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Best Linux for 16" MBP? (Apple CSAM scandal)

crymimefireworks

crymimefireworks

macrumors 6502
Original poster
For anyone looking at how to switch OS because of the Apple CSAM scandal...what are the best Linux options for a 16" MBP?

I've never been a Linux user before. My understanding is perhaps there are certain versions of Linux that will have better compatibility with 16" MBP hardware. High res screen, dockability, battery life.

Thanks for any suggestions and experience!
 
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Alternatively you can turn off iCloud, but based on the latest FAQ Apple published it seems the iCloud side of matters is just hash comparison.

Anyway to answer you actual question any of them will do the trick, really but may require more or less fiddling for HiDPI to look right. Anything that uses Gnome as the desktop environment will have HiDPI scaling that works fairly well. KDE Plasma also has a "Global Scaling" slider. - Really most of the DEs do. If you're new just don't go with Gentoo, Arch, anything that uses the i3 windowing system or other similar tiling window managers - if you stick to one of the big names you'll be good. Ubuntu or its variants, Elementary, Fedora
 
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casperes1996 said:
Anyway to answer you actual question any of them will do the trick, really but may require more or less fiddling for HiDPI to look right. Anything that uses Gnome as the desktop environment will have HiDPI scaling that works fairly well. KDE Plasma also has a "Global Scaling" slider. - Really most of the DEs do. If you're new just don't go with Gentoo, Arch, anything that uses the i3 windowing system or other similar tiling window managers - if you stick to one of the big names you'll be good. Ubuntu or its variants, Elementary, Fedora
Click to expand...
Ah good to know, will avoid i3 then! thanks!
 
crymimefireworks said:
OK I'm starting with Ubuntu. Sounds like Linux Mint is also worth giving a try. We'll see!!
Click to expand...
What you can do with one Linux distro, you can also do with another. They just come packaged with different things installed and configured or differently configured out of the box 🙂
Ubuntu will be the easiest to find help for is something isn’t working right, though Linux Mint is one of my favourites because its Desktop Environment can easily be set up with a global application menu bar and HUD similar to the menu bar on macOS 🙂
Though I really do also like Gnome (the standard Ubuntu DE) and the Wayland version supports trackpad gestures in a very similar way to macOS including virtual desktop switching
 
crymimefireworks said:
Hmmmm, tried with Ubuntu. Took 2 hours and it was....a nightmare. I finally got the installer to Boot and my freaking keyboard and mouse didn't work. Yikes.
Just found a guide that says wifi won't even work. Barhg! https://gist.github.com/gbrow004/096f845c8fe8d03ef9009fbb87b781a4
Click to expand...
It might be worth considering if you're overreacting about the CSAM thing.

Because the alternative is running Linux on your MBP, and frankly unless you like troubleshooting your computer constantly I cannot recommend that to any soul out there.
 
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Interesting, always thought Linux was an option, and it was just a matter of making the switch.

Turns out in order to boot Linux on my 16" MBP I should be prepared to always use an external keyboard and mouse...forever. And likely an external Wi-Fi dongle.

Turns out this Macbook Pro is almost as bad as an M1 in terms of cross compatibility. Sounds like Windows is the only other option.

Sooooo glad I dove into this. The Mac seems worse off than I thought. I had no idea Intel Macs were so limited. Selling the computer and getting a PC may be the better option.

Going to try Ubuntu 21 rather than 20.
 
Nonsens. The keyboard and trackpad can definitivt work under Linux. They’re not very different from generic SPI and USB keyboards and mice internally. As for Wi-Fi, Linux support will vary a fair bit depending on what the Wi-Fi chip is. Chips with only proprietary firmware won’t be included in the kernel by default, but will often have drivers you can install yourself. My laptop for example doesn’t have Wi-Fi in Linux out of the box but Ubuntu does come with the Wi-Fi driver on the install media ready for post-installation setup through Ubuntu’s handy Additional Drivers utility. It’s a broadcom module so it uses the brcm-wl dkms driver that automatically configures itself for kernel updates too. Macs work just as well under Linux as any other PC will.

As I initially suggested you could also just disable iCloud Photos. And it’s mot like Windows is going to be any better on the privacy front…

I wish you luck with Ubuntu 21.04.
 
casperes1996 said:
Nonsens. The keyboard and trackpad can definitivt work under Linux. They’re not very different from generic SPI and USB keyboards and mice internally. As for Wi-Fi, Linux support will vary a fair bit depending on what the Wi-Fi chip is. Chips with only proprietary firmware won’t be included in the kernel by default, but will often have drivers you can install yourself. My laptop for example doesn’t have Wi-Fi in Linux out of the box but Ubuntu does come with the Wi-Fi driver on the install media ready for post-installation setup through Ubuntu’s handy Additional Drivers utility. It’s a broadcom module so it uses the brcm-wl dkms driver that automatically configures itself for kernel updates too. Macs work just as well under Linux as any other PC will.

As I initially suggested you could also just disable iCloud Photos. And it’s mot like Windows is going to be any better on the privacy front…

I wish you luck with Ubuntu 21.04.
Click to expand...
Appreciate your guidance! Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Tried Ubuntu 21.04, same experience. Didn't get very far, needed an external keyboard to run the installer.

My hope was I could Dual Boot Linux, but wasn't able to get it installed. The installer kept failing, I couldn't see how to direct it to any particular partition, it just kind of did its thing and failed. Of course my lack of experience isn't helping. I'm still very curious to make it happen.

Should this be doable on a 16" MBP tho? I've been running into a lot of posts online that says it's either not doable or sufficiently challenging that it's not worth it....something about T2 chip.
 
crymimefireworks said:
Appreciate your guidance! Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Tried Ubuntu 21.04, same experience. Didn't get very far, needed an external keyboard to run the installer.

My hope was I could Dual Boot Linux, but wasn't able to get it installed. The installer kept failing, I couldn't see how to direct it to any particular partition, it just kind of did its thing and failed. Of course my lack of experience isn't helping. I'm still very curious to make it happen.

Should this be doable on a 16" MBP tho? I've been running into a lot of posts online that says it's either not doable or sufficiently challenging that it's not worth it....something about T2 chip.
Click to expand...
What kind of errors do you get from the installer?
During the installer there comes a point where you can pick between erasing the disk and installing just Ubuntu or manually managing the installation; It may even have an automatic dual boot setup; It’s been a while since I ran Ubuntu’s installer specifically. Last one I did was Gentoo (don’t do that one that’s not a user-friendly Linux; it’s very much a distribution for Unix nerds)

What are your security settings set to on the Mac? I don’t think it would even boot the installer if you hadn’t already loosened them, but you’d need to have changed the T2’s secure enclave settings to allow booting OSes that aren’t signed by Apple
 
Looking into things specifically for the 16” it appears GDM has issues with the hardware in it; As a result, give up on Ubuntu, it uses GDM by default. Pick a KDE based distribution; Kubuntu or KDE Neon are examples.
And the Wi-Fi chip in the 16” has no Linux drivers *yet*. They will very likely show up eventually but they don’t exist yet. But everything else should work 🙂
And knowing the open source community, I’ll say we’re looking at, at most 2-3 years before there’s a wi-fi driver ready
 
casperes1996 said:
Looking into things specifically for the 16” it appears GDM has issues with the hardware in it; As a result, give up on Ubuntu, it uses GDM by default. Pick a KDE based distribution; Kubuntu or KDE Neon are examples.
And the Wi-Fi chip in the 16” has no Linux drivers *yet*. They will very likely show up eventually but they don’t exist yet. But everything else should work 🙂
And knowing the open source community, I’ll say we’re looking at, at most 2-3 years before there’s a wi-fi driver ready
Click to expand...
Now that is some sleuthing! I'm pumped....downloading now
 
Same errors as I ran into before during boot up with Ubuntu. Couldn't get size. Couldn't get UEIF db list. Unable to enumerate USB device.

Final line is "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system"

Somehow I was able to get to the Ubuntu installer but not there yet with Kubunti. Wonder if the fact that I'm using a SD card as a boot disk has anything to do with the issues.

when I try to edit UEIF Settings on boot it, it says cant find command fwsetup.

Security settings - have them at lowest, can boot from anything according to the settings
 
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crymimefireworks said:
OK I'm starting with Ubuntu. Sounds like Linux Mint is also worth giving a try. We'll see!!
Click to expand...

Ubuntu is a good place to start. It tends to have more of the pieces that most users want. In Linux, you often have to add OS and program pieces and it's a bit different if you're not used to using the command line.
 
crymimefireworks said:
Hmmmm, tried with Ubuntu. Took 2 hours and it was....a nightmare. I finally got the installer to Boot and my freaking keyboard and mouse didn't work. Yikes.
Just found a guide that says wifi won't even work. Barhg! https://gist.github.com/gbrow004/096f845c8fe8d03ef9009fbb87b781a4
Click to expand...

I assumed you were going to use a Virtual Machine. It should be a piece of cake with VMware Player. I've created lots of VMs (Windows, Linux, macOS) using VirtualBox, VMware and KVM/QEMU on my Windows box.
 
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crymimefireworks said:
Same errors as I ran into before during boot up with Ubuntu. Couldn't get size. Couldn't get UEIF db list. Unable to enumerate USB device.

Final line is "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system"

Somehow I was able to get to the Ubuntu installer but not there yet with Kubunti. Wonder if the fact that I'm using a SD card as a boot disk has anything to do with the issues.

when I try to edit UEIF Settings on boot it, it says cant find command fwsetup.

Security settings - have them at lowest, can boot from anything according to the settings
Click to expand...

Hm. I unfortunately don’t have a 16” so it’s kinda hard to help out. Sorry for the issues. Best advice I can give right now unless you want to keep tinkering is to wait for Ubuntu 22.04 or later revisions and see if they work.
I did see online that it looks like keyboard, mouse and audio are wired through the T2 on the 16” so someone had made a git repository that could make a virtual USB host that could talk to them properly so they’d act as USB devices to the Linux OS. - That doesn’t solve the installation issues but it does explain and offer a fix for the keyboard/mouse issue, but if you can’t get the OS installed in the first place that doesn’t help much
 
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Appreciate your help on this! I've tried Kubuntu to the best of my ability, used etcher and dd to create a boot disk but both times it won't get past the startup screen/error text after selecting a boot option. Will try new versions when they come out
 
crymimefireworks said:
Interesting, always thought Linux was an option, and it was just a matter of making the switch.

Turns out in order to boot Linux on my 16" MBP I should be prepared to always use an external keyboard and mouse...forever. And likely an external Wi-Fi dongle.

Turns out this Macbook Pro is almost as bad as an M1 in terms of cross compatibility. Sounds like Windows is the only other option.
Click to expand...

Well your MacBook Pro is a T2 Mac which does cause complications. The T2 is an Apple ARM64 co-processor a few generations older than the M1. A pure Intel Mac would be easier to get Linux running on but even then you can run into device driver issues.

Windows is officially supported by Apple on both types of Intel Macs via Bootcamp. Easy to install but Windows doesn't seem like an improvement privacy wise.

If you really want to run Linux, Dell and Lenovo do support Linux on their PCs and you don't even have to pay for Windows.
 
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fuchsdh said:
It might be worth considering if you're overreacting about the CSAM thing.

Because the alternative is running Linux on your MBP, and frankly unless you like troubleshooting your computer constantly I cannot recommend that to any soul out there.
Click to expand...
True. If you don't use Apple's iCloud photo service, the CSAM scanning will not happen.

Make sure you don't use any other cloud based photo service. In fact instead of trying to install Linux on a MacBook, build yourself a Linux or BSD based server aka NAS and store your data on that (with offsite backups of course).
 
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An update here for anyone else who finds themselves on this path:
- Dual Boot Linux seems like a non-starter as of today. There's a github repo going under constant improvement, but it's not there yet in the sense that wi-fi doesn't yet work. Someday!

- Run Linux virtually:
My goal is to switch 100% to Linux, even if that means using a virtual machine full screen all the time. I did a lot of experimentation with VirtualBox and Parallels, here's what I found:
  • VirtualBox is free but slow. Not quick enough for a complete replacement. I bought the 16" because I like speed.
  • Parallels free trial is nice and seems pretty speedy.
  • VMware needed an email and such to register so I ended up skipping it. Others online said Parallels is fastest

- Which version of Linux
  • With Parallels and VirtualBox it's easy to create different machines each running a different version of Linux. I ended up trying
  • Ubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • Linux Mint
  • Purism/Pure OS
  • Elementary OS
  • Debian

    After playing with all of them, I found Ubuntu best
  • It just gets out of the way and seems to work how I expect 80% of the time
  • Setting this up as my main OS, installing replacement apps for what I use on Mac OS (Signal, Slack, Zoom are available. Gimp+Photogimp as a Pixelmator/Photoshop replacement sith similar UI)
  • Removing apps from my Mac dock as I install them in Ubuntu. Going all in on this.
  • I still dont have Apple command keys worked out, so copy paste still is confusing.
  • Planning to use this until my Paralells trial runs out in 2 weeks and decide then whether to buy it.
 
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crymimefireworks said:
An update here for anyone else who finds themselves on this path:
- Dual Boot Linux seems like a non-starter as of today. There's a github repo going under constant improvement, but it's not there yet in the sense that wi-fi doesn't yet work. Someday!

- Run Linux virtually:
My goal is to switch 100% to Linux, even if that means using a virtual machine full screen all the time. I did a lot of experimentation with VirtualBox and Parallels, here's what I found:
  • VirtualBox is free but slow. Not quick enough for a complete replacement. I bought the 16" because I like speed.
  • Parallels free trial is nice and seems pretty speedy.
  • VMware needed an email and such to register so I ended up skipping it. Others online said Parallels is fastest

- Which version of Linux
  • With Parallels and VirtualBox it's easy to create different machines each running a different version of Linux. I ended up trying
  • Ubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • Linux Mint
  • Purism/Pure OS
  • Elementary OS
  • Debian

    After playing with all of them, I found Ubuntu best
  • It just gets out of the way and seems to work how I expect 80% of the time
  • Setting this up as my main OS, installing replacement apps for what I use on Mac OS (Signal, Slack, Zoom are available. Gimp+Photogimp as a Pixelmator/Photoshop replacement sith similar UI)
  • Removing apps from my Mac dock as I install them in Ubuntu. Going all in on this.
  • I still dont have Apple command keys worked out, so copy paste still is confusing.
  • Planning to use this until my Paralells trial runs out in 2 weeks and decide then whether to buy it.
Click to expand...
One issue with Parallels is they like you to keep paying them. Every MacOS upgrade or major Windows upgrade they seem to make you upgrade to a new version. OTOH You can stick with your current version of MacOS and may not have an issue with newer versions of Linux. Or if your Linux experiment works out, you could sell the MacBook and buy a new laptop with Linux pre-installed.

Personally I use Ubuntu Multipass which is fast and free. It’s command line only but you can use the Microsoft RDP client for Mac to get Desktop access.

Presumably you are using FireFox as your web browser. What email client are you using? Do you use a smartphone, if so what OS is it running?
 
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casperes1996 said:
Alternatively you can turn off iCloud, but based on the latest FAQ Apple published it seems the iCloud side of matters is just hash comparison.

Anyway to answer you actual question any of them will do the trick, really but may require more or less fiddling for HiDPI to look right. Anything that uses Gnome as the desktop environment will have HiDPI scaling that works fairly well. KDE Plasma also has a "Global Scaling" slider. - Really most of the DEs do. If you're new just don't go with Gentoo, Arch, anything that uses the i3 windowing system or other similar tiling window managers - if you stick to one of the big names you'll be good. Ubuntu or its variants, Elementary, Fedora
Click to expand...
I have read that the T2 chips causes complications

Is one able to install Linux natively on the internal SSD and boot from there on T2 equipped macs?
 
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