Install Fedora on MacBook Pro 16,2 with Broadcom 4364 Chipset

3 min readFeb 14, 2022

Background

In December 2021, I successfully made Ubuntu 20.04 installed on MacBook Pro 16,2. Unfortunately several issues were observed, such as bluetooth, wifi-firmware, nautilus and nemo file managers very poor performance or intermittently crashed. I even tried Manjaro with no luck (installed but failed to boot). Then I decided to try Fedora. After running for a week, Fedora on MacBook Pro 16,2 is really robust, stable, flexible, with bringing confidence and freedom. Happy.

Hardware Spec

On macOS,

ioreg -l | grep RequestedFiles"RequestedFiles" = ({
  "Firmware"="C-4364__s-B3/trinidad.trx",
  "TxCap"="C-4364__s-B3/trinidad-X3.txcb",
  "Regulatory"="C-4364__s-B3/trinidad-X3.clmb",
  "NVRAM"="C-4364__s-B3/P-trinidad-X3_M-HRPN_V-u__m-7.7.txt"
  })

On Linux,

[jeff@mbp ~]$ sudo dmidecode | grep "Product Name"
[sudo] password for jeff:
	Product Name: MacBookPro16,2[jeff@mbp ~]$ lspci -vvnn | grep -i network
e5:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries
BCM4364 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:4464] (rev 04)

Base Installation

Follow up the instruction at https://github.com/mikeeq/mbp-fedora

Wifi Firmware

According to https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/wifi/, and upgrade kernel, then output of modinfo reads

[jeff@mbp mbp-fedora]$ modinfo brcmfmac | grep 4387
firmware:       brcm/brcmfmac4387c2-pcie.clm_blob
firmware:       brcm/brcmfmac4387c2-pcie.bin

I didn’t execute wifi.sh because my MacBook gets internet recovered so its disk volume was named differently. Renaming solution doesn't work for me.

Load firmware

Instead, copying all under Broadcom BCM4364 firmware (https://github.com/j3ffyang/mbp-fedora/tree/main/brcm) into /lib/firmware/brcm on Linux

sudo modprobe -r brcmfmac && sudo modprobe brcmfmac

Verify by `journalctl`

[jeff@mbp ~]$ sudo journalctl -k --grep=brcmfmacFeb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie for chip BCM4364/4
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.apple,trinidad-HRPN-u-7.7-X3.bin failed with error -2
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.apple,trinidad-HRPN-u-7.7.bin failed with error -2
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.apple,trinidad-HRPN-u.bin failed with error -2
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.apple,trinidad-HRPN.bin failed with error -2
Feb 14 15:16:45 mbp kernel: brcmfmac 0000:e5:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.apple,trinidad-X3.bin failed with error -2
Feb 14 15:16:46 mbp kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_txcap_blob: TxCap blob found, loading
Feb 14 15:16:46 mbp kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4364/4 wl0: Jul 12 2021 18:02:56 version 9.30.464.0.32.5.76 FWID 01-c081cfed

Check Loaded Modules

[jeff@mbp ~]$ lsmod | grep brcm
brcmfmac              356352  0
brcmutil               16384  1 brcmfmac
cfg80211             1036288  1 brcmfmac
mmc_core              196608  1 brcmfmac
[jeff@mbp ~]$ modinfo brcmfmac
filename:       /lib/modules/5.16.8-200.mbp.fc33.x86_64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmfmac/brcmfmac.ko.xz
license:        Dual BSD/GPL
description:    Broadcom 802.11 wireless LAN fullmac driver.
author:         Broadcom Corporation
firmware:       brcm/brcmfmac*-sdio.*.bin
firmware:       brcm/brcmfmac*-sdio.*.txt
firmware:       brcm/brcmfmac43752-sdio.clm_blob

Update Kernel

sudo update_kernel_mbp

Enjoy Fedora Linux on MacBookPro

Credit

Thanks for kernel build > https://github.com/mikeeq/mbp-fedora