> There was a good GitHub repo tracking it for up to I think the first touchbar Pro, and basically it was dismal then and only got worse (according to repo owner who consequently stopped bothering iirc).
As I'm said repo owner, let me chime in here quickly to shed some light on that.
I used a 13" MacBook Pro 2016 for 3 years with Debian as my sole machine for work. When ordering it back in 2016 I wasn't sure how difficult it'd be to get Linux properly working on it, as at that point it was only known that it's possible to boot Linux, but nobody had figured out even such basics like support for the integrated input devices or the NVMe SSD yet. However as I was using Linux on Macs since 2006 I figured it'd be somehow possible to get it to work for me.
Fortunately I wasn't the only one serious about running Linux these 2016+ MacBooks, as I have very limited knowledge of the required lowlevel programming skills. What I did was to provide and moderate a Github repository (https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux) as a central place to document and discuss of the status of hardware support for these MacBook Pros, some little patches and lots of feedback and bug reports. A big shoutout to all contributors who did an incredible job at reverse engineering, implementing and upstreaming drivers for various components! That's quite an achievement for such a complex device with no public hardware documentation at all!
After a while it turned out that support for certain components would be rather difficult to get working flawlessly. As an example, even at the end of the 3 years I used the MacBook Pro, I had to use an external adapter to be able to use WiFi. With that in mind I started to reconsider why I bought Apple products: I bought them because of their superior hardware quality. But if I'm not able to use the hardware as intended, what's the point of paying a premium for Apple products? And let's just not talk about the butterfly keyboard or the horrible thermal management. So when it came to replacing my MacBook Pro, I decided to go with a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon instead. It's not perfect, but I'm way happier now than I ever was with the MacBook Pro 2016, as the hardware just works.
As I don't own any 2016+ Apple device anymore, the help for further Linux support I can provide is limited, but I didn't stop bothering at all! I'm still actively managing said Github repository, but activity in general has significantly dropped there over time. Either the devices work well enough for other people now or they also replaced them with non-Apple hardware.
As I'm said repo owner, let me chime in here quickly to shed some light on that.
I used a 13" MacBook Pro 2016 for 3 years with Debian as my sole machine for work. When ordering it back in 2016 I wasn't sure how difficult it'd be to get Linux properly working on it, as at that point it was only known that it's possible to boot Linux, but nobody had figured out even such basics like support for the integrated input devices or the NVMe SSD yet. However as I was using Linux on Macs since 2006 I figured it'd be somehow possible to get it to work for me.
Fortunately I wasn't the only one serious about running Linux these 2016+ MacBooks, as I have very limited knowledge of the required lowlevel programming skills. What I did was to provide and moderate a Github repository (https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux) as a central place to document and discuss of the status of hardware support for these MacBook Pros, some little patches and lots of feedback and bug reports. A big shoutout to all contributors who did an incredible job at reverse engineering, implementing and upstreaming drivers for various components! That's quite an achievement for such a complex device with no public hardware documentation at all!
After a while it turned out that support for certain components would be rather difficult to get working flawlessly. As an example, even at the end of the 3 years I used the MacBook Pro, I had to use an external adapter to be able to use WiFi. With that in mind I started to reconsider why I bought Apple products: I bought them because of their superior hardware quality. But if I'm not able to use the hardware as intended, what's the point of paying a premium for Apple products? And let's just not talk about the butterfly keyboard or the horrible thermal management. So when it came to replacing my MacBook Pro, I decided to go with a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon instead. It's not perfect, but I'm way happier now than I ever was with the MacBook Pro 2016, as the hardware just works.
As I don't own any 2016+ Apple device anymore, the help for further Linux support I can provide is limited, but I didn't stop bothering at all! I'm still actively managing said Github repository, but activity in general has significantly dropped there over time. Either the devices work well enough for other people now or they also replaced them with non-Apple hardware.