MacBook Pro 13,2 Late 2016 T1 Touchbar & Ubuntu 26.10 WiFi does not work
Core i7 16G of RAM & 256G SSD version, Secure Boot is off.
Short version: Wiping old MacOS and Ubuntu 26.04 reFind dual boot to be pure Ubuntu 26.10. Kept the Apple EFI partition (with the APPLE folder in it) and created 18G Swap partition, 70G Ext4 partition for OS and the rest in another Ext4 partiotn for /home.
On a fresh install of Ubuntu 26.xx:
- Touchbar is dead
- Sound does not work
- Most USB devices ONLY work when plugged into a USB hub
- Machine locks up on sleep and will not recover
The usual fixes, circa late 2026:
- gist.github.com for WiFi. edit your actual MAC Address into the text file and copy it into /lib/firmware/brcm. Reboot and get WiFi (except in kernel 7.3, apparently -- see below)
- gist.github.com for Touchbar, sleep, and USB. The installer provided for these fixes won't even work without a working internet connection, and the installer is oddly picky about your brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt file, so I just set it up as above and edited out all of the WiFi bits from the installer to get the other bits working.
- davidjo/snd_hda_macbookpro for sound.
- (OPTIONAL): There is a newer Touchbar T1 driver that sets up the Touchbar in a mode that can allow it to be customized AND enables the fingerprint reader. You have to remove the other Touchbar driver (remove from DKMS and purge) prior to installing. Downside: I was never able to get the touchbar to wake back up from sleep using this driver AND as of now, there do not appear to be any custom UIs to take advantage of it. standardagents/t1bridge is the actual project development site and it's for Arch Linux... but someone helpfully bundled this up in a .deb for us Debian and Ubuntu users at vfontanela/macbookpro14-linux-support
Installed Ubuntu 26.10. Touchbar, sound, USB and sleep all work with the usual fixes above. WiFi will not work. No editing of brcmfac43602-pcie.txt fixes this. I had to go back to Ubuntu 26.04 to get everything including WiFI working.
As a test after falling back to 26.04, I compiled and installed a mainline kernel 7.3 build and WiFi was dead again. Rebooting back to kernel 7.0 restored WiFi. It appears that something in kernel 7.3 breaks WiFi on the 13,2 at least. I did not test any 7.1 or 7.2 kernels. Not sure how to go about reporting this to someone that can fix it.
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MacBook Pro 13,2 Late 2016 T1 Touchbar & Ubuntu 26.10 WiFi does not work Core i7 16G of RAM & 256G SSD version, Secure Boot is off. Short version: Wiping old MacOS and Ubuntu 26.04 reFind dual boot to be pure Ubuntu 26.10. Kept the Apple EFI partition (with the APPLE folder in it) and created 18G Swap partition, 70G Ext4 partition for OS and the rest in another Ext4 partiotn for /home. On a fresh install of Ubuntu 26.xx: - Touchbar is dead - Sound does not work - Most USB devices ONLY work when plugged into a USB hub - Machine locks up on sleep and will not recover The usual fixes, circa late 2026: - gist.github.com for WiFi. edit your actual MAC Address into the text file and copy it into /lib/firmware/brcm. Reboot and get WiFi (except in kernel 7.3, apparently -- see below) - gist.github.com for Touchbar, sleep, and USB. The installer provided for these fixes won't even work without a working internet connection, and the installer is oddly picky about your brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt file, so I just set it up as above and edited out all of the WiFi bits from the installer to get the other bits working. - davidjo/snd_hda_macbookpro for sound. - (OPTIONAL): There is a newer Touchbar T1 driver that sets up the Touchbar in a mode that can allow it to be customized AND enables the fingerprint reader. You have to remove the other Touchbar driver (remove from DKMS and purge) prior to installing. Downside: I was never able to get the touchbar to wake back up from sleep using this driver AND as of now, there do not appear to be any custom UIs to take advantage of it. standardagents/t1bridge is the actual project development site and it's for Arch Linux... but someone helpfully bundled this up in a .deb for us Debian and Ubuntu users at vfontanela/macbookpro14-linux-support Installed Ubuntu 26.10. Touchbar, sound, USB and sleep all work with the usual fixes above. WiFi will not work. No editing of brcmfac43602-pcie.txt fixes this. I had to go back to Ubuntu 26.04 to get everything including WiFI working. As a test after falling back to 26.04, I compiled and installed a mainline kernel 7.3 build and WiFi was dead again. Rebooting back to kernel 7.0 restored WiFi. It appears that something in kernel 7.3 breaks WiFi on the 13,2 at least. I did not test any 7.1 or 7.2 kernels. Not sure how to go about reporting this to someone that can fix it.
@dhh @DanielLockyer I been daily-driving my 2016 MacBook Pro running Omarchy with speakers, mic, Touch Bar + Touch ID working for the last month and half. Opened PRs for Mac recovery/dual-boot docs and automatic T1 module rebuilds: omarchy#16673 t1bridge#56