facetimehd

Not the OP, but I have a 2015 Macbook Pro and a desktop PC both running Linux. I love Fedora, so that's on the desktop, but I followed online recommendations to put Mint on the Macbook and it seems to run very well. However, I did need to install mbpfan (https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan) to get more sane power options and this package (https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd) to get the camera working. It runs better than Mac OS, but you'll need to really tweak some power settings to get it to the efficiency of the older Mac versions.

There is a reverse-engineered driver for the Facetime HD (Broadcom 1570) webcam on recent MacBook and iMac models: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki

I Did but the camera didn't work until I did https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie

> Can I install Debian on it and have stuff working? Depends on the kind of Mac you buy. I can only comment on their mobile offerings: - Best supported are the current MacBook Airs. Everything except the Webcam should work out-of-the-box. The webcam needs the out-of-tree bcwc_pcie driver (https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie)). - The Retina MacBooks need some manual work before being usable (e.g. need to compile out-of-tree keyboard & touchpad driver (https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver)), but should work fine as well. - The MacBook Pros before October 2016 are also quite good supported, the support for newer ones is still quite incomplete (check out https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux for details), although it's possible to use them as daily driver if you're aware of the limitations.

I'm running 4.6 kernel "testing" on a MacBook Air 7,2 as my daily driver. It is rock solid. Wifi, Backlight brightness control and FaceTime camera will not work out of the box, however they can be made to work. Expected to spend a weekend getting it all working. It's not for everyone, but if you want to better understand Linux, running it everyday is a great way to be fully immersed. It's also nice to have a desktop environment (openbox/lxde) that only uses 263MB ram on startup instead of a massive OS full of features I do not need or use. So yea, let's say the machine rarely swaps. This is by no means exhaustive, but some things that I'm running and work well for me: How to setup rEFInd for dual boot http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ Wifi driver (using non-free Broadcom-sta driver) https://wiki.debian.org/wl Backlight driver https://githu

If you miss those days you can install a driver to get your camera working on a MacBook with Linux. It worked fine for me but took about an hour or so of fiddling: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie

There is an open source webcam driver now [1], although it has some problems. [1] https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie

Yo dawg. I heard you like ARMs, so we put an ARM on your ARM. https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki/Specification---Fea... ^^ did everyone already miss that the webcam was an entire SoC and not just a sensor hooked up to UVC?

I'm going to dig into this and find out, I've wanted to know for ages. If the LED == LED_TORCH, then it looks like it may be possible: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/blob/8cc44d67f3c924f30a8... Either way, I'm planning on buying some spare parts to actually test and possibly PoC this.

I don't know if it's the same webcam in the newest Macbook, but the the reverse engineered driver works perfectly for me on a 2013 model: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki Just follow the instructions exactly. If it doesn't work first time, try `sudo modprobe -r bdc_pci` and then retry `sudo modprobe facetimehd` and see if it creates `/dev/video0` (which means it's working) For suspend, is it waking up after you close the lid? I fixed this with: sudo -i echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup Then give it a test. If it works, pop it into a startup service somewhere.

The iSight cameras are now PCIe rather than USB, and no drivers exist for them yet as far as I'm aware. There is some more information on the kernel.org bug tracker[1], and there's also an ongoing attempt to reverse engineer one on GitHub[2]. [1]https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71131 [2]https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie