Notes to install Ubuntu 22.04.4LTS (Upgraded to 24.04LTS) up and running on my 2017 MacBook Pro 15 inch (MacBookPro14,3).
Now everything except the TouchID (Fingerprint), Suspend and Hibernation seems to work for me.
About Ubuntu 24.04LTS: I tried to install Ubuntu 24.04 and didn't have success. There was a crash issue during installation. https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/2065310 But I installed 22.04 and upgraded it to the 24.04LTS later and it working same as 22.04.4.
- [Rob Hills's original Gist] - https://gist.github.com/rob-hills/9134b7352ee7471c4d4f4fbd6454c4b9 - very helpful
A lot of online info about running Ubuntu on MBP indicated that you needed to build drivers and install them just to get the basics running. For Ubuntu 22.04LTS and my MBP a1707, this was not the case. Things that worked for me with the standard Ubuntu 22.04LTS Live USB and after initial installation included:
- The basic keyboard (not the Touchbar with Esc and Function keys though);
- The touchpad;
- My SSK USB-C multi-port adapter, provides important infrastructure such as LAN connection, external monitor, and external storage;
- Bluetooth. Connected external Bluetooth keyboard and Apple mouse 2.
- Wifi: It was partly functional, but was not fully usable. Only 2.4Ghz access points shown with poor level and can be connected;
- Touchbar;
- Sound;
- Camera;
- Suspend (Can not resume many hardware); 2016 version seems to work with following method: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2492426 But, 2017 version seems doesn't work.
- Hibernation (When I execute
systemctl hibernate, it seems shutting down); - TouchID (It seems diffucult. There might have possibility. Please see this: Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#71 (comment));
The following notes mostly document what worked to get Wifi, Touchbar, Camera, and Sound working.
The Macbook's EFI partition seems to need to be kept. Please see the following comment for more information.
Just creating the configuration file /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt was enough for my hardware.
Andy Holst's example configuration file final iteration here was ideal and only required a little tweaking for my system.
I made the following changes to Andy Holst's /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt
macaddr=00:90:4c:0d:f5:30
ccode=ALL
- macaddr - set to the mac address of my WiFi card (I got it with the command
ip addr) - ccode - I just simply set it to ALL, (ALL (Channel 1-14), US, EU etc.)
Become the superuser
sudo su
Ubuntu uses initramfs so add our new modules to the list to be loaded
cat <<EOF | tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
# drivers for keyboard+touchpad
applespi
apple_ib_tb
intel_lpss_pci
spi_pxa2xx_platform
EOF
Build and install drivers from the source code.
apt install dkms
cd {your preferred source download folder}
git clone https://github.com/almas/macbook12-spi-driver
cd macbook12-spi-driver
git checkout touchbar-driver-hid-driver
ln -s `pwd` /usr/src/applespi-0.1
dkms install applespi/0.1 --force
Test the drivers by loading them and their dependencies
modprobe intel_lpss_pci spi_pxa2xx_platform applespi apple_ib_tb
An empty output indicates success
Reboot
At this point of the process, my touchbar was not working. More Googling led me to someone else logging this as [an issue on RoadRunner2's Driver repository[(roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver#42] and in the discussion I found a workaround. The following commands:
echo '1-3' | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind
echo '1-3' | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind
caused my touchbar to light up!!
To save having to run these commands each time I start the computer, I needed to create a "macbook-quirks.service" and have it start up with the computer:
sudo su
cat <<EOF | tee /etc/systemd/system/macbook-quirks.service
[Unit]
Description=Re-enable MacBook 14,3 TouchBar
Before=display-manager.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 2
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
EOF
Now enable with systemctl enable macbook-quirks.service and reboot to check.
My MBP now boots up with the Touchbar working!
From the discussion in the link above, it appears this may be due to a bug in Linux and the usbmuxd system so hopefully will be able to remove the workaround in the future, so keep an eye on the relevant issue discussion.
Personally, I don't like this. But, if you want the Function keys to appear by default (instead of the brightness and sound keys), then you need to pass some parameters to the apple_ib_tb module. 'modinfo apple_ib_tb' lists the parameters and what they do.
sudo su
cat <<EOF | tee /etc/modprobe.d/apple_ib_tb.conf
options apple_ib_tb fnmode=2 # Default to Function Keys, Fn key toggles to "special"
options apple_ib_tb idle_timeout=60 # Turn off the Touchbar after 60 seconds.
EOF
After reloading the module with the following command, the Function keys will be shown by default.
sudo modprobe -r apple_ib_tb
sudo modprobe apple_ib_tb
I found the resolution from the Rade0nFighter's answer from the following QA: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1475091/sound-macbook-pro-ubuntu-22-04
sudo su
apt install wget make gcc linux-headers-generic
git clone https://github.com/davidjo/snd_hda_macbookpro.git
cd snd_hda_macbookpro/
bash install.cirrus.driver.sh
# It will give you instructions to install package linux-source-XXXXX. Install it.
apt install linux-source-XXXXX
# Then re-run install script.
bash install.cirrus.driver.sh
bash dkms.sh
reboot
Now the sound should work.
Execute the following command and reboot.
echo "options uvcvideo quirks=0x100" > /etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf
Now the camera should work too.
@rafy51 WIFI does work for me. Though limited to 2.4GHz.
iw)After remapping Escape key to Caps, I'm not missing Touch bar. So decided to stick with Ubuntu 25 and not downgrade to 24