#1 2026-01-17 00:57:50

GlenJ

New Member

Registered: 2026-01-17

Posts: 4

[Carbon RC2] Trackpad on Debian Trixie

I ran RC2 live USB on macbook air 2017 with 8 gb memory. The trackpad is inoperative. The broadcom wifi driver is not installed; this happens with Boron where after some searching it's fixable; I need to test with a full install of RC2. It would be nice if it were recognized automatically when the live USB is booted. Linux mint and Endeavor  can do this when booting their live USB on my macbook air.  I've been using Boron for the last 18 months as my daily linux "driver". My 2017 macbook air seems like a new machine. I've also tried to boot the live USB on my 2015 macbook pro  - no luck here, just hangs with a blinking cursor in upper left corner of the screen; Boron runs on this machine.

New Findings:
I found that the trackpad issue can be corrected with: sudo modprobe -r bcm5974  followed by modprobe bcm5974 which results in an immediate fix. To make the fix permanent, I edited ~/.config/bunsen/autostart and commented out  active synclient line. Unfortunately even with this fix, "tap to click is disabled". None of this was necessary with Boron. 

The broadcom issue needs the wl driver for the macbook air 2017. So need to do use a realtek dongle to connect to the to enable networking and
run:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms
sudo modprobe wl
reboot

Last edited by GlenJ (2026-01-17 05:01:52)

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,074

Website

Re: [Carbon RC2] Trackpad on Debian Trixie

I ran RC2 live USB on macbook air 2017 with 8 gb memory. The trackpad is inoperative. The broadcom wifi driver is not installed; this happens with Boron where after some searching it's fixable; I need to test with a full install of RC2. It would be nice if it were recognized automatically when the live USB is booted.

The packages firmware-b43-installer and firmware-b43legacy-installer are installed in the live session, which should provide some Broadcom support. But Boron didn't work out of the box for you? In the live session, have you got files in /usr/lib/firmware/b43 and b43legacy?

Last edited by johnraff (2026-01-17 02:17:56)

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,074

Website

Re: [Carbon RC2] Trackpad on Debian Trixie

I found that the trackpad issue can be corrected with: sudo modprobe -r bcm5974  followed by modprobe bcm5974 which results in an immediate fix. To make the fix permanent, I edited ~/.config/bunsen/autostart and commented out  active synclient line. Unfortunately even with this fix, "tap to click is disabled". None of this was necessary with Boron.

This is difficult stuff, and Debian changes with each release. Also the Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchpad_Synaptics

xf86-input-synaptics is no longer actively updated. If possible, use libinput. For some reasons why you might still prefer xf86-input-synaptics, see [1] and [2].

[1]https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-to … -on-linux/
[2]https://web.archive.org/web/20200925193 … t-drivers/

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop