#781843 Patch: Add apple_set_os command neede for Macbook Pro 11,3 (Late 2013)

Package:
grub-efi-amd64
Source:
grub2
Description:
GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version)
Submitter:
Bruno Bierbaumer
Date:
2015-04-24 13:24:05 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#781843#5
Date:
2015-04-03 18:02:33 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Debian folks,
the current generation of dual GPU Macbook Pros turn off the integrated Intel GPU when any other OS than Mac OS X is booted.
This works by MAC OS X identifying itself as a custom EFI protocol.

The supplied patch adds a command (apple_set_os) that fakes this OS identification to make all the hardware accessible to Linux.
So it's possible to have much better battery life and driver support by switching to the power saving Intel GPU instead of the discrete Nvidia GPU.

It would be great if you could apply this patch to the Debian package. I haven been using this patch for months and it works well.
The command should also be side-effect free as it just gets registered and then can be run by users who needs this quirk for their hardware.

References:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2013-12/msg00442.html
https://github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch#requirements
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1367109
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro11,x#Getting_the_integrated_intel_card_to_work_on_11.2C3

Greetings,
Bruno
#781843#10
Date:
2015-04-05 12:24:30 UTC
From:
To:
Am Freitag, den 03.04.2015, 20:02 +0200 schrieb Bruno Bierbaumer:

Thanks for the report. But our opinion is that we don't want to diverge
much from upstream.
I looked a bit in the grub-devel archives around. But it seems that
patch got a bit stuck?
#781843#17
Date:
2015-04-05 13:07:55 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Felix,
Thank you for your quick answer.

It would make perfect sense to integrate this patch upstream, but
frankly I also think it got stuck and that is the reason I report it here.
Do you have have any idea how we could push this patch a little to get
it merged?

Greetings,
Bruno
#781843#22
Date:
2015-04-24 13:09:53 UTC
From:
To:
Hallo Thibaut,
for the MacbookPro 11,x it also true for the EFI mode.
They differ to the older models, because the Intel chip is also hidden
in the EFI mode and not only in the BIOS compatibility mode.

Regards,
Bruno
#781843#27
Date:
2015-04-24 13:06:04 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Bruno,

Is this true (only) when booting Linux in BIOS compatibility mode, or
also in EFI mode? On older Macbooks, the Intel chip is hidden in BIOS
mode, but not in EFI mode.

Kind regards, Thibaut.
#781843#32
Date:
2015-04-24 13:21:33 UTC
From:
To:
I also posted the patch again on the grub-devel mailing list, but never
got any response.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2015-04/msg00009.html

Any help would be appreciated!

Greetings,
Bruno