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive) to give errors along the lines of

Using 'noapic acpi=force' instead solved the problem.

Using stock kernel and patch from svn

You can build your own kernel using the stock Linux kernel and the patches found in the mactel-linux SVN. Here is the steps to follow:

• download the source for the stock kernel from one of the kernel mirror,
• get the mactel-linux patches with svn:
• apply all the mactel-linux patches:

• copy the config from the svn (trunk/kernel/mactel-patches-2.6.17/config-2.6.17-MBP) to your kernel dir, with name .config,

• configure your kernel with make menuconfig, and control that CONFIG_FB_IMAC is not set,

• build your kernel (fakeroot make-kpkg ...,

• install your kernel (dpkg --install ...),

• reboot.

See the MacBook page for other details.

The first MBP versions have an ATI card built in (MBP 2,2: ATI Technologies Inc M56P [Radeon Mobility X1600]). Later versions (MBP 3,1 and up) have an Nvidia card.

The installation of x.org should work out of the box with the lenny (and later) version of x.org (nv or radeonhd drivers).

ATI graphics

Lenny contains the free radeonhd driver (package name xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd) which supports the ATI card and 3D. Squeeze defaults to the free radeon driver (xserver-xorg-video-radeon); you need to install the package firmware-linux-nonfree to use 3D acceleration.

If you wish to use the binary vendor driver on ATI cards, install the non-free fglrx-driver package and, in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, change the driver from 'ati' to 'fglrx'. Afterwards, to enable 3D you need to build the kernel fglrx module:

PowerPlay does not work with the fglrx driver as of v8.42. A patched radeontool is available at http://www.g2inf.one.pl/~anszom/MBP-ATI/.

NVidia graphics

With MacBookPro5,5 under Debian Lenny (2.6.26), use the NVidia proprietary driver. Brightness adjustment can be obtained by using Ubuntu packages

For MacBookPro7,1 download the driver from Nvidia (Geforce GT 320M) and install it manually. (Obsolete with squeeze)

See the MacBook/Wireless page.

(Obsolete with squeeze) For MacBookPro7,1 apply the following patch to Kernel 2.6.35-rc3:

Then modprobe btusb.

See the MacBook Sound section.

MacBookPro2

With a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro and kernel 2.6.18-3-amd64 sound only works with the headphone but no speaker output.

With a Core2 Duo MacBook Pro (built fall 06) running (unpatched) 2.6.18-3-686, sound output can be changed as follows in alsamixer:

• PCM channel changes overall volume
• Center and LFE channels change volume of headphones output (which is at the jack labled as line in!)
• Line in (only toggling mute possible) enables/disables built-in speakers
• IEC958 enables/disables optical IO on jack labled as headphones
• line in not yet worked out

MacBookPro3

With MBPv3 (mid 2007), sound works out-of-the-box starting with kernel 2.6.24.

MacBookPro5,5

With MacBook Pro 5.5 (mid 2009) with kernel 2.6.26, the following little hack helps to enable sound under Lenny.

Reboot

Under Squeeze, with kernel 2.6.32, simply add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

MacBookPro7,1

(Obsolete with squeeze) For MacBookPro7,1 with the kernel 2.6.35-rc3 and above, append the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

The front speaker can be unmuted with the gnome-alsamixer or with the alsamixer from console.

Apple ClickPad

Multi-touch gestures like the drag two-finger drag gesture are supported in the current xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package (>1.6.1).

If you would like your touchpad to behave like the natural scrolling mode in Mac OS X Lion, you have to add the next line to your ~/.Xmodmap

Apple Touchpad

?MacBookPro3,1 touchpad behavior might be smoother with the kernel boot option:

possibly adding it to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/defaults/grub

For older versions you can check PageFragmentClickPadOld

In the Keyboard section, it is possible to have an example on how to modify the .Xmodmap file.

For MacBook Pro 13 (8,1)

If your Macbook Pro has an English International Keyboard as this one: http://people.debian.org/~muammar/MB110Z.jpg So, the best layout you can use is the Macintosh (International) layout, and you can apply the next Xmodmap: http://people.debian.org/~muammar/Xmodmap which means that you download that file and you place it in your /home/ directory as .Xmodmap. In this Xmodmap file, the key Shift + 3 is showing the # instead of the £, and the question mark down (¿) is shown when pressing Alt-Right + /.

Before you proceed to use this file, it is good to make a backup of your current layout. You can execute:

Now, the diff between the Xmodmap.back and Xmodmap is pasted below, and thus you can have an idea on the changes and how to do them:

To be able to easily suspend to disk, or suspend to ram you can use the hibernate package. Note: Tested on MBP 2006

To use it use the command

For MacBookPro7,1 suspend to RAM works with s2ram from package uswsusp with the command

For squeeze see the section 'Debian 6 (squeeze) on MacBookPro7,1' below.

In combination with the acpi script lid.sh (I simply hacked that line into the script as last statement within the closing condition) it does exactly what you would expect on MacOS - the MBP suspends when closing the lid and awakens when it is opened. While sleeping, the LED is blinking.

With MacBookPro5,5 (Debian Squeeze), this HowTo was successful.

Create config file /etc/lirc/lirc.conf with

Set the driver in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

Associate buttons with software/functions in .lircrc (make sure to use the same button names as in lirc.conf). See examples here

Make sure that daemons are launched at session start-up (Gnome > System/Preferencies/Session):

This Howto is reported to works. Under Squeeze, after iOS 4.3 update, you perhaps will need to update to following package from wheezy (testing) repositories :

In that case, you even need not to create SysInfoExtended yourself : simply install gvfs-fuse & ifuse; add yourself to the fuse group, reboot, plug your iPhone and launch Rhythmbox. That's it.

Here is just the configuration for the hardware, that does not work out of the box. (sound and graphics work fine)

Installation

You can use the Kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64. Installation from CD works out of the box.

Wireless

Follow the procedure.

Bluetooth

Just modprobe btusb.

Graphics

The nvidia-glx package works perfectly.

Synaptics

The Touchpad can be configured by some settings in xorg.conf. But when I installed Debian with XFCE, the were no xorg.conf. I simply created a new xorg.conf with the following content. With this configuration, the touchpad has a similar behaviour of MacOS (multi finger scroll, tapping, right-click with two fingers, mouse middle click with three fingers).

Hibernate

Hibernate has also suspend to ram with the command 'hibernate-ram'. So if you want to suspend to ram when the lid is closed, you can install hibernate and acpi-support (apt-get install hibernate acpi-support) and create an executable file named '/etc/acpi/local/lid.sh.pre':

Put the following content into this file:

Mostly everything is the same with a few changes. The testing distro has enough working drivers to get you started. The stable distro, however does not have a new enough version of the ethernet drivers to work. The other caveat here is that 'apt-get install grub' seems to give you grub2 which didn't seem to work for me. If you're using rEFIt to boot to a boot loader then you should turn use Lilo or grub 1.

See also: https://cbg.dyndns.org/wiki/ReadingCorner/LinuxOnMacbookPro

Ethernet

Requires a new version of sky2 available on the testing CD, but I am unsure as to what the minimum kernel version is. However, it works out of the box with kernel 2.6.22.

Video

Since v100.14.19, the binary nvidia driver works nicely on x86 and x64, no patches needed. The OSS driver 'nv' works too, but has very limited HW support.

Touchpad

The touchpad works fine with the synaptics driver, though maybe not as smooth as with OSX. Use GrabEventDevice if you want misc usb mice and synaptics touchpad special functions to work simultaneously. Patches from http://www.mactel-linux.org are optional.

Suspend2RAM

For MBPv3: For some reason, suspend2ram does not work with the free nv driver from xorg (bug 453782).

Works with binary nvidia drivers. VT/X-switching is needed with old nvidia drivers. Note that usb is necessary for keyboard/mice to work. These drivers should not be reloaded, otherwise the synaptics driver will lose its grab(GrabEventDevice, synaptics(5)) on the device. I also unload v4l, sky2 and madwifi before s2ram.

I used acpid to disable networking and echo mem > /sys/power/state on PWBTN.

Tested in debian/unstable, with vanilla linux 2.6.22/23. Alsa, uvcvideo and madwifi drivers taken from their corresponding repositories, i.e. working with various revisions of recent development drivers.

With Debian unstable and kernel 4.14.x suspend works out of the box but resumes very often. The reason is the USB 3.x ACPI configuration. This can be fixed with:

AppleIR

Patch your kernel with https://cbg.dyndns.org/store/apple-remote-quirk-hiddev.patch. Enable CONFIG_USB_HID and CONFIG_USB_HIDDEV. When loading usbhid, a device /dev/usb/hiddev0 should be created. Use lirc to configure your remote. Reported to work with other remotes, too.

For a step by step guide, including elisa setup see http://www.e-hoffman.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.AppleMacBookProV3

Best Linux For Macbook Pro

Here's what needs to be done:

• Figure out how to install ELILO.

  • elilo failed to boot my kernel, though efi-boot was enabled. Direct efi-boot is reported to work very bad, as drivers(nvidia,networking) depend on some BIOS calls. http://www.madingley.org/macmini/ provides patches and some bios emulation code, but this is old and only for mac mini.

• Figure out how to use the remote control.

• See also: InstallingDebianOn/Apple

• CategoryLaptopComputer

• CategoryMacintoshComputer

Best Linux For Macbook Pro 2013

I started using Linux more seriously around 2010, with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), if memory serves me well, although I did play around with Corel’s Linux way back when. Since then, I tried a variety of distros and Unixes, such as Fedora and FreeBSD, but it wasn’t until early 2015 that I first installed Arch Linux. At the time, I purchased a used 13” Asus Zenbook on ebay specifically to toy with different distros without risk for my work laptop. I quickly started appreciating Arch Linux’ minimalist approach where you can relatively easily configure your distro to your liking, backed by an amazing wiki, rolling updates and an extensive, user-friendly package manager.

The Switch To Macbook Pro

Best Linux For Macbook Pro Mid 2009

I work as a freelance Go developer, and the overwhelming development platform of choice for the clients I work with - mostly startups - is macOS, so to make it easier for me to integrate to development teams (tools, setup, sharing installation information, etc.), my work machine is a mid-2015 13” Macbook Pro. I also think it is the best laptop - the best computer - I’ve ever had, for my needs. I work remotely, so the form factor makes it a great portable machine to go work in libraries, coffee shops or in a park during summer, and the battery life is good enough to be away from an outlet for an extended period of time (although not quite an entire work day). I also love the trackpad and keyboard.

So when the old Zenbook’s screen died I started considering buying another laptop, but what I really wanted was that great macbook hardware paired with my personal favorite OS. But I still didn’t want to take away what little disk space I had for my work (128GB SSD) to dual-boot, and I wasn’t interested in running in a VM. I had a 120GB Lacie USB drive around, so I figured I might as well install Arch on it and not touch my internal disk at all.

Best Osx For Macbook Pro 2011

The Installation

Basic setup is pretty straightforward and closely follows the installation wiki page. Mac-specific steps I had to make were (keep in mind that other approaches may work too, but this worked for me and my specific configuration):

• create an EFI partition for boot
• setup boot to use systemd-boot (I installed Arch from a Virtual Box VM on macOS, and at this point I had to ensure the VM started in EFI mode, which hangs for minutes at startup, but ends up working - the Mac-specific instructions were documented in this wiki page)
• when configuring mkinitcpio.conf, I had to make sure the block hook was before autodetectas explained on superuser.com, otherwise I had the error mentioned in the question. I also use systemd instead of udev, so my HOOKS look like this: (base systemd block autodetect modconf filesystems keyboard fsck)
• configure the pacman mirrorlist (/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist) and install some basic packages to get started: pacman -S vim base-devel terminus-font dialog wpa_supplicant git openssh
• because the Mac’s resolution is so high, the console font is way too small for me by default, so I played around with setfont until I found something I liked, and persisted the setting in /etc/vconsole.conf (I set it to FONT=ter-v28n, but keep in mind that I’m in my forties…)
• create my user, set a password and add myself to the sudoers (I added my user to the wheel group and uncommented %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL in visudo)
• next came network configuration, which was a bit of a pain because lspci is not accurate in the VM, so there were some back and forth between the real OS and the VM to get internet access to install the driver; my macbook pro has a Broadcom 43602 card and the b43-firmware (AUR) package works for me.

Best Linux For Macbook Pro 2017

This results in a working console-based system, and although there’s much configuration to be done next, the rest is much more subjective. At this point, booting the macbook with the USB drive plugged in and the option key pressed shows the bootloader menu with the option to select the EFI Arch Linux bootloader.

The Customization

That’s where the real fun begins. I’m not a gamer, when I use a computer I’d say I’m at least 90% of the time either at the terminal or in a web browser. I have very little use for other GUI-based applications, except Keepassxc (and that’s because I used a poor naming scheme when I created my password database otherwise I’d use its command-line interface).

I implemented a very personal bash-based “framework” to manage my dotfiles (and more, config files, bashrc, aliases, etc.) so at this point making a system feel at home only requires cloning that repo and hooking it up so it runs on login. It also takes care of installing the packages I want from the start on an Arch system. For me, the main ones are:

• xorg-server & co. for the graphical environment.
• i3-gaps as my window manager - I don’t need any heavyweight desktop environment such as KDE or Gnome. I use i3blocks for the status bar and dmenu as application launcher.
• the automatically detected resolution wasn’t quite right (can’t remember what it was exactly, but everything was way too small), so I had to add Xft.dpi: 192 in my Xresources file.
• cower to handle AUR packages, along with some handy aliases because I always forget how to use it.
• nitrogen for my wallpaper, with lots of Black Metal Cat pictures to randomly choose from.
• kitty for my terminal.
• adobe-source-code-pro-fonts because I’m used to Source Code Pro as terminal font.
• a bunch of other font packages so that web pages look good (ttf-mac-fonts in AUR, ttf-croscore for substitutes to Windows fonts, etc.)
• google-chrome (AUR) and firefox.
• a terminal-based mail setup using isync (mbsync) to sync my Gmail locally, msmtp to send email, notmuch to index my emails, and alot as terminal-based mail agent. I have a user systemd service running regularly to automatically sync this.

Best Version Of Linux For Macbook Pro

It… Just Works?

Okay so you really have to do a lot of manual set-up, few things work automatically out-of-the-box, but with a bit of work, I think pretty much everything works? Let’s see:

• Screen looks great. Like, sometimes I forget if I’m in macOS or Arch, I’ll move the mouse to the top and wait for an apple menu to appear.
• Trackpad works great too, not quite as versatile as on macOS, but still works really well (it is a bit more forgiving on macOS if too much of the finger drags on it). I use libinput to enable natural scrolling so I’m not all confused when switching OS.
• Function keys work, namely the screen brightness, keyboard brightness and volume keys. I haven’t bothered doing anything with the other ones, but I’m pretty confident they could be made to work easily enough.
• As mentioned, brightness works, acpilight provides keyboard brightness and pommed-light (AUR) handles screen brightness.
• Sound works, I used ALSA for the sound, and an xbindkeys file to map the volume function keys to amixer increase/decrease/toggle. Headphones work too.
• Camera works, with bcwc-pcie-git and facetimehd-firmware packages (both AUR).
• Sleep/resume works, without anything special that I can recall.
• HDMI works with xrandr, I even configured i3 with a specific layout when an HDMI screen is plugged in so I can work with two monitors.
• Bluetooth works with bluez and bluez-utils to use bluetoothctl command-line tool to pair a device. Apple’s Magic Trackpad works fine.
• Printing works with cups and the hplip driver for my wi-fi HP printer.

Really, I can’t think of anything I use on my Macbook Pro that doesn’t work under Arch Linux (I haven’t tried the card reader nor the thunderbolt ports). And unlike under macOS where I struggle to maintain 10-15GB of free disk space, on my Arch disk with all my emails synced locally, I still have just under 100GB free. I’m really glad I didn’t opt to buy a separate laptop, not only did I save a significant amount of money, I now have my favorite OS available on my favorite hardware.