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Arch Linux on Macbooc Air - 2013 ​

Resources ​

And as always have the official guide in the back of your head:
Arch Linux wiki installation guide

Boot USB installer ​

Hold alt-key while restarting the MBA, select UEFI device.

Installation ​

Keyboard layout ​

Use loadkeys no-latin1 (or your language) here as well. DON' try any of those mac layouts, it will switch everything around.

Formatting ​

Leave 128mb after apple partitions, they say:
take default start sector and add 12821024 = 262144 373478472 + 262144 = 373740616
start sector first: 373740616
Apple HFS+ filetype = af00 don't need to create one with the setup I chose
Linux swap filetype = 8200

Use MacOS boot partition ​

Is probably /dev/sda1GRUB to EFI directly

Networking during install ​

You will not make the Wifi on MBA work during install. You have options:

USB wired adapter ​

D-Link USB DUB-1312 usually works out of the box on Linux. Plug in and type ip a it probably already works, if not try too boot up USB with the adapter and network already connected.

USB mobile tethering ​

An alternative from the guide in my sources: Android tethering

Remember broadcom wireless ​

Install Broadcom dkms drivers

sh
pacman -S linux-headers
pacman -S broadcom-wl-dkms dkms

After install and first boot ​

Network ​

Wifi ​

Network Manager ​

network manager is a better choice but not preinstalled.
How to set wifi up with cli, this even works with a hidden SSID:

sh
nmcli connection add type wifi con-name con1 ifname wlp3s0 ssid "MyHiddenOrNotSSID"
nmcli connection modify con1 wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-psk
nmcli connection modify con1 wifi-sec.psk "greatestpasswordever"
# setup done, then connect
nmcli connection up con1
netctl ​

as root run this to make wifi persist

sh
wifi-menu      # select network, enter pw to create profile
ls /etc/netctl # to see the name of the profile just created
netctl enable wlp3s0-MyHomeWifiNetworkName

Wired ​

If you have a adapter and no network automatically works, try this: ip link show and see if there is another device in addition to loopback.
if there is, try to start systemd-networkd:

config file /etc/systemd/network/50-temp.network

bash
[Match]
Name=enp0s20u1

[Network]
DHCP=ipv4

Services:

sh
systemctl start systemd-networkd.service // up the device
systemctl start systemd-resolved.service // for DNS

Touchpad ​

Install libinput package

setup /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-libinput.conf like this:

bash
Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "Tapping" "True"
    Option "DisableWhileTyping" "True"
    Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
EndSection

Reference:
Arch article on MacBook and Trackpad

Sound ​

First install alsamixer

sh
sudo pacman -S alsa-utils

Then run alsamixer and unmute HDA Intel PCH, toggle with m

Then install pulseaudio, volumeicon and pavucontrol to control stuff easier.

Screen Display ​

To set your default backlight value, that will be set on reboot and resume
Set something between 0 and 100

sh
# get current
cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
# get max
cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness
# only root can set
sudo su
echo 50 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

Xbacklight ​

This will temporarily set backlight, resets on reboot and resume
Can be used for hotkeys, see Functionkeys

sh
sudo pacman -S xorg-xbacklight
xbacklight -set 50 # is %

Keyboard ​

Arch Linux Apple keyboard article

Function keys setup ​

Need to use fn-key to get F[num] function
edit file /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf and add this:

bash
options hid_apple fnmode=2

Function keys set backlight and volume ​

Add this to config:

bash
# Screen brightness controls 
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec xbacklight -inc 10
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec xbacklight -dec 10

# Pulse Audio controls
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 +5%
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5%
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-mute 0 toggle

< and | is switched ​

Create .Xmodmap in home folder containing this:

bash
keycode  94 = bar section grave asciitilde brokenbar paragraph
keycode  49 = less greater less greater onehalf threequarters onehalf threequarters

Put this in your shells startup file somehow, i.e for i3 .config/i3/config, after eventual setxkbmap commands:

bash
exec "xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap"

If others keys are wrong, look at all current bindings with this command and then change accordingly in .Xmodmap:

sh
xmodmap -pke