I know what many of you are thinking: Linux on an Apple computer? The answer may be another simple question: Why not? I think we all agree that it is not worth buying a MacBook to install the Penguin system, but we all know that there is the possibility of installing more than one operating system on the same computer, and that changes everything. If you are one of the users who wants to have Linux on the latest Apple computers, Linux 5.3 has a surprise for you.
Right now, if it hasn't been shut down already, the next Linux kernel update is about to close its request request window. In a move at the last moment, it has been accepted an application related to the support for the keyboards and trackpads of the latest MacBook and MacBook Pro to reach the market. The surprise is greater when we consider that Linux has not included very good support for the keyboards and touchpads of the most recent MacBooks (from the MacBook 8.1 to more modern ones like the MacBookPro13 and MacBookPro14).
Linux 5.3 will get along better with MacBooks
There has been no support like this since, Instead of being exposed as USB devices like all other modern laptops, Apple made the strange move of turning them into SPI devices. Beyond that, Apple has never documented its protocol in use with this SPI driver to support these keyboards and trackpads. Seen like this, we could say that the absence of this support is mostly Apple's responsibility.
But the developer community tends to get what they set out to do, and some developers with some spare time have reverse-engineered much of this protocol and even have been able to write this basic Linux driver. With the arrival of Linux 5.3, support will be included, but the new Kconfig switch will have to be activated CONFIG_KEYBOARD_APPLESPI.
This support joins another patch that will activate the support for NVMe drives on Apple devices more current, so we could say that Linux 5.3 will take better care of the computers of the bitten apple.
