Tips for installing Arch Linux on Macbook Pro

Some pointers on installing Arch Linux on a Macbook Pro. I don’t use Arch anymore, but this might be helpful for someone. In these examples, I’m using pacaur instead of pacman for the AUR integration. Check out this page in the Arch wiki for more information on pacaur.

Wifi

pacaur -S broadcom-wl-dkms - I use the dkms version to keep things stable.

Backlight

Set this in /etc/rc.local: setpci -v -H1 -s 00:01.00 BRIDGE_CONTROL=0

LTS Mode (more stable)

LTS Kernel Installation

pacaur -S linux-lts linux-headers-lts nvidia-lts, then use dkms versions of modules to build against your new kernel. Then use sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to create a new boot menu. LTS should be at the top, but if not, you can add these options to /etc/default/grub to make grub save your last boot option:

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y

General Kernel Modules

Enable the dkms service to automatically build kernel modules when the source updates. Only install dkms versions of modules.

Virtualbox Host DKMS

Use dkms install vboxhost/$(pacman -Q virtualbox|awk '{print $2}'|sed 's/\-.\+//') -k $(uname -rm|sed 's/\ /\//') to install the virtualbox host modules using dkms.