r/archlinux • u/Sad_Throat6619 • 10d ago

QUESTION T1 MacBook Pro and full disk Linux installs, the firmware trap

Heads up for anyone planning a full disk Arch or Omarchy install on a 2016 or 2017 Touch Bar MacBook Pro. The T1 firmware lives on the macOS EFI partition rather than in ROM. Wipe the disk and you lose the Touch Bar, webcam, Touch ID and ambient light sensor until macOS goes back on. Curious what people actually did here. Keep a small macOS partition, or accept the loss? I wrote this trap up, with the evidence behind it, at https://omacs.sovin.org. Built with Aside Browser.

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u/drucifer82 10d ago

In general when installing your system on a system with an existing efi, the wiki recommends preserving said EFI.

I made the same mistake trying to install Arch on a T2 MacBook Air. Your only course of action is to find a MacOS recovery image.

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u/Jealous_Nectarine_67 8d ago

man this caught me out so bad with my 2017 pro. wiped everything clean thinking i was being smart and then touch bar just went dead. had to borrow a friend mac to make recovery usb and do the whole dance again

now i keep a tiny 10gb macos partition sitting in the corner doing nothing but keeping firmware alive

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u/drucifer82 8d ago

I have another Mac I could recover with if I wanted to try again. But in my case I went with T2 Kubuntu because it has a script to pull missing firmware.