Linux Mint on the 2015 MacBook Pro

As of 2026-10-14 (install since replaced by Omarchy). Mint-specific setup only. The hardware findings are in hardware.md. Everything worth keeping from the original Mint notes and scripts has been folded into this repo.

Install: Linux Mint 22.3 (Ubuntu 24.04 base), Cinnamon on Xorg + LightDM, kernel 7.0.0-38 (plus a self-built 7.0.0-38-mtrr), GRUB.

Decision: radeon + deep (S3) sleep + the MTRR-patched kernel. That gave real sleep at 0.21 W with about 5 s wake, at the cost of Vulkan on the AMD GPU.

Boot options

# /etc/default/grub
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.si_support=1 amdgpu.si_support=0 intel_iommu=off nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=0"
sudo update-grub

# /etc/initramfs-tools/modules (appended): GPU drivers before LightDM, or Xorg starts on simpledrm and the screen goes black
i915
radeon
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

• /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ is empty; no custom X config.
• To switch drivers, change the si_support pair in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and the radeon/amdgpu line in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, then run both update commands.

Recovery

• Recovery mode: GRUB → Advanced options → recovery mode → resume. It boots with nomodeset (software rendering), so it always works, just slowly.
• Editing a boot entry: press e. Ctrl+X doesn’t work on this Mac’s keyboard; boot with F10 (or Fn+F10).
• Text console: Ctrl+Alt+F2 (maybe with Fn).
• Things that didn’t fix the white windows (before intel_iommu=off was found): AMD_DEBUG=notiling, DRI_PRIME=1 cinnamon, an OutputClass modesetting driver, and reverse PRIME (Intel renders, AMD drives the panel), which gave a black screen when the AMD GPU got dropped.

MTRR kernel (Ubuntu-specific build)

The scripts are in kernel/:

• build-kernel-ubuntu.sh prepare|build, then sudo bash build-kernel-ubuntu.sh install|remove
• mtrr-resume.patch, extracted from the LKML post

The script builds the running Ubuntu kernel’s exact source and config plus the patch, named <ver>-mtrr, with Rust and debug info off, in ~/kernel-build. It needs libdw-dev and gawk. Installing gawk forces a nearly full rebuild of about 2 h. Re-run it after every Ubuntu kernel update, until the patch is merged.

On another distro, apply mtrr-resume.patch to that distro’s kernel package instead.

Fans

mbpfan was installed early and made the fans loud. It was replaced by mbp-fan-smooth (fans/: sudo bash fan-smooth.sh installs it, and it reverts to SMC automatic mode when stopped), which:

• smooths the temperature over 15 s
• runs the fans at minimum up to 70 °C, scaling linearly to maximum at 90 °C
• limits changes to +200/−100 rpm per second
• has a failsafe at 98 °C

On Omarchy no daemon was needed (see hardware.md).

Desktop extras (Mint/Cinnamon only)

• Trackpad: gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.peripherals.touchpad click-method 'fingers' for two-finger right click; touchegg for gestures.
• Camera viewer: Cheese freezes through PipeWire. ~/.local/bin/cheese-v4l2 runs it with the PipeWire GStreamer plugin hidden, with matching desktop and D-Bus service overrides. guvcview works directly.
• Toshy: Mac-style Cmd shortcuts. Its unused cosmic/kwin/wlroots user services log harmless failures; mask them.
• Timeshift: rsync snapshots, daily ×5 + boot ×3, on the same SSD.
• power-profiles-daemon: on this Mac it only changes the CPU energy bias (EPB). It doesn’t manage radeon.
• Login keyring: set its password to the login password in Seahorse so it unlocks at login.
• Clipboard from scripts: xclip/xsel weren’t installed; use Python GTK.
• Leftover open items: sudo ufw enable (the firewall was off), masking Toshy’s unused services, measuring power profiles.