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

[Thibaut Paumard]

Dear Steve,

Le 23/04/2015 14:31, Steve McIntyre a écrit :
>> 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!

Well, on my hardware at least, EFI is mandatory to use the intel IGD,
which allows you to turn the GPU off and double your battery autonomy
(at the expense of cutting-edge 3D acceleration and external monitor
connectivity).

Also, I use rEFInd as a boot manager. The "Mac OS" entries in grub never
worked for me.

> 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! :-)

Well, we are not very many, and the diversity of the hardware we have
access to is the culprit for these aspects. Even simply testing the
installer, I would not do on my only machine which is for production...

Kind regards, Thibaut.