On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 11:31 PM Kent West <we...@acu.edu> wrote: > I have an M1-chip 2020 MacBook Air on which I have dual-booted with Debian > 12 initially, then "upgraded" to sid (in hopes of getting better hardware > support). It has several hardware ... glitches, and my google-fu is failing > me in finding solutions. I'm hoping someone here can help. > > First, the good news: Basic functionality works fine. Both Gnome and > Plasma work on both X11 and Wayland; graphics are crisp (albeit tiny, until > I use the GUI's size-mag feature to bump it to about 175%), and both wired > and wireless networking work, even with our certificate-based > authentication wireless network, that I could never get to work with a > version of Debian around 9 or 10 or so (but the connection is a little > daunting for the average Joe). I can't really speak for Sleep/Hibernation, > as I haven't had it running that long (UPDATE: It just announced it was > automatically suspending as I was typing this; I suspect it'll wake when I > try it in a few (UPDATE: Yes, it woke up instantly, perhaps too > instantly?)), but screen time-out/wake-up works fine. Audio via my > Bluetooth ear buds works great. > > Now the bad news: > > - keyboard backlight. Ag, how I need this in my usually-dark computing > environs! > > - display brightness. It's either full-on or full-off. This is a much more > minor concern. > > - audio. As mentioned above, audio works fine via Blluetooth (watched an > interesting Adam Savage video about a $13 USB-c cable vs Apple's $130 > version; I can't believe I'm saying it, but I think the Apple version might > actually be worth that), but I can't get a peep out of the built-in > speakers. Everything *seems* to be in order; alsamixer sees both the > Pipewire device and the native Mac sound device; volume controls move up > and down (or left/right); there's just never any sound. Not even from > "speaker-test" after I've killed X/Wayland/gdm3, although "speaker-test" > (as a non-root user) looks like it's working. It acts like the speakers are > muted, but I can find no way to unmute them. When I run "speaker-test" as > root, it complains that the service (server? device?) is not > running/available? (Sorry; don't recall the exact message at the moment.) > > - Though not really a hardware matter, thought I'd mention this for anyone > who wants to try Debian on their MacBook Air M1; when I updated to Sid, > apparently the Mac got "confused", and when I tried to boot back into > macOS, the system insisted on having my decryption password (which I guess > is normal, now that I think about it, 'cause FileVault 2 does that also, > just ... differently, so that I didn't recognize it), but then it also > insisted on a Recovery Key being typed in (like when Bitlocker locks you > out of Windows when it thinks the hardware has been tampered with). > Thankfully I had that key available, or it would have been a wipe/reimage > (or perhaps worse, the way Apple has locked things down of late). > > So if anyone has any help for these issues, especially audio and the > keyboard backlight, I'm all ears. >
Have you considered just running Debian in a Virtual Machine until hardware support matures. > Thanks! > > Linux debian kernel 6.1.0-rc8-asahi #1 SMP Tue Dec 6 21:41:25 CET 2022 > aarch64 GNU/Linux > trixie/sid > > -- > Kent West <")))>< > IT Support / Client Support > Abilene Christian University > Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com > -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org/ ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀
