[MacBook] Trackpad/keyboard do not work on CentOS Stream 10 on 2017 MacBook Pro (Intel-based)

Our Neighbors CentOS
1

I just booted into CentOS-Stream-10-latest-x86_64-dvd1.iso on my 2017 MacBook Pro (Intel-based), ID MacBookPro14,1, and I noticed that the trackpad does not work. The keyboard doesn’t seem to work either.

The same happens with RHEL 10 (rhel-10.0-x86_64-dvd.iso).

I am suspecting that the drivers may not be included. Is there a reason why?

The trackpad and keyboard work on other distros, including Fedora.

2

I think you will have to identify the hardware and manually install the drivers.

There are some threads on MacBook hardware and Fedora, and the required drivers on the forums to search for.

3

It seems that the driver is applespi, which is included in the kernel since 5.3:

The applespi driver for the internal keyboard and trackpad of the MacBookPro13,* and MacBookPro14,* is now included upstream and works out of the box. (Input: add Apple SPI keyboard and trackpad driver · torvalds/linux@038b1a0 · GitHub). The commit dates back to 2019.

Source: GitHub - Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux: State of Linux on the MacBook Pro 2016 & 2017

So, they should already be included in the kernel used by CentOS Stream 10, I presume. Idk for sure.

The commit message mentions something about the SPI drivers needing to be loaded. So it might be that.

4

Some more people (devs) hang out (in the very quiet) You're invited to talk on Matrix
CentOS Matrix channel.

5

RHEL10 and the default CentOS Stream 10 had many non-modern, non-enterprisy, drivers removed. They even raised the bar for CPU’s to x86_64_v3. I’m a little surprised it was even able to boot because I personally have several machines that cannot boot RHEL 10 and CentOS Stream 10. As for why. Support. Red Hat is looking 10 years down the line and doesn’t want to support hardware that is already 8 years old now, for another 10 years.

If you need something that is RHEL 10 compatible that will possibly work with the hardware, I suggest Alma Linux 10. They lowered the CPU to x86_64_v2 (the same as RHEL 9) as well as added back many drivers.

6

Thank you for clarifying. The removal of drivers is unfortunate but understandable.

I will give CentOS Stream 9 / RHEL 9 a try and then AlmaLinux 10. But will probably just use RHEL 10 in a VM.

Update: the trackpad/keyboard did not work in CentOS Stream 9 either.

Update 2: they did not work with AlmaLinux 10 either. I made a post in their forum.