[Pkg-mactel-devel] Ready for Jessie! (aka bits from the debian-cd team)

[Steve McIntyre]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 09:42:08AM +0200, Thibaut Paumard wrote:
>Le 23/04/2015 03:35, Steve McIntyre a écrit :
>>  d. Significantly better support for Intel-based Apple Macs in
>>     general, to the point that installing Debian on lots of these
>>     machines should now be much easier and doesn't depend on extra
>>     third-party software such as rEFIt or rEFInd. I've massively
>>     updated the Debian wiki page at https://
>>     wiki.debian.org/MacMiniIntel with more details for specific models
>>     of Mac Mini. I'm hoping to provide similarly updated information
>>     for Mac laptops too - see below! Massive thanks to the lovely
>>     folks at Mythic Beasts for providing me with a range of machines
>>     to test with here!
>
>Dear Steve,

Hi Thibaut!

>Thanks for your work on that. Are you aware of the pkg-mactel team?
> https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-mactel/

I wasn't, no! :-) I'll be honest that normally I have very little time
for Macs, but I knew that installation stuff needed some attention due
to the changes I was making already...

>I'm sure the team could use your knowledge... and sample hardware for
>testing packages.
>
>There are a number of packages (e.g. macfanctld, pommed) that help on
>some hardware, but perhaps not everywhere. At some point it would be
>great if the installer could somehow install them automatically when
>needed, and we need access to a variety of hardware to make the right
>suggestion here.

ACK, OK...

>In you MacMiniIntel wiki page, you say that it is better to use the BIOS
>mode. Is that true? My Macbook Pro (so, not a Mini) runs fine with EFI
>booting, with either the Intel IGP (i915 driver) or the NVidia GPU,
>(nouveau driver). (Only issues: no hot-switching of graphics, and the
>external display works only when using the GPU rather than the IGD).

I was just thinking in terms of the ease of installation, to be
honest. For machines where EFI and BIOS work just fine, I'd normally
prefer to choose EFI and I've done a lot of work to make EFI boot and
installation work better recently.

For me, if I was installing a machine I'd be happier just installing
Debian directly using a CD/DVD than having to resort to extra
third-party stuff like rEFInd if it works. I've not yet seen any
down-sides to using BIOS mode on the 1,1 and 3,1, but I've barely used
these machines beyond a simple installation on each. If there are good
reasons to change, please educate me and update that page!

It's also possible that we could make things work better still in d-i
for these machines if enough people care about them. Also: I've got no
Macbook hardware at all to test with to provide a similar guide for
installation - please help! :-)

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve at einval.com
"I can't ever sleep on planes ... call it irrational if you like, but I'm
 afraid I'll miss my stop" -- Vivek Dasmohapatra