I installed several versions of Linux on a 2015 Macbook Pro. Everything generally worked great except for suspend/wake up (also known as “sleep”), which puts the computer into a low power state when not being used.
UPDATE JULY 2026: It seems this issue is not 100% resolvable for the 2015 Macbook Pro with dual GPUs. Other Maccbooks are likely to work fine – but Linux does not know how to handle the dual GPUs – one is more powerful but consumes more power. It seems it may be an issue primarily related to the dual GPUs. I’ve gone back to running Apple MacOS Big Sur on the 2015 Macbook Pro.
I first tried several different versions (distros) of Linux including Zorin OS, Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Cosmic OS/Pop!_OS
First, on each of these I had to manually install the Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers (easy to do). Fortunately, I have both Wi-Fi and wired Ethernet – and this is easy to install if you have a network connection, which in my case was the wired Ethernet.
The second issue was the wake up from suspend problem.
Suspend worked on all distros, but waking up from suspend mode failed most of the time or all of the time depending on the distro used.
With help of Grok AI, I found a solution that fixed the problem for me. (Update: Did not always work – I could sometimes use the system for a couple of days but then it would not wake up from suspend – and had to do a power off/restarrt.)
In Terminal, use the command:
sudo nano /etc/tmpfiles.d/disable-acpi-wakeup.conf
And then add the following:
# Disable ACPI wake sources (XHC1 for USB, LID0 for lid) on boot
w+ /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - XHC1
w+ /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - LID0
Press Ctrl O to output or save the file, then press Enter, and then Ctrl-X to exit the editor.
Type the command:
sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create
The above may work on may versions of Linux but if it does not (and it did not work for me), try this instead = change the 2 lines beginning with w+ to the following single line in the file you just created:
w /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - XHC1\nLID0
Save that file and type
sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create
This file will run when the system is restarted.
How to check the wake up sources - type this command:
cat /proc/acpi/wakeup
You want to see that XHC1 and LID0 are "disabled".
The other alternative is to create a service - this did not work for me, though.
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/disable-wake.service
Then add the following using the text editor:[Unit]
Description=Disable ACPI wake sources
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup; echo LID0 > /proc/acpi/wakeup'
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl enable disable-wake.service
sudo systemctl start disable-wake.service
sudo systemctl status disable-wake.service (should exit without error)
If you get an error (as I did), you may wish to change the ExecStart line to
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo "XHC1" > /proc/acpi/wakeup; echo "LID0" > /proc/acpi/wakeup'
I did not test that as I went with the other method, shown first, above.
