POP_OS_22.04-mbp-2016

A repackaged POP!_OS distro with drivers for the MacBook Pro 13,3 (Late 2016). Not tested on other MacBooks, but will probably work on most Apple T1 devices.

This was done on macOS Monterey, alongside a Bootcamp partition, resulting in a pretty neat triple boot envirmoent.

I hope that this will save someone from a lot of work, googling around, and reading up on forum posts and discussions. I've gathered everything I have learnt in the following document. I also take no credit for the methods presented below, and have linked to the source below each heading.

A Note On Updating

For me, updating POP!_OS to the current release as of September 2022 breaks the touchbar drivers, and I haven't figured out how to get them back working. I recommend backing up with Timeshift before updating, for an easy way to revert back.

Installation

To install, unpack the latest ISO from the releases, and make a bootable USB, using balenaEtcher, rufus or similar tools.

Shrink your macOS partition with Disk Utility.

Hold down the alt key while booting, and choose the USB (should be appear as a yellow drive named EFI Boot).

Choose custom installation, and make a root partiton and a boot partition that's at least 500 MB. If the installer lists the partitons with the wrong size, see the "Resize Partition" heading below.

If someone knows of a way to mitigate this problem, or update the ISO to use macOS block size, I would be happy to know!

Resize Partition

The POP_OS installer apparently uses a different block size (4096 bytes) than the macOS disk (512 bytes), at least in my case, making the partitions being listed as eight times smaller than their real size. This is not an issue after the installation, as the sizes are listed correctly there. However it forces you to make an EFI partition of around 6 GB, which is unfortunate. After the installation is finished you can manually resize the partition.

Source: https://superuser.com/a/1289122

Boot to the live USB you just created, and open the terminal

Mount the ESP, if it's not mounted already:

mount /dev/nvm0n1p5 /mnt # replace nvm0n1p5 with ESP

Make a backup of its contents:

mkdir ~/esp
rsync -av /mnt/ ~/esp/

Unmount the ESP:

 umount /mnt

Delete and recreate the ESP:

gdisk /dev/nvm0n1 # replace nvm0n1 with disk containing ESP

p (list partitions)
d (delete partition)
5 (select the EFI partition to be resized)
n (create partition)
Enter (use default partition number )
Enter (use default first sector)
Enter (enter first sector + the euqivalent of 600 MB)
EF00 (hex code for EFI system partition)
w (write changes to disk and exit)

Format the ESP:

partprobe /dev/nvm0n1
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvm0n1p5

Format the ESP:

partprobe /dev/nvm0n1
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvm0n1p5

Restore the ESP's contents:

 mount /dev/nvm0n1p5 /mnt
 rsync -av ~/esp/ /mnt

Get PARTUUID for the new EFI partition

 blkid | grep EFI

Update EFI entry in /etc/fstab

nano /etc/fstab

Replace PARTUUID with the new one.

PARTUUID=XXXX-XXXX # Replace with PARTUUID of EFI partition from blkid

Save the file and you should be good to go

Ctrl+O
Enter
Ctrl+X

Reboot

The Changes I've Done

These are the modifications I've done with the ISO.

UPDATE 2023-10-25

One of the repos I've used has gone offline, so I've added all external content to this repo, so no need to clone the other repos anymore. Useful links:

https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

https://gist.github.com/roadrunner2/1289542a748d9a104e7baec6a92f9cd7#gistcomment-2164350

WiFi

Source

Download brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt

cp brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt /lib/firmware/brcm

Audio

Source

git clone https://github.com/davidjo/snd_hda_macbookpro.git
cd snd_hda_macbookpro/
#run the following command as root or with sudo
./install.cirrus.driver.sh

TouchBar

Source

Get and install the drivers

echo -e "\n# applespi\napplespi\nspi_pxa2xx_platform\nintel_lpss_pci" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

apt install dkms
git clone https://github.com/PatrickVerner/macbook12-spi-driver.git /usr/src/applespi-0.1
dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1

There is a bug with the USB drivers, that apparently overrides the TouchBar drivers after booting. This can be mitigated by rebinding usb drivers each boot

Source

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/macbook-quirks.service

Add the following contents to the file

[Unit]
Description=Re-enable MacBook 14,3 TouchBar
Before=display-manager.service
After=usbmuxd.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "echo '1-3' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind"
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "echo '1-3' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind"
RemainAfterExit=yes
TimeoutSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then, enable the service

systemctl enable macbook-quirks.service 

Adjust Trackpad Sensitivity

Make file

sudo nano /usr/share/libinput/local-overrides.quirks

Add content:

[MacBook(Pro) SPI Touchpads]
MatchName=*Apple SPI Touchpad*
ModelAppleTouchpad=1
AttrTouchSizeRange=200:150
AttrPalmSizeThreshold=1100

[MacBook(Pro) SPI Keyboards]
MatchName=*Apple SPI Keyboard*
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

[MacBookPro Touchbar]
MatchBus=usb
MatchVendor=0x05AC
MatchProduct=0x8600
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

Register the file

sudo systemd-hwdb update

Neofetch

Just to get a nice looking terminal, with useful information.

sudo install neofetch

Then edit file from the home directory

sudo nano .bashrc 

If done during generating iso, the home folder don't exist, so we have to do it here instead

sudo nano /etc/skel/.bashrc

In the file, uncomment

force_color_prompt

and add

neofetch

at the end of the file

Recommended Configurations (not implemented)

Swap Ctrl and Command

Source

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/altwin

Add the following mapping abow swap_alt_win

// Control is SWAPPED with Win-keys 
partial modifier_keys
xkb_symbols "swap_ctrl_win" {
    key <LWIN> { [ Control_L ] };
    key <RWIN> { [ Control_R ] };
    key <LCTL> { [ Super_L ] };
    modifier_map Control { <LWIN>, <RWIN> };
    modifier_map Mod4 { <LCTL> };
};

Edit the following file

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev

Insert the following line under the option = symbols section in

  altwin:swap_ctrl_win  =       +altwin(swap_ctrl_win)

Edit this file

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst

Add the new option under the section "! option":

  altwin:swap_ctrl_win  Ctrl is swapped with Win

Register the rule

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['altwin:swap_ctrl_win']"

And now it should work!

Helpful commands

setxkbmap -print -verbose 10 # See registered options
setxkbmap -option # Remove options currently registered

Palm Rejection (not tested)

Source

Alternative Trackpad (not tested)

Source

Tips After Successfull Installation

Switch GPU to the internal

Be sure to spoof the machine into thinking it's booting into macOS to get access to the iGPU. The easiest method is to use rEFind.

Uncomment the "spoof_osx_version" line in refind.conf and you'll get access to the iGPU when booting into Pop!_OS.

Other methods can be found here

Then blacklist the AMD GPU

sudo su
echo "blacklist amdgpu" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-amdgpu.conf 

Switch to integrated GPU

cd && git clone https://github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch
cd gpu-switch
sudo ./gpu-switch -i

Reboot

Turn off AMD GPU

Turn off the AMD card properly. This didn't work for me, as I don't have a vgaswitcheroo folder. If someone knows how I can work around this, please enlighten me!

Could be a solution here perhaps: https://askubuntu.com/questions/57059/sys-kernel-debug-vgaswitcheroo-missing

sudo su
gpu-manager | grep 'amdgpu loaded? no' && sudo modprobe amdgpu || echo 'AMD GPU already loaded'
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Some of the following instructions broke my installation when I tried, so proceed with caution (and Timeshift backups)

Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#6 (comment) Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#6 (comment)

Note that in the last link, the location is different in this installation, so use the following command instad

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Usefull commands to get GPU information

gpu-manager
sudo modprobe amdgpuworks
command lspci | grep "VGA

To see which GPU is active, use the glmark2 benchmark tool

Install

sudo apt-get install glmark2

Run the benchmark

glmark2

How to Repackage the ISO Yourself

Source

Download the image file (I used Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS), and extract the contents. You could even use my ISO to modify it further.

cd ~/Downloads
sudo mkdir /mnt/iso
sudo mount ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso /mnt/iso
mkdir customiso
rsync -a --exclude=casper/filesystem.squashfs /mnt/iso/ customiso/
sudo unsquashfs /mnt/iso/casper/filesystem.squashfs
sudo umount /mnt/iso

Chroot to the image so that we can update it from the inside

sudo mount --bind /dev squashfs-root/dev/
sudo chroot squashfs-root/
PS1="(chroot) $PS1"
LC_ALL=C
HOME=/root
export PS1 HOME LC_ALL

mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t devpts none /dev/pts

Update the image

mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak
echo 'nameserver 8.8.8.8' | tee /etc/resolv.conf

apt-get update
apt-get -y dist-upgrade
apt-get -y autoremove

Then do wanted configurations

Remember to add CASPER_GENERATE_UUID=1 before each line updating initramfs. This makes sure that we can extract the UUID when mastering the ISO.

Examples:

CASPER_GENERATE_UUID=1 update-initramfs -u
CASPER_GENERATE_UUID=1 dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1

Then exit the chroot enviroment

rm /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
rm /etc/resolv.conf
mv /etc/resolv.conf.bak /etc/resolv.conf
umount /dev/pts
umount /sys
umount /proc
rm /root/.bash_history
unset HISTFILE
exit
sudo umount squashfs-root/dev/

And update the kernel

sudo cp squashfs-root/boot/vmlinuz customiso/casper/vmlinuz
sudo cp squashfs-root/boot/initrd.img customiso/casper/initrd

Then build remastered image

sudo rm customiso/casper/filesystem.squashfs
sudo mksquashfs squashfs-root customiso/casper/filesystem.squashfs

unmkinitramfs customiso/casper/initrd /tmp/z
sudo cp /tmp/z/main/conf/uuid.conf customiso/.disk/casper-uuid-generic
rm -rf /tmp/z

cd customiso
sudo rm md5sum.txt
sudo find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sudo md5sum | grep -Ev "./md5sum.txt|./isolinux/" | sudo tee md5sum.txt
cd ..

sudo apt -y install xorriso isolinux

rm ubuntu4mac.iso
sudo xorriso -as mkisofs \
  -r -V "POPOS4MAC" -R -l -o popos4mac.iso \
  -c isolinux/boot.cat -b isolinux/isolinux.bin \
  -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
  -isohybrid-mbr /usr/lib/ISOLINUX/isohdpfx.bin \
  -eltorito-alt-boot \
  -e boot/grub/efi.img \
  -no-emul-boot -isohybrid-gpt-basdat customiso/

sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) ubuntu4mac.iso