T2 MacBook Installation

Installation

General Information

CachyOS provides out of the box support for the T2 MacBook. The required kernel patches are shipped in all the kernels provided by CachyOS.

WiFi connection is not available out of the box because it is a closed source firmware, which CachyOS is not allowed to redistribute. The installation needs internet to proceed, so either use a LAN network, or follow this section to get WiFi firmware.

Getting WiFi firmware for the installation

1. First boot into macOS and run this command:

   curl -sL https://wiki.t2linux.org/tools/firmware.sh | bash -s copy_to_efi

2. Now boot into the CachyOS ISO. Open Konsole there, and run these commands:

   sudo mkdir -p /tmp/apple-wifi-efi
   sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /tmp/apple-wifi-efi
   bash /tmp/apple-wifi-efi/firmware.sh get_from_efi
   sudo umount /tmp/apple-wifi-efi

3. Setup iwd as backend for NetworkManager. You can run the following commands in Konsole to do so:

   cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi_backend.conf
   [device]
   wifi.backend=iwd
   EOF
   sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

Now you can connect to a WiFi network and proceed with the installation.

Proceeding with Installation

Follow the instructions in Installation Prepare on how to download the ISO and create a bootable USB drive.

You need to follow additional steps to prepare a T2 MacBook for installing Linux such as partitioning your disk using macOS and disabling secure boot. You can follow the t2linux Preinstall guide for instructions.

Refer to Installation on Root after creating a bootable USB drive. CachyOS applies necessary boot parameters and configurations to the user’s T2 MacBook with CachyOS Hardware Detection.

Installation of the Firmware

The firmware can be downloaded and fetched from another mirror, which is not hosted by CachyOS.

Run the following commands after booting into the installed system:

1. Fetch firmware package using one of the following utils:

   using curl

   curl https://mirror.funami.tech/arch-mact2/os/x86_64/apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst -o apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

   using wget

   wget https://mirror.funami.tech/arch-mact2/os/x86_64/apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

   If wget is unavailable, install it with sudo pacman -S wget

2. Install firmware package

   sudo pacman -U apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

After that modprobe the firmware and reload the wifi driver:

sudo modprobe -r brcmfmac_wcc
sudo modprobe -r brcmfmac
sudo modprobe brcmfmac

For more ways to get the firmware, see the t2linux wiki page