for Intel Mac owners

Apple stopped caring about your Mac. We didn't.

That 2018–2020 MacBook Pro with the T2 chip — the one macOS 15 dropped — is still a perfectly good machine. It just needs an OS that acknowledges the T2 exists. vinOS ships the linux-t2 kernel in the ISO itself: keyboard, trackpad, Wi-Fi, and Touch Bar work from the moment the live USB boots.

Why installing Linux on a T2 Mac has been a nightmare.

  • The stock Arch kernel doesn't talk to the T2.

    Boot vanilla Arch and you get: no Wi-Fi, no keyboard, no trackpad. You need linux-t2, apple-bcm-firmware, and a specific brcmfmac feature-disable mask before the machine is usable.

  • The firmware scavenger hunt is real.

    Your Wi-Fi chip needs a symlink from brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.txt to your specific model. Get it wrong and the driver crashes at 5GHz. Every T2 model has a different quirk.

  • Suspend is a whole other saga.

    Upstream apple-bce + hci_bcm4377 quirks. The blog posts contradict each other. Every kernel bump might break it again.

What we did so you don't have to.

  • The T2 recipe, verified.

    8 items — linux-t2, apple-bcm-firmware, wireless-regdb, iwd Country, brcmfmac feature-disable, model-specific firmware symlinks, T2 initramfs modules, cfg80211 cmdline. Wi-Fi associates on the first boot of the live USB.

  • Touch Bar, on Linux.

    tiny-dfr ships in the base. Escape / function keys / brightness / volume all work. Not identical to macOS, but functional out of the box.

  • Command key as Super.

    hid_apple fnmode=2 + swap_opt_cmd=0 — F-row acts like F-keys, ⌘ acts like Super. Muscle memory transfers. No remap script required.

  • Verified on real hardware, not just docs.

    vinOS is boot-tested on a 2019 MacBook Pro (T2, MacBookPro15,4). Wi-Fi, keyboard, trackpad, Touch Bar all green.

vinos-doctor detecting Apple T2 hardware
First-boot detection on a 2019 MacBook Pro. hardware profile · t2mac (MacBookPro15,4) · t2 firmware · ok · 0.1-4 · touchbar · ok · tiny-dfr.

Fifteen minutes to a Linux Mac.

Flash the ISO, boot with Option held, pick the USB. The T2 kernel is the default boot entry — no menu-picking required. Full T2 guide: install docs.

Download vinOS v2.0.5 Read the T2 install path → Join the T2 discussion

Known limits: Touch ID doesn't work under Linux (Apple never released the drivers). Suspend is unreliable upstream — we document the workarounds. Everything else does.