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LukeShortCloud
Remove dependency on touchbar driver once it is upstreamed
The Macbook Pro touchbar driver is under review for being upstreamed into the kernel. This is something to keep an eye on.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Touch-Bar-For-Linux
The driver reported in the article above was never upstreamed. It was sent it, the kernel developers gave a lot of feedback, and the downstream driver was seemingly never approved on.
As it is right now, we install a custom "applespi" driver (from the macbook12-spi-driver-dkms package in the AUR) that allows the keyboard, mouse, and touchbar to work. All of that has been upstreamed into the Linux kernel since Linux 5.3 except the touchbar driver.
Linux 5.18 may finally have the changes we need to drop the macbook12-spi-driver-dkms package and instead rely on the upstream kernel. Here are relevant fixes for MacBook Pros:
- Support for the keyboard backlight control on various Apple T2-chipped Macs. There are also various IDs added for handling the keyboard with other Macs relying on the T2 security chip.
- Fn key mapping support for MacBook Pros that have a Touch Bar.
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We should test with 5.18 as soon as it comes out to see if it works as expected but we will only ship LTS or SteamOS kernels.
The touchbar driver was attempted to be upstreamed again.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Apple-Touch-Bar-Linux-2023
Once the touchbar driver is upstreamed, the apple-bce-drv driver is still required for it to work.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/
This is no longer relevant since we switched to the t2linux kernel.
https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS/issues/641