User:Jeff132312342q4323/Wifi For Macbooks

Warning
This is an unofficial guide for wifi for Macbooks (before 2016), and if you want an official guide, I suggest you follow the official handbook. With that out of the way, let's go.

Note
if you wanna edit it if there is a mistake or something I missed out on you can. I added my username in front of it since it is not official but you can and you are encouraged to edit it

Words used in this article and their definition

• Macbook(s) -> Macbooks (every MacBook pro, air, etc.) before 2016, so Macbook pro 15 inches 2015 works, but Macbook pro touch bar 2018 does not.
• wifi / Networking -> I will use them interchangeably as this is not a guide on learning wifi.
• packages / builds -> I mean the packages that you can install using portage.

Installation before Compiling Kernel

Before compiling the kernel, we need to install some packages. These packages are required for wifi to work as they are the drivers for wifi cards on MacBooks these are:

• Linux-firmware

Kernel Configuration

This step should be done after the installation of Linux-firmware. In this part I have included several kernels with 2 or more methods in some so choose the kernel you want and follow the guide. (The steps are the same (or almost the same) for most kernel releases.

Gentoo Sources

Genkernel

assuming you followed the offical wiki you can just

root #genkernel all

Options for Wifi Tools and Installation

This step is after the kernel is compiled

Before installing the networking tools for Macbookyou need to choose a set of tools. There are many options for networking like NetworkManager and Wpa_Supplicant or NetworkManager + iwd or netifrc + Wpa_supplicant or netifrc + iwd, and many more.

Wpa_Supplicant with

NetworkManager

So you choose Wpa_supplicant with NetworkManager. Great Choice; this is what I use on my Gentoo system on my MacBook. Let's start it by