Apple peripheral devices - any possibility to get them working under Slackware 14.2?

glupa4e · 03-14-2020, 05:02 AM

Hello,

i was interested if anybody has ever struggled with pairing Apple hardware to a Slackware 14.2 machine? I mean the following peripheral devices:

Magic Mouse 2
or
Keyboard - A1843

I tried as far as i know. It seems that bluetooth adresses that a Mac sees / has are not even discovered by Linux. Either is my machine too old for that (i mean bluetooth protocol version) or devices are completely incompatible.

Does anybody has some experience with that? Just to mention i am stil not using -current.

bassmadrigal · 03-14-2020, 01:11 PM

For the mouse... from this stackexchange post, you might need to upgrade your kernel to at least 4.18 and might need to use this github repo for the module and updated Xorg drivers. For kernels under 4.18, the driver might not compile.

And this might be a module for the keyboard.

average_user · 03-14-2020, 07:39 PM

I guess that these devices don't use USB HID standard?

bassmadrigal · 03-14-2020, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by average_user

I guess that these devices don't use USB HID standard?

Pretty sure they're both wireless via Bluetooth.

glupa4e · 03-15-2020, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bassmadrigal

Pretty sure they're both wireless via Bluetooth.

MagicMouse2 is bluetooth only, MagicKeyboard has bluetooth interface but i was surprised to discover that the keyboard can be used via the charging cable and it was recognised even with Linux kernel 4.4.153.

Dear bassmadrigal regarding your suggestion above for kernel 4.18 - i think i'd wait until Slackware 15 is released, i do not want to currently mess up with linux kernels even the newest update for 14.2 includes a lower number of the kernel.

bassmadrigal · 03-15-2020, 08:23 PM

You could try booting up Slackware Live to see if the 5.4 kernel in it has proper support out of the box for the devices... Then you'll at least know if it'll work out of the box once 15.0 is released.