Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

Temporalin · 2026-05-10 16:39:09

Hello,

I am trying to give a second life to a friend's Macbook (I'm not a Mac user myself) and while it's relatively easy to install Arch on it, the visual performance is lacking compared to MacOS Catalina. Watching YouTube videos with stats on shows that more than half the frames drop, and the same video runs smooth on Catalina.

I've tried installing the Nvidia drivers 470xx, as this laptop shows an old GK107M (GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition) GPU, but it stops showing anything on screen if I install them.

As rEFInd is apparently the way to unlock some GPU capabilities, I tried using the rEFInd option in archinstall, but no boot option appears. I tried "blessing" it but I get an error (if this is relevant I can get the code again). GRUB works fine.

The wiki entry for this model is very outdated https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MacBookPro10,x, and I'm not sure if the xf86 drivers are even relevant in the Wayland era

I suspect Wayland is making this harder, so I may try a Xorg setup, but then this second life is already on life support...

As I have never needed to mess this deep with drivers in Linux, and being Macs as hard to mess around as they are, I am close to giving up, so this post is probably my last chance

I appreciate any kind of help. Thanks in advance

mwigzell · 2026-05-10 18:16:30

Hey, see my posts, my last one is relevant to your situation probably.

seth · 2026-05-10 19:25:23

And what if you now post in the image game thread?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p2297645

Temporalin · 2026-05-11 01:51:55

mwigzell wrote:

Hey, see my posts, my last one is relevant to your situation probably.

Hello, thanks, I see they're related, I didn't find it before.

The Apple EFI bypass seems like something that could help, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to run it with GRUB.

On the other hand, the rest of the things are AMD related, and the one I'm dealing with has NVIDIA so I'm not sure on how to proceed in this case

seth wrote:

And what if you now post in the image game thread?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p2297645

Hello, thanks for linking to that thread, is that the "image game thread" you're referring to?

What I take from that thread is that I need to deal with two main things: the Apple EFI bypass and kernel parameters.

But again, as the thread deals with AMD, I'm not sure what should I do with this old NVIDIA GPU. Can I use Nouveau then? Or do I need to also deal with drivers?

Thanks for the quick response

seth · 2026-05-11 07:34:00

is that the "image game thread" you're referring to?

No, it's the relevant post mentioned by mwigzell - I just was pointing out that "last one" is an unstable condition.

I've tried installing the Nvidia drivers 470xx, as this laptop shows an old GK107M (GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition) GPU, but it stops showing anything on screen if I install them.

Does this also hold for the multi-user.target (2nd link below)?

I suspect Wayland is making this harder

"Impossible" - the 470xx drivers don't support GBM, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Requirements (don't rely on gnome/eglstreams)

Temporalin · 2026-05-11 09:52:10

seth wrote:

is that the "image game thread" you're referring to?
No, it's the relevant post mentioned by mwigzell - I just was pointing out that "last one" is an unstable condition.

Oh I see now haha

seth wrote:

I've tried installing the Nvidia drivers 470xx, as this laptop shows an old GK107M (GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition) GPU, but it stops showing anything on screen if I install them.
Does this also hold for the multi-user.target (2nd link below)?
I suspect Wayland is making this harder
"Impossible" - the 470xx drivers don't support GBM, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Requirements (don't rely on gnome/eglstreams)

I can try, but my objective here was to give my friend an updated OS, if I have to put a semi-outdated system already... might as well not mess more with this.

What I have been trying is using rEFInd (could not, so no way to try spoof_osx_version), putting apple_set_version.efi and run it with GRUB or systemd-boot (could not either, it was stuck after running the .efi)

I don't think I'll have much more time to mess around, though, so I don't know what would be my best next shot before I have to stop trying ?

V1del · 2026-05-11 13:48:51

@mwigzell You accidentally hit report instead of reply.

mwigzell wrote:

I wrote my own EFI shim to "chain" the apple_set_os.efi with the systemd efi.Then I ran that ShimApp.efi from rEFind. It works, but there is a limitation: the systemd loader isn't able to read the console keys. To work around that I wired it to default to the desired loader and timeout 0. So I didn't need to enter anything. If you're interested I can send you the code.Or you might be able to write your own GRUB chain ? Not sure about that.

Temporalin · 2026-05-11 14:14:50

mwigzell wrote:

I wrote my own EFI shim to "chain" the apple_set_os.efi with the systemd efi.Then I ran that ShimApp.efi from rEFind. It works, but there is a limitation: the systemd loader isn't able to read the console keys. To work around that I wired it to default to the desired loader and timeout 0. So I didn't need to enter anything. If you're interested I can send you the code.Or you might be able to write your own GRUB chain ? Not sure about that.

I have not messed around bootloaders this much, honestly, so I wouldn't now were to start writing that kind of thing. Also, unfortunately, I won't have physical access to the device any longer, so if there is a solution it would be ideal to be as little technical as possible

Arch Linux

#1 2026-05-10 16:39:09

Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#2 2026-05-10 18:16:30

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#3 2026-05-10 19:25:23

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#4 2026-05-11 01:51:55

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#5 2026-05-11 07:34:00

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#6 2026-05-11 09:52:10

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#7 2026-05-11 13:48:51

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

#8 2026-05-11 14:14:50

Re: Graphic issues with Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 10,x 10,1

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