Hi HN,
everyone knows the T2 Macs, the neglected last generation before Apple decided to switch to ARM.
MacOS 26 is the last supported release and it runs terrible on some of these devices... they simply can't cope with enough power to give users a smooth experience.
That's why the devices are affordable and just right to put Linux on it, to give them another few years of life.
There is a community called T2linux, who already did the major lifting a couple of years ago. They wrote essential drivers to communicate with the T2 security chip in order to get Keyboard, Trackpad, Sound and the internal Camera to work. They patched the kernel and maintain own versions of all major distributions.
While this brings much choice to the users, a lot of problems come with that approach, too. You can't easily rule out bugs, since every distro configuration is totally different. There are so many different repos and quirks needed to make things work, on I believe 16 different T2 Mac models? This can lead to frustration at the developer side: When we offered code changes and wanted them tested, we had to deal with not directly comparable results and a lot of distro-specific "noise".
Asahi has shown the value of concentrating development around a single reference platform. So we decided to do the same here and created KaiT2en. That is our clean reference platform based on Fedora. We rewrote the necessary t2linux kernel patches into DKMS modules. Yes, we're using the vanilla Fedora kernel. We've only included what's really necessary.
We've already fixed suspend, the shutdown path and the touchbar. We did a major overhaul to the audio driver. We included a brand new touch bar daemon and wrote an automatic installer to get this installed as smooth as possible.
We're working on open problems like better dGPU or Thunderbolt support.
Our long-term goal is to upstream as much code as possible. Until then, we want to give users and developers alike a smooth and consistent linux experience on T2 Macs.
This is exciting! I found a t2 macbook in the trash a couple of years ago and spent a long time configuring gentoo for it. It mostly works, but i never got the keyboard or trackpad to work on it. (Works fine with external devices, so it's usable but not portable)
Absolutely crazy insane stuff!!!
Just installed it yesterday using the installer script on macOS after reading your post on reddit. I have been a CachyOS user before and what the heck? Kait2en just works. Like everything is working? Suspend, DSP audio. The TouchBar is even better than on macOS...Where have you been all the time? You're just popping out of nowhere turning the T2 Linux world around... THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
Yes all went fine for me as far as I can tell. I have been using it on a 2018 15,1. What you have created seems to be a very complete package. So far the only thing missing would be update notifications? Maybe even a little app that would do in-place updates? Or even rpm?
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, we've already thought about that. We're not quite sure which way to go, so we're very open to suggestions from the community.
For now, you can simply re-run kait2en-install to fetch the latest updates.
Hi HN, everyone knows the T2 Macs, the neglected last generation before Apple decided to switch to ARM. MacOS 26 is the last supported release and it runs terrible on some of these devices... they simply can't cope with enough power to give users a smooth experience. That's why the devices are affordable and just right to put Linux on it, to give them another few years of life. There is a community called T2linux, who already did the major lifting a couple of years ago. They wrote essential drivers to communicate with the T2 security chip in order to get Keyboard, Trackpad, Sound and the internal Camera to work. They patched the kernel and maintain own versions of all major distributions.
While this brings much choice to the users, a lot of problems come with that approach, too. You can't easily rule out bugs, since every distro configuration is totally different. There are so many different repos and quirks needed to make things work, on I believe 16 different T2 Mac models? This can lead to frustration at the developer side: When we offered code changes and wanted them tested, we had to deal with not directly comparable results and a lot of distro-specific "noise".
Asahi has shown the value of concentrating development around a single reference platform. So we decided to do the same here and created KaiT2en. That is our clean reference platform based on Fedora. We rewrote the necessary t2linux kernel patches into DKMS modules. Yes, we're using the vanilla Fedora kernel. We've only included what's really necessary.
We've already fixed suspend, the shutdown path and the touchbar. We did a major overhaul to the audio driver. We included a brand new touch bar daemon and wrote an automatic installer to get this installed as smooth as possible.
We're working on open problems like better dGPU or Thunderbolt support.
Our long-term goal is to upstream as much code as possible. Until then, we want to give users and developers alike a smooth and consistent linux experience on T2 Macs.
This is exciting! I found a t2 macbook in the trash a couple of years ago and spent a long time configuring gentoo for it. It mostly works, but i never got the keyboard or trackpad to work on it. (Works fine with external devices, so it's usable but not portable)
Can't wait to get back home and try this out.
nice to hear that there is demand for it. :)
You can also join our Discord or Matrix server (details on GH) and we're more than happy to help you out!
Absolutely crazy insane stuff!!! Just installed it yesterday using the installer script on macOS after reading your post on reddit. I have been a CachyOS user before and what the heck? Kait2en just works. Like everything is working? Suspend, DSP audio. The TouchBar is even better than on macOS...Where have you been all the time? You're just popping out of nowhere turning the T2 Linux world around... THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
YAY, thank you, happy to read that!
You’re actually the first person we know of to have used the installer script. Has it been smooth sailing so far?
Happy to see you on Discord or Matrix, details are on the GitHub readme.
Yes all went fine for me as far as I can tell. I have been using it on a 2018 15,1. What you have created seems to be a very complete package. So far the only thing missing would be update notifications? Maybe even a little app that would do in-place updates? Or even rpm?
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, we've already thought about that. We're not quite sure which way to go, so we're very open to suggestions from the community.
For now, you can simply re-run kait2en-install to fetch the latest updates.