Very nice that it's being supported, but I think the general consensus among MacBook owners was that it was mainly a sales gimmick and not actually that useful? With opinion divided, of course. I can imagine it would be handy for specific apps.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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I have a couple touch bar macs, and the touch bar is fine.
However, I installed Ubuntu on one of my touch bar macs. The keyboard has no physical escape key; that would be on the touch bar. So, my Ubuntu touch bar Mac now has no escape key, which is a bit problematic, so having a fix for that would be cool.
It is not a big deal for me, since I'm just using it as a server, but it could be a deal breaker for using a touch bar Mac with Linux as a PC.
I never used a MacBook but I map caps lock to Esc on every machine I own.
Ah, that's a good workaround.
Does that work pre-os boot? I had to boot my Linux Mac into safe mode, and the way to do that is to press the escape key during boot. I had to plug in an external keyboard to do it.
No, it is an OS application that handles if
This was the major problem with the Mac version too. Esc is such a necessary button and they put it behind a bunch of ridiculous other stuff, like if you open the volume slider, now you have to press off of it and then hit esc, so esc is now two button presses.
it was great if you really leant into it and installed custom stuff like better touch bar… but apple never really did a lot with it: it could have been really cool, but it never got the attention it needed
Now I want a Touch Bar MacBook! It would be so fun to customize the touch bar to my exact needs! Possibly even play doom on it!
Lmao nice
I don't think stretching it to the whole width did it any good
I never had one but I don't understand why so many people hated it. It seems like a super useful feature.
it was really useful but in typical apple fashion the defaults were pretty simplistic… if you customised it by installing things like better touch bar and spent time integrating it with your workflow, it was great
but also, i don’t miss it much
See the current dislike for fully digital display on cars. As they are now they just seem like a imprecise replacement for the function keys that either forces you to constantly look down at them (since the main selling point is that programs can change it at will) or force map them to F1-F12 (meaning you've spent extra on the touch-bar for no reason)
Something that always bothered me about them was that I could no longer rely on feeling the keys to know which one I was about to press. Had to look at it to be sure, which slows down productivity
I had it. I hated it. I wanted real function keys back. I wanted a real escape key. Much happier now to have a laptop with real keys instead of that gimmick.
The biggest problem with it is that you have to look at it to use it. When I use my laptop I don’t look down at the keyboard, I look at the big screen in front of me. The Touch Bar is basically like a touch screen in a car: it takes away tactile controls and distracts you from driving, the thing you’re supposed to be doing.
So glad to finally see this like 5 years after I needed it. Apple doesn't even make Macs with the touchbar anymore because it sucked.
As someone who always confuses the function keys with the alternative functions, it feels like a separate bar with that control would be good.
Note that you still need t2linux-specific patches to make it work on your Intel MacBooks with T2 chip.
Oh, the possibilities on Linux! Yummy.