Having experimented a lot with Linux on Mac the following points are dealbreakers for me. Currently using Ventura (pre 2015 Macs) or Sequoia (post 2015 Macs), with OCLP, and will continue to do so until they are scrapped:

• Linux isn't actually faster. I see no evidence of this - comparing fresh install to fresh install
• Suspend doesn't work, or loses a lot of battery
• Instant wake gone
• Speakers sound worse, and the only real solution is buying an expensive reference microphone and building your own speaker correction profile
• Weird problems with T2 Macs like flashing touchbar
• Apple built the best machines in the world around mediocre hot processors (Intel)

Unless your Mac is extremely old I just don't see the point of Linux. The latest web browers still work on Ventura, and Sequoia. The only possible advantage might be security, but you're probably not installing a bunch of random software on an old Mac, and the browser itself should protect from online exploits.

Probably a wider point is how sensible it is to keep using the same computer for decades. Any machine without usb-c ports is already a bit annoying in the modern world. Not to mention improvements in WiFi standards, screen technology, etc.

Having used ARM chips (Apple and Qualcomm) on Mac, Windows, and Linux with their amazing low latency and battery life, the future is ARM.

Being new to the linux community I see a lot of people saying they don't like snaps this and that.. so instead they enable flatpaks or download the deb versions which I agree with in most cases like I needed slack so I just went and got it from the website long story short I was stuck doing brave tweaks messing with flags, extensions etc finally got tired of it and used Firefox through snaps and twitch works beautifully!!! I never knew Firefox through snaps is already optimized for your hardware through cannicol or whatever its called ? I just think its funny I tried for days to get brave to run twitch at 1080p and Snap firefox just runs it effortlessly I am on a 2015 macbook pro btw 8gb ram 2.7 processor speed. I now will embrace snaps lol

I got a 2015 macbook pro 8gb ram , 128gbSSD with only 300 charge cycles... this thing is def brand new feeling. who runs Ubuntu on here and whats your thoughts on it?

I've got an old 2013 MacBook. It's only got 256GB of storage, most of which was just taken up by Mac OSX Catalina. No program supports that OS anymore, and updating it means losing more storage space, so I decided it's time to try Linux!

I downloaded Fedora 44 KDE Plasma, installed it, and realized I have no WiFi. Welp.

Googling it, most "fixes" require going on the internet to download or update some packages via the terminal. But how? USB tethering via my phone worked only once - after rebooting, it never worked again. And apparently my TP-Link USB WiFi dongle is ALSO not supported.

I tried going on some RPMFusion website (I don't even know what that is for), downloaded free and nonfree repositories (??), but when I try to open them, they just open the Settings, and they do nothing - or they error and say they can't update. I lost track of what I did and DIDN'T do just to try and get stuff working.

So now I'm stuck. No WiFi, no bluetooth (at first boot, it did have BT, strangely), no audio.

What can I do? Is there a driver I can simply download from another computer and put that on the MacBook? I'm pretty close to regretting this decision.

EDIT: FIXED!!

What I did:

• Upon first install, use USB tethering (rebooting at this point screws it up)
• Install the RPM Fusion Free repository
• Install the RPM Fusion Non-free repository
• Update via DNF
• Reboot
• Install broadcom-wl
• Reboot

Hello,

I'm planning to make my MacBook more usable - what Linux distro do you recommend? How is battery life?

My experience with Linux is kinda basic - I was using it on my other laptop (Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora Sway Spin and KDE) and during my studies.

Specs:

CPU: i5-5250u
RAM: 8 GB
SSD: 128 GB

Thanks for help! :)

We all have that one old, faithful friend. Mine is a 2011 MacBook Air. It has a slim aluminum body, a stylish design, and an excellent backlit keyboard, but it came with a "sentence" from Apple: only 2 GB of RAM that cannot be upgraded. Modern macOS turned it into a "brick" that would freeze for a minute with every click.

However, I decided it was too early to consign it to the scrapheap of history. The solution was found where enthusiasts always look: the world of open-source software.

Linux Mint: A Breath of Fresh Air I wiped the heavy, sluggish macOS and installed Linux Mint MATE. Why this one? Because it’s lightweight, intuitive, and works "out of the box," even on Apple hardware. But let’s be honest: even the lightest Linux distribution with a modern Chrome browser will quickly hit the ceiling of those 2 GB of RAM.

To make my Air truly fly, and not just "exist," I had to assemble a secret puzzle of three technologies.

zRAM: Air Out of Thin Air The first hero is zRAM. Imagine your RAM is a small suitcase. Previously, when you had too many things, it simply wouldn't close (and the system would hang). zRAM acts like vacuum bags. It takes the data, compresses it right inside the RAM, and allows you to cram two or even three times more information into the same bag.

But when even the compressed "bags" fill up the space, our trump card enters the scene.

Swapspace: Dynamic Intelligence A standard swap file in Linux is a blunt, clunky chunk of disk space. It either wastes space on the SSD for no reason or isn't there when you need it while opening your tenth Chrome tab.

Swapspace is like a manager with built-in artificial intelligence. It monitors my MacBook's pulse:

• While there is enough memory, it doesn't take up a single byte on the disk.
• As soon as the "free energy" level drops below a critical percentage, it instantly begins "carving out" space on the SSD in neat, pre-defined chunks.

It’s as if your laptop, in moments of heavy fatigue, started quickly building extra temporary warehouses, and then dismantled them just as fast once the work was done.

My Rescue Formula: On my 2011 MacBook Air, I set up a multi-layered defense:

1. RAM: Works at the limit, but is protected.
2. zRAM (First line of defense): Compresses everything possible to maintain speed.
3. Swapspace (Second line): A safety net on the disk that unfolds only when there is a real threat of a crash.

In the config, I set a threshold of 10% (lower_freelimit). That is the exact line where the magic begins. The system doesn't wait for the memory to reach "clinical death"; it starts acting in advance.

The Result: The Old Horse Still Pulls the Plow When I look at the terminal and see how Linux Mint smoothly juggles data between zRAM and dynamic swap files, I realize: my MacBook Air still has some fight left in it. I can comfortably write code, watch videos, and open the million tabs I need.

This isn't just optimization. It’s a philosophy. Why buy a new laptop for browsing when a beautiful old MacBook Air running Linux Mint can work faster and more reliably than many modern budget laptops?

https://preview.redd.it/dp6o3sfwbj0h1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=dedfbdbefaa436f2bb613f6d4b07d65eca45a30d

https://preview.redd.it/u880zbgwbj0h1.jpg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6299fd2f49e80bef06803c8a9deea2010c19f66

Hey all, I need some advice before I handle this. I am former I.T. and I use Linux daily, but I haven't had to install Linux on a Mac in forever, so I wanted to ask those that are more up to speed.

Long story short, my mothers 2018 Macbook Pro is finally getting painfully sluggish and apps are crashing, etc due to lack of updates and she cant afford a new system. I'd obviously be her tech support since shes new to Linux, but the time constraint is the biggest headache given the situation (she's very busy and needs her laptop for work).

I did 5 seconds of research so far, and it is my current understanding that t2linux and CachyOS are the best options for her laptop. I prefer CachyOS since it's my daily driver, but what I need to know, is which should I choose? Specifically for the best out of the box installation with the least amount of manual patching to make sure all hardware/firmware/features are working properly due to time constraints. As well as if there's any specific tweaks I should be aware of given the t2 chip.

Also, any recommendations for managing battery life/performance? Macs are obviously different than gaming laptops so I'm not familiar with which packages or anything are best.

Thank you in advance!

School is selling these for $25. Is there a linux distro that just works with this hardware? Best option? I vaguely recall someone mentioning a site with Mac specific Linux builds.

Specs: Apple Mac Pro (2013) Processor: 3 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5 Memory: 32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 Graphics: AMD FirePro D700 6 GB MacOS: MacOS Mojave

Is there anybody that knows of a distro that works out of the box ? Last time I tried I couldn't get my wifi to work

>"For some, Linux fails to boot, for some it's okish, for some it's good"

u/AdityaGarg8 said that to me back in November 2024, when he was kind enough to help guide me through installing Ubuntu on my Mac Pro 2019.

After a lot of testing, I think that quote perfectly describes the current state of Linux on the Mac Pro 2019, especially when using Apple’s MPX AMD GPUs with the Infinity Fabric Link jumper or bridge installed.

What seems to be happening?

From my testing, the main issue appears to involve the Infinity Fabric Link jumper/bridge.

On newer kernels, especially kernel 6.8 and later, some GPUs with the Infinity Fabric Link installed do not initialize correctly. In my case, this has shown up as amdgpu initialization failures and psp -22 errors.

On kernel 5.15.0, the GPUs initialize more successfully, but I still see errors, especially SDMA-related errors. So I would describe 5.15.0 as partial support, not full support.

So far, my practical summary is:

• Kernel 5.15.0: GPUs can initialize, but support appears incomplete.
• Kernel 6.8: GPUs may fail to initialize when Infinity Fabric Link is installed.
• Later kernels, including 6.17 and 7.0: in my testing, one GPU may initialize correctly, while the remaining GPUs fail with psp -22.

This is not meant to be a final technical diagnosis. It is a report of what I and others are seeing on real Mac Pro 2019 hardware.

Does Infinity Fabric Link matter?

For local AI, the most important factors are usually:

• GPU compute
• VRAM capacity
• Memory bandwidth
• Inter-GPU bandwidth

On multi-GPU setups, VRAM is not automatically pooled into one shared memory space. Each GPU has its own VRAM, and when a workload is split across multiple GPUs, the GPUs need to communicate with each other.

Without a direct GPU-to-GPU interconnect, the normal path is usually something like:

GPU0 -> CPU / PCIe -> GPU1

That means traffic has to go through the PCIe path, with the CPU/platform sitting in the middle.

The AMD MPX GPUs in the Mac Pro 2019 are based on PCIe 4.0-capable GPUs, but the Mac Pro 2019 platform itself provides PCIe 3.0 bandwidth. A PCIe 3.0 x16 link has a theoretical maximum of about 15.75 GB/s per direction.

This is where Infinity Fabric Link becomes interesting.

Why Infinity Fabric Link could matter

With proper support, Infinity Fabric Link should allow direct GPU-to-GPU communication:

GPU0 -> GPU1

That removes the normal CPU/PCIe middle step for supported GPU-to-GPU traffic.

Apple rates the Infinity Fabric Link connection at up to 84 GB/s in each direction. That is more than five times the theoretical one-direction bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16.

In theory, that could be a major advantage for multi-GPU workloads, especially workloads where GPUs need to exchange data frequently.

For local AI, this could matter most in cases like:

• tensor-parallel inference
• large models split across multiple GPUs
• concurrent inference with many users
• workloads where inter-GPU communication becomes a bottleneck

But does it actually work on Linux?

My current answer is:

Not reliably, at least not on the W6800X Duo and W6900X in my testing.

Some users have reported better results with Vega II / Vega II Duo, and it is possible that older MPX GPUs behave differently. But with the W6800X Duo and W6900X, I do not currently see clean, reliable Infinity Fabric Link behavior under Linux.

To be clear, I am not saying Linux has no AMD GPU support. The GPUs themselves can work under Linux. The issue appears to be specifically around the Infinity Fabric Link Jumper/Bridge with the MPX GPU implementation; firmware/PSP initialization and how the AMDGPU driver handles this hardware combination.

What am I testing now?

Personally, I am experimenting with:

• Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS
• Kernel 5.15.0
• W6800X Duo and W6900X MPX GPUs
• Infinity Fabric Link jumper/bridge installed

The goal is to see how far this partial support can go, whether the link actually becomes active, and whether there is any measurable bandwidth advantage when it does.

I am also watching newer stacks such as:

• Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS / kernel 6.17
• Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS / kernel 7.0

Hopefully, proper support or a workaround appears for these newer kernels.

Community tracking / bug report

There is already activity on the DRM AMD GitLab here:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/work_items/3793

If you have a Mac Pro 2019 with MPX GPUs, especially Vega II, Vega II Duo, W6800X, W6800X Duo, or W6900X, please consider sharing your results there.

Useful information would include:

• Mac Pro 2019 configuration
• GPU model or models
• Whether the Infinity Fabric Link jumper/bridge is installed
• Linux distro
• Kernel version
• ROCm version, if applicable
• Whether the GPUs initialize
• Relevant dmesg / journalctl errors
• Whether removing the jumper/bridge changes behavior

What can you do to help?

Share your experience.

What hardware do you have?
What OS and kernel are you using?
Does the system boot?
Do all GPUs initialize?
Does removing the Infinity Fabric Link jumper or bridge change anything?
Have you found a kernel version where it works better?

Hopefully, with more of us testing, reporting, and giving this issue attention, we can help establish better Linux support for these powerful MPX GPUs on the Mac Pro 2019.

Disclaimer: I wrote this post myself, but used AI to help clean up the wording and formatting.

Resources:

• DRM AMD Gitlab
• Coelacanth's Dream: Research
• nbritton's Lab (Vega II Implimentation)
• Enable XGMI Support for Sienna Cichlid
• Enable XGMI support for Arcturus

Hi, i’ve been using my old retina (mid 2014) macbook for some internet browsing and just old minecraft gaming, but recently it started acting a bit sluggish? given that i was on macos 12 with opencore legacy patcher i thought maybe its time to install linux, but now that i’ve installed ubuntu 26.04 without any issues at first, now i’ve started noticing a few issues, mainly that my bluetooth headphones keep crackling and stuttering, the fans randomly start blowing at max rpm, and there being a few graphical issues as well as just plainly bad performance - which is what im least surprised by since it is the model with a gt750m and ubuntu is running gnome…

so given all that rambling, do you guys have any recommendations on what linux i should use on my macbook a1398 mid 2014, with nvidia gt750m (and some igpu)

When running the command "cat /proc/asound/card*/codec* | grep Codec" the 2 outputs are

Codec: Cirrus Logic CS8409

Codec: Intel Kabylake HDMI

I have tried to install several drivers to fix the audio not outputting, but so far nothing has fixed the issue. The device's speakers do work on the MacOS partition I left on the machine, but Ubuntu can not output to them. (In case it is needed, the device's screen size is 21.5 inch).

I am looking at 2 different macbook pros to try linux for the first time. One is a 2019 i9 with 32gb ram, a 2017 i7 with 16gb, and a 2020 with an i7 and 16gb. Thanks for any advice!

Hola a todos. Soy relativamente nuevo en Linux y decidí instalar **Fedora 44 con KDE Plasma** en mi **MacBook Pro 13" 2016 (MacBookPro13,3)**. La experiencia en general ha sido increíble, logré que cosas como la Touch Bar funcionen y el sistema corre genial... excepto por una cosa que me tiene completamente loco: **el WiFi**.

Puedo estar literalmente pegado al router y no conecta. Detecta las redes, las ve, pero nunca logra asociarse. Llevo todo el día intentándolo y nada. Por el momento sobrevivo con un adaptador USB-Ethernet pero obviamente no es lo ideal andar con un cable a todas partes en una laptop.

---

**Info del sistema:**

```

Fedora 44

Kernel: 6.19.12-210.t2.fc44.x86_64

Plasma: 6.6.4

```

**Hardware WiFi:**

```

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. BCM43602 802.11ac

Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 015a

Kernel driver in use: brcmfmac

Kernel modules: brcmfmac, wl

```

**Drivers disponibles:**

- `brcmfmac` — driver open source activo, es el que usa el kernel por defecto

- `wl` — driver propietario de Broadcom, instalado via RPM Fusion (`broadcom-wl` + `kmod-wl`) pero bloqueado por un `/bin/false` en modprobe porque entra en conflicto con brcmfmac

- `brcmutil`, `cfg80211` — módulos de soporte cargados correctamente

**Paquetes de firmware instalados:**

```

linux-firmware-20260410-1.fc44

brcmfmac-firmware-20260410-1.fc44

broadcom-wl-6.30.223.271-28.fc44

kmod-wl-6.30.223.271-61.fc44

```

**Lo que me dice el dmesg y que creo que es la raíz del problema:**

```

brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie

brcmfmac: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.clm_blob failed with error -2

brcmfmac: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.txcap_blob failed with error -2

brcmfmac: no clm_blob available (err=-2), device may have limited channels available

brcmfmac: Firmware: BCM43602/2 wl0: Nov 10 2015 version 7.35.177.61

```

Sí, el firmware es de **noviembre de 2015**. Le falta el archivo `clm_blob` que define qué canales puede usar el chip. Sin él opera con canales muy limitados.

**Archivos de firmware presentes en /lib/firmware/brcm/ para este chip:**

```

brcmfmac43602-pcie.ap.bin.xz

brcmfmac43602-pcie.Apple Inc.-MacBookPro13,3.bin → brcmfmac43602-pcie.bin

brcmfmac43602-pcie.bin

brcmfmac43602-pcie.bin.xz

brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt

```

Nota: el `.clm_blob` NO está presente.

---

**Todo lo que ya intenté (y falló):**

- `linux-firmware` y `brcmfmac-firmware` ya estaban en su última versión y no incluyen el clm_blob para BCM43602

- Intenté descargar el clm_blob desde GitHub (Asahi Linux, winterheart) — todos devuelven archivos de 14 bytes que son HTML redirigido, no el archivo real

- Probé `wpa_supplicant` directamente sin NetworkManager — se queda en SCANNING eternamente

- Conecté por BSSID directamente apuntando a la MAC del router — mismo resultado

- El driver propietario `wl` está bloqueado por `/bin/false` en modprobe

- Configuré el perfil WiFi manualmente en NetworkManager desactivando WPS con `wps-method=0` — nada

- Establecí el dominio regulatorio a México (`iw reg set MX`) — sin cambios

**Lo que creo que necesito:**

El archivo `brcmfmac43602-pcie.clm_blob` real. Según lo que leí, ese archivo solo existe dentro de macOS en alguna ruta como `/usr/share/firmware/wifi/C-4355__s-B2/clmb`. El problema es que desinstalé macOS cuando puse Fedora, así que no tengo acceso a él.

---

¿Alguien ha logrado hacer funcionar el WiFi con BCM43602 en Linux? ¿Existe alguna forma de conseguir ese clm_blob sin tener macOS? ¿O hay algo que me esté faltando?

Cualquier ayuda es bienvenida, llevo todo el día en esto y ya estoy un poco desesperado jajaja. Gracias de antemano 🙏