Apple's MacBook Pro laptops have become increasingly unfriendly with Linux in recent years [...] But now with the latest Mac Mini systems employing Apple's T2 security chip, they too are likely to crush any Linux dreams.
At least until further notice, these new Apple systems sporting the T2 chip will not be able to boot Linux operating systems.
[...] By default, Microsoft Windows isn't even bootable on the new Apple systems until enabling support for Windows via the Boot Camp Assistant macOS software.
From Phoronix.
Related Stories
Apple's T2 chip will block some third-party repairs of new devices
Small repair shops and tech enthusiasts who attempt to fix their new Apple devices may be taking a serious risk in doing so. According to a report from The Verge, Apple confirmed that its new T2 security chip is designed to lock down devices after repair if it doesn't recognize certain authorized replacement parts.
Word of this new policy came out last month in an Apple document circulated among authorized service providers. In order to replace certain hardware components, such as the Touch ID sensor or the logic board on new Macs, the provider must run a specific piece of diagnostic software.
This program, called "AST 2 System Configuration," works in conjunction with the T2 security chip. If this step isn't performed on devices with the T2 chip, it could result in an inoperable machine.
[...] Apple only provides the special application to its own stores and authorized service providers. That means that unauthorized service providers, small repair shops, and individuals can't completely and properly replace certain parts of new Macs.
Also at Engadget, Notebookcheck, and MacRumors.
Previously: Apple's T2 Security Chip Prevents Linux From Installing on New Macs
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @02:29AM (21 children)
If I bought one of your overpriced piece of shit machines, I would want to run my choice of software on it. But since I'm not a sheep, I'm not buying into your walled garden.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @03:21AM (20 children)
Yup. Makes me wonder why this is really newsworthy. I mean, paulej72's wacky ass aside, what kind of Linux user is going to buy a Mac anyway? I mean, if you can get a lot more performance for your buck by not buying a Mac, where's the up side?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Monday November 12 2018, @05:18AM (10 children)
The kind of user who isn't necessarily up to date. Lots of us remember Mac's from a different era, and if you don't run into them every day might think they were still making good hardware.
Spoiler; they aren't. This 'macbook pro' is utterly useless, under any OS. It's a fashion accessory not a functional computer.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @11:19AM (1 child)
Yeah, it's been quite a while since the PPC days.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bot on Monday November 12 2018, @05:13PM
The PPC-openfirmware-everything-but-the-modem-supported-and-no-blobs days. Yes, since the debian potato days, the hardware and peripheral guys did A LOT of work to prevent free software to make your machines basically eternal or faster with every new model. And to put the nail in the coffin, poetteringware helped on the software side.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday November 12 2018, @12:48PM
I'm typing this on a 2013 macbook air (£900 new), the OS is fine - I use it mainly for web browsing on the train (as now), I don't do real work on it. The hardware, including the battery, has survived well. Keyboard isn't as good as an old thinkpad but beats all modern PC laptops I've ever used. The trackpad is almost as good as the pointer on a thinkpad.
My 2010 thinkpad (£1800 new), software (currently ubuntu 1604, but was originally 10.04 and has been upgraded via 12, 14 and 16) is fine, but hardware - especially the hinge - could be better. On the other hand the keyboard is far better than the mac.
A colleague has a new macbook without the keyboard, I'm not impressed, but the industry has been reducing quality on all laptops over the last 10-15 years.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday November 12 2018, @04:13PM
Those macs from a different era might be perfectly good overpriced machines with life left in them.
What makes macs obsolete, or so I am told, is the sudden, purely artificial, lack of new OS updates for otherwise perfectly good hardware. I heard this some years back, so it may be dated. But the pattern went like this: You can't get the new browser, because it needs the new OS. You can't get the new OS because it doesn't support your not-that-old and otherwise perfectly good hardware.
If present day macs won't run Linux or even (pinches nose...) Windows, then once those OS updates stop, the machine really does become useless. It is like Apple is trying to inflict additional pain deliberately. But for a religiously loyal audience that has more dollars than sense, they'll just buy a new of whatever Apple says.
I am not an irrational Apple hater. Back in the 80's and 90's I was a card carrying Apple fanboy and long time Mac developer. Back when Apple was a great company and led in technology rather than in fashion.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 12 2018, @04:25PM (3 children)
Haven't seen any of the new macs personally in a long time, but have Linux on a macbook pro from the early teens, back when DVD drives and adequate USB ports were the rule. and the build quality, functionality, and cosmetics are all quite good, probably among the best. I've heard from several mac people that it's all been downhill since then. Certainly the precipitous loss of USB ports suggests as much.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 12 2018, @05:20PM (2 children)
I had a titanium powerbook II series. A head turner, basically next to the other laptops it seemed alien tech. Linux double booting, booting from firewire. The build quality though was OK but not stellar, i had problems with the screen hinge due to a fall and they wanted 300 eur to send it from ITA to NL to have it repaired. I NOPED out of it crossed fingers wiped the HD and mailed it to a shop who did repairs some 600km from here, everything went well.no
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 12 2018, @05:21PM (1 child)
"no" means "no big problems afterwards but the machine tended to heat up a lot".
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:14AM
True of every Titanium Powerbook I ever worked with - and I worked with many of them. If the interior was cleaned regularly and they were kept in spec they would *almost* stay in spec on temp - and spec was pretty hot. And of course they get gunked up just as easy as any other laptop - maybe easier than some.
Once the cooling efficiency degraded even a little, trying to do real work on them resulted in temperatures high enough to make typing on the built-in keyboard uncomfortable, and of course to damage components over time.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:46PM (1 child)
"flamebait" is an unnecessary and suck ass mod to even have available. it's a whiner's mod. "controversial alert!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @08:06AM
"Stop downmodding me!" = the refrain of the whiner
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by NotSanguine on Monday November 12 2018, @05:56AM (2 children)
Since MacOS is a bastardized version of BSD, the kind that doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
Although, with a sharp stick, I think I could teach that sort of Linux user the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground. I wouldn't even attempt to teach such a user the difference between linux and BSD, with or without a sharp stick, however.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @11:18AM
Well, being at least some form of *nix is still better than Windows given the choice but it's a bloody stupid choice when you don't have to run either.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 12 2018, @04:17PM
For an ordinary Linux user, you would be correct.
But we're talking about a Linux user who would also buy Apple products. So they're accustomed to the way Apple treats them. Their reaction might be more like:
Thank you sir! I still do not know the difference! Could you please abuse me some more! And yes, I promise to loyally make my annual pilgrimage to WWDC this year!
[x] Yes! Please send me the latest of whatever Apple product you want, enclosed is a blank check!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday November 12 2018, @02:08PM (3 children)
The kind who has been hired* to port a Linux application to a Mac or vice versa. The upside of buying a Mac to run Linux is that a developer can use the same hardware to test the versions of an application for macOS, glibc/Linux, and musl/Linux platforms. This is especially true if the developer is trying to reach users who deliberately avoid using web applications, such as many who post comments to SoylentNews.
* Or self-employed. Many micro-ISVs run very lean.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @02:52PM
Fair nuff. I was speaking primarily for personal use boxen though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)
what kind of linux user would allow themselves to be hired to port linux software to a slaveOS? shame! SHAME! :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:09AM
One who likes eating regularly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 12 2018, @04:55PM
Performance isn't the end-all of laptops though - if performance is really important to you, you're going to get a desktop computer whose absolute performance *and* price/performance ratio blow any laptop out of the water. Not to mention I've met precious few Linux users that really care about performance - most distros run beautifully even on old hardware, and most games run better (or only) on Windows, so unless you're regularly doing something else very computationally intensive, performance just doesn't matter that much.
In fact, for most people performance of any non-junk computer is plenty adequate, and the the primary considerations should be the hardware you directly interact with: screen (resolution, finish, brightness, contrast, color quality, and viewing angle), speakers(if used for music/movies), keyboard (if they type a lot), and mouse/touchpad. For a desktop those are all separate products so you can buy exactly what you want and use them indefinitely. But for a laptop they're all integrated (except an optional mouse) and so must be considered as part of the purchase decision. I've long recommended those as the primary considerations for laptop purchases - finding a fast enough computer for a decent price is usually easy. Finding one that won't leave you quietly cursing the interface can be a much greater challenge. (My biggest complaint against Macs is the flat-top keys - there's a fricking good reason keyboards have cupped keys to subtly maintain proper finger alignment.)
And then there's durability - laptops take a LOT more physical abuse than desktops, so build quality matters a lot more. And aesthetics, if you're not the sort of person who's happy to drive a battered but reliable old clunker around town. Macs have traditionally been among the best on both of those metrics, at least until recent years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @09:42AM
After all, I seem to remember he spent a lot of time doing presentations on a Macbook running OSX.
I seem to remember hearing Linus Torvalds or a few other big name Linux devs were running them back in the 2008-2013 timeframe as well.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday November 12 2018, @02:31AM (14 children)
6-8 years ago I bought a laptop and went to put Linux on it. Think it was UEFI, could be wrong. But I could not get that laptop to boot from anything outside of the hard drive. I could not put Linux on it.
So the tech has been there for years, consumers need to look for it. That said, how many laptop ads say "can't boot anything but what we want you too, how secure is that!".
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @03:58AM (12 children)
I can't see very many reasons to buy a new Mac to boot linux natively on the hardware. There are other options, many of them truly excellent.
Having said that, odds are linux can be run just fine in a VM under OSX on these machines.
If that's not so, then this is an issue. Otherwise, it's just noise. There are plenty of good reasons to take Apple to task. Somehow I doubt this rises to that level. We'll see though. The minis are out in the wild now.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday November 12 2018, @05:10AM (3 children)
On a machine with a given amount of RAM, using a VM means you thrash swap sooner than you would with a dual boot. It also means that your USB passthrough is limited to the 12 Mbps of USB 1.1-era "full speed" devices unless you spend $5,000[1] on the full version. Nor is the performance of GPU passthrough likely to be representative of the majority of other users, who are not using a VM.
[1] Source: Oracle [oracle.com]. Commercial use licenses for VirtualBox Extension Pack are $50 each in lots of 100. Equivalently, buy 1 seat for $5,000 and get 99 free.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @12:57PM (2 children)
I read that as "insufficient RAM" :) With an OSX machine that has sufficient RAM, I turn the swap off. It can provide quite a speed boost. You can also direct it to a RAM drive, which isn't quite as good as actually having code (and data, if we add in-OS data cache to this line of thinking) ready to go, but still far better than swapping to HD, even SSD.
Oracle is not the only fish in the OSX VM sea, nor the tastiest. For example, on this particular issue, OSX vmware has long supported USB 2.0, with USB 2.0 speeds proportional to the available CPU power applied, and OSX parallels supports USB 3, same conditions. I use both; they both work. OTOH, if you truly require native speeds, sure, get something else. There will always be exceptions.
This varies with the particular VM and graphics hardware combination as well. But getting right down to it, if GPU performance is what you're after, you don't want Mac hardware at all, nothing to do with direct bootability. Apple's long been the trailer in the fast GPU wars, even in their top of the line machines where you can swap GPU cards around, and unless they do something very differently in the future, I expect they'll remain dependably well behind. Adding a VM will just compound the problem.
Having said that, most people will do fine with a lot less GPU than they think they need, gamers and really heavy CAD users excepted.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Monday November 12 2018, @02:03PM
By that definition, there's a sentiment across certain forums that affordable Macs ship with insufficient RAM. One of the costs that T2 imposes on many is the price of Apple's RAM upgrade.
In other words, another of the costs that T2 imposes on many is the price of a license of proprietary VM software.
Say an application developer is using a Mac to test an application that he or she plans to make available for macOS and Linux. In a case like this, performance on par with a low-end PC is fine, so long as what is fast in the VM is also fast on metal, and what is slow in the VM is also slow on metal. But I haven't seen evidence that a VM offers even this.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 12 2018, @03:05PM
In my experience, there is no such thing as sufficient RAM. Mine may be mostly empty (okay, full up of cached files) five nines worth of the time but I've yet to find a box I didn't hit swap on eventually. Even with vm.swappiness set to 1.
Pro-tip: it's a damned fine condition to alert yourself on if you want to be able to deal with things before they manage to get completely out of hand. Having a swap file/partition as nothing but a time buffer for you to be able to investigate and fix the problem is quite valuable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday November 12 2018, @05:42AM (4 children)
Why would you want to do it? Because you happen to own an Apple branded PC. Maybe you got it for free, I don't know, the point being that you want to get some use out of it, instead of use it as a doorstop, so of course you will want to install software on it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @12:33PM (3 children)
No, because I know what I'm doing. I don't own one, I own five. Presently three Mac Pros, a Mac mini, and an iMac, as well as a set of four native linux servers and two Windows machines, so I'm intimately familiar with various paths of mixing and matching. When you develop software for all three platforms as I do, as well as run multiple web servers, you tend to learn quite a bit about what can be done and how difficult or easy it is.
Having been running multiple varieties of linux doing real work under OSX VMs for many years now, I seriously doubt that most people have any applications at all that require running under bare hardware. VMs are very powerful these days and there are many things you might think of running under linux you can also run under OSX native, linux not in the least bit required. But for the exceptions, yes, there are other paths they can take so again, this is pretty much going to be a non-issue for 99.99% of the people out there that actually know what they're doing. Further, running a VM under OSX offers advantages as well, specifically ready access to many applications otherwise not available (and that goes for Windows as well... in fact in all six directions, any OS to any other OS, not even counting the less commonly used OS's that can also run in VMs.)
"Doorstop", lol. That's purest backwards hyperbolic nonsense. If you can't get any use out of such a setup, it's not the setup's fault, it's 100% yours and it goes straight to your lack of competence. A linux machine standalone has access to far less software than an OSX machine that can comfortably and legally run applications from all three major operating systems. Period.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 12 2018, @01:00PM
Actually... six Macs. Forgot about the laptop. Still running fine after all these years, but hardly ever used, so I dropped some bits. My brain needs regular refreshes like DRAM. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @01:34PM
When the PPC macs could no longer run the newest mac OS, you could put linux on them and run modern browsers. So when this newer generation loses OSX support and you can run only old ass shit you would want a brand new distro which actually supports programs from less than 10 years ago. That's why you want linux on bare hardware. Otherwise enjoy doing everything in a VM. And this is just one thing off the top of my head.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 12 2018, @05:04PM
Having spent a couple months trying to use Linux under a VM on MacOS, I gave up. It ran fine, but between two OSes and a VM, the hotkey conflicts and other UI glitches were interminable. It'd be great if I wanted to run MacOS and a few Linux programs, but I wanted to run Linux and a few MacOS programs, and was lured by the promise of three-finger-swiping between OSes (that part worked beautifully). So the plan is now to install Linux natively and try to get MacOS running in a VM. I've heard it can be done, we'll see if Fusion360 cooperates.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday November 12 2018, @02:00PM (1 child)
Is there a guide somewhere for running a VM under Linux? What VM systems are available (and which of them are free software)? How you get subsystems like Windows to run under them? Even an old Windows whose installer can no longer authenticate? Whether you can move an existing OS installation from a hardware machine to a virtual one? How well they work and what scale of resources they need?
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Tuesday November 13 2018, @04:03AM
Here are a couple of tutorials to get you started.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/set-windows-virtual-machine-linux/ [makeuseof.com]
https://www.ionos.ca/digitalguide/server/know-how/virtual-machines/ [ionos.ca]
No doubt there are other better ones.
Most recently I set up an XP virtual machine under Linux (to run an aged version of WordPerfect). Had to phone an automated 800 number to get it to authenticate. Meaning, I sat with a pen and wrote down the authentication code. If you phone from a cell phone, they can text you the code, instead of writing it down. Is this what you are worried about?
Have never tried moving an existing installation from hardware to a virtual one. Not sure that it is possible. When you create the virtual machine, you really are creating an OS installation from scratch.
For scale of resources, you can install something like VirtualBox and play, poke around. If you go through the first few steps to create a new virtual machine, it will tell you how much hard drive space it would like for that particular installation. Depending on what you want to install, it likely requires 5-10 gigs of space and up.
hope this is helpful, hendrikboom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:55PM
i don't deal in mapple shit so idk what vm stuff is available but if it's not lxc or kvm, it doesn't count as far as i'm concerned. i'm not running some bullshit gui closed source or gpl violating vm shitware.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday November 12 2018, @09:34AM
Did you have hastle when you returned it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @02:44AM
I'm dying to see when this gets busted. Is the "hacker community" up to it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @02:46AM
n/t
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 12 2018, @03:30AM (4 children)
In 2006, I greenlighted Apple hardware for a project specifically because it would run any OS (Windows through Parallels, Linux native, etc.) With the T2, that would not have been such an easy call.
Hackers will be around this in 3... 2... 1... but, you're going to be "on your own" if you try this, just like root-kitting a phone. At least in 2006 it was easy enough to re-initialize the Mac hard drives as many times, in as many OSs as you wanted, and triple-boot configurations were common back then.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday November 12 2018, @07:27AM (3 children)
Back then, with OpenFirmware, it was one of the most open platforms around.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 12 2018, @12:20PM (2 children)
(Some Apple PPCs had a shitty linux driver which couldn't understand the hardware thermal protection mechanisms (blame proprietory hardware?), so defaulted to "all fans to max". The driver was even called "windfarm" because of this "feature": https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/diff/?id=b55fafc5a800f27beedfdcf8bd1b6baa47e769a9 )
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 12 2018, @01:17PM (1 child)
I'm talking about just barely not quite that far "back there" when they switched off of PPC to Intel.
The early Intel Mac Pros could still qualify as wind-farm-suckers, they'd spin their fans up to "screech and scream" at the slightest provocation, and it didn't take too many Mac Pros running Monte Carlo to suck down the full output of a 1.5MW wind driven generator, our resident genius thought he had an application requiring 50 Mac Pros... that's a lot of CO2 emission.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 12 2018, @08:59PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday November 12 2018, @04:15AM (1 child)
The company that Microsoft saved from the brink of bankruptcy in 1997.
With a paltry $150 million.
A vastly different time.
They learned to out-evil their evil benefactors....mwhaahaha....
They're coming for you...
They're coming for all of us....
And they has new shiny....
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @04:49AM
MS just copied it from Apple. Apple has played these games since Woz left. That 150 was buying 'good graces' form the DNC of basically 'do not break us up'. Which was promptly forgotten about once the kickbacks were in. But what do I know. I only read the news.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday November 12 2018, @05:06AM (1 child)
Anyone got a soldering iron?
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:50AM
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday November 12 2018, @05:07AM
*Do not confuse with the older 'powerbook' machines - they were worth having. And still run linux fine.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LVDOVICVS on Monday November 12 2018, @06:06AM
I think Fonzie/Apple is at the point where it's got on it's leather jacket and water skis, given the thumb's up to Ritchie, and about to hit the ramp by the shark enclosure.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday November 12 2018, @06:46AM
My goodness, there are a lot of salty tears in the comments for this article!
I find it interesting how many of them seem to be Sour Graps [wikipedia.org] though - if Apple hardware is as shit and overpriced as you say, why do you even care that Linux can't run on it?
Just pretend that it's an oversized iPad with a keyboard and you can put it all into context.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @01:30PM
the apple electric self-driving car will only be chargable with apple-approved electricity.
and getting you to that electricity will be up to the A.I. built into the car by apple.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by rickatech on Tuesday November 13 2018, @07:26AM (1 child)
No, Apple's not locking you out of Linux on Mac with the T2 chip
https://www.imore.com/no-apples-not-locking-you-out-linux-macs-t2-chip [imore.com]
To change it:
Turn on your Mac, then press and hold Command (⌘)-R immediately after you see the Apple logo to start up from macOS Recovery.
When you see the macOS Utilities window, choose Utilities > Startup Security Utility from the menu bar.
When you're asked to authenticate, click Enter macOS Password, then choose an administrator account and enter its password.
From there, if you want to boot into Linux, you want to choose the "No Security" option.
Great click bait to suggest otherwise, now go back and Linux on your Sinclair or whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @01:43PM
It's currently not possible to install anything except Windows 10 on Apple computers equipped with T2 chip. This security chip makes it impossible to see the internal drive, Apple generously did an exception only for Windows 10 (but only if you install it via Boot Camp). A possible option could be Linux installed on a USB/Thunderbolt external drive, unfortunately I tried this only for Windows but it worked (though the internal drive was not visible).
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/463422/2018-macbook-pro-tb-1tb-ssd [stackexchange.com]
Great fanboy bait, now go back and enjoy your overpriced, underpowered cage.