I used MacBooks with Linux starting in 2006 till the end of last year. That's when I finally gave up. I really love the hardware Apple produces, but we're at a point where I believe it's not feasible anymore to use Linux on MacBooks.

For the MacBook Pros 2016 and up I put significant effort into trying to get mainline Linux running as smoothly as possible by documenting and coordinating the efforts to have drivers for all internal devices [1], but just have a look where we're at over three years later: Audio doesn't work properly, Wifi does neither (expect for the non-TouchBar models, like the one the OP uses), hibernation is still somewhat broken and let's not even start talking about the advanced abilities of the TouchBar or support for TouchId. I could go on.

Models with T2 chip (2018 and up) are even worse in some regards and I believe it won't get better anymore. Next year we might see MacBooks with custom ARM SoCs and that's where I expect the driver situation will get even more dire. As Apple continuous to use more and more custom designed components, the effort for proper Linux drivers for such hardware only increases.

Most of these problems could be easily solved if Apple would simply make documentation for their hardware available. There are lots of great people passionate about running Linux on Macs out there, but reverse-engineering the hardware is what makes it really complicated to produce robust drivers for it.

I sincerely hope my predictions are wrong and Linux will still go strong on Macs in future as well, but for the time being I'm done with Macs.

[1]: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Buy a XPS-13 developer edition.

Just an FYI... You might want to add “balena.io” to your hosts file. I do like the simplicity of BalenaEtcher but it seems to still try to call home over tcp port 443 even when I disable usage statistics and auto-updates in settings. This may have been fixed in newer versions. (I’m using 1.5.45)

Lenovo Carbon X1 - besides maybe Dell XPS line - this is the best small 14" laptop for Linux. I consider it a 13" macbook replacement. it is good quality. I have had zero issues with my 6th gen running Fedora. However, you will never get the trackpad exp of a Mac, but you get a GREAT keyboard on X1s to make up for it (and the trackpad is actually pretty good).

I wouldnt want to fight with Apple hw with Linux. Apple doesnt want to make it doable any longer...

If you have a mid-2017 MacBook pro, these instructions are great: https://nixaid.com/linux-on-macbookpro/

You can follow the instructions to create a patched Ubuntu installer, or you can just download the image.

> Using Etcher to create bootable USB drive.

For such a technical post, I’m surprised this is the recommendation. There are a million ways to copy the iso to the usb drive and make it bootable. The easiest in my opinion is:

    cat Ubuntu.iso > /dev/disk

Somewhat unrelated but do we still need Docker Desktop for Mac to run Docker containers on macOS? Why is that, is it because Linux is needed? Couldn't Docker run containers natively using just macOS?

Or go to windows hyper-v manager, and click install Ubuntu image. And you’re done!

(Ok, expanding the memory to a decent size is a little more work)

What year’s release is a “MacBookPro14,1”?

This might be great "because we can" or to recycle old MacBooks, but to me the whole point of having a Macbook is the tight, native integration with its hardware.

I pay the premium for Apple precisely because everything just works, and works well. (Barring the occasional bugs...)

What you need is Microsoft like linux VM environment, with direct support by Apple. But even boot camp ... but competition might help. When developer moves to windows for its linux Env., it may trigger then to rethink about mac. But probably not. Sadly.

I've installed it on a Macbook Pro 15 Retina Late 2013 everything works out of box.

Are these fixes experimental? There must be a reason why they aren't in the main distribution.

For people who want to install Ubuntu on MBP14,2 or 14,3 (the new MBPs with four thunderbolt 3 ports) — this[0] might help. (It'll be probably trivial to update the article for Ubuntu 20.04 - just ignore the upgrading the kernel parts.)

It mentions adding the touchbar, keyboard drivers[1] and fixes for the non-working wifi[2], all without an external keyboard or anything. You can just boot up your Ubuntu virtual machine, execute some commands in the chroot environment & make an bootable ISO.

This gist[3] and this GitHub repo[4] might also be worth to check out - although it looks like a bit lagging in information (the wifi fix, added last November isn't reflected yet).

This is my command checklist (tweaked from this[0] to match my prefs), might be helpful for someone?

   ### check if pwd is ~/Download
   
   # ask password beforehand
   sudo -v
   
   # mounting iso and copying to current file
   sudo mkdir -p /mnt/iso
   sudo mount ubuntu-20.04-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
   
   # chrooting
   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
   
   # updating
   mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak
   echo 'nameserver 1.1.1.1' | tee /etc/resolv.conf
   
   ### change apt mirror list
   
   apt update
   apt upgrade
   apt dist-upgrade
   apt autoremove
   apt -f install
   
   # installing driver
   apt install git dkms
   
   echo -e "\n# macbook12-spi-drivers\napplespi\nappletb\nspi_pxa2xx_platform\nintel_lpss_pci" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
   
   git clone https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver.git /usr/src/applespi-0.1
   dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1
   
   cat > /etc/udev/hwdb.d/61-evdev-local.hwdb << 'EOF'
   # MacBook8,1 (2015), MacBook9,1 (2016), MacBook10,1 (2017)
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBook8,1:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBook9,1:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBook10,1:*
    EVDEV_ABS_00=::95
    EVDEV_ABS_01=::90
    EVDEV_ABS_35=::95
    EVDEV_ABS_36=::90
   
   # MacBookPro13,* (Late 2016), MacBookPro14,* (Mid 2017)
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro13,1:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro13,2:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro14,1:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro14,2:*
    EVDEV_ABS_00=::96
    EVDEV_ABS_01=::94
    EVDEV_ABS_35=::96
    EVDEV_ABS_36=::94
   
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro13,3:*
   evdev:name:Apple SPI Touchpad:dmi:*:svnAppleInc.:pnMacBookPro14,3:*
    EVDEV_ABS_00=::96
    EVDEV_ABS_01=::95
    EVDEV_ABS_35=::96
    EVDEV_ABS_36=::95
   EOF
   
   cat > /etc/udev/hwdb.d/61-libinput-local.hwdb << 'EOF'
   libinput:name:*Apple SPI Touchpad*:dmi:*
    LIBINPUT_MODEL_APPLE_TOUCHPAD=1
    LIBINPUT_ATTR_KEYBOARD_INTEGRATION=internal
    LIBINPUT_ATTR_TOUCH_SIZE_RANGE=200:150
    LIBINPUT_ATTR_PALM_SIZE_THRESHOLD=1200
   EOF
   
   ### edit wifi driver(https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193121#c52)
   
   # exiting chroot
   mv /etc/resolv.conf.bak /etc/resolv.conf
   umount /dev/pts
   umount /sys
   umount /proc
   exit
   sudo umount squashfs-root/dev/
      
   sudo rm customiso/casper/filesystem.squashfs
   sudo mksquashfs squashfs-root customiso/casper/filesystem.squashfs

   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 xorriso -as mkisofs -r -V "ubuntu-for-mac" -R -l -o ubuntu-for-mac.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/

[1]: https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver

[2]: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193121

[3]: https://gist.github.com/roadrunner2/1289542a748d9a104e7baec6...

[4]: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Do you know of a way to get OSX key bindings on Ubuntu?

Arent MacBooks overpriced because of MacOS?

2020 - Finally, the year of linux on the desktop.