A message from vit9696

This month completes the vacation season, and this time we have something special to present. For a long time Linux support was a grey area in OpenCore. It worked and we fixed the reported issues when it did not. However, one needed to perform a fair amount of work to make Linux natively display in the OpenCore boot pickers, whether built-in or the shiny OpenCanopy. This fall, this is finally changing.

With OpenCore 0.7.3, we present a preview version of the OpenLinuxBoot.efi driver, which delivers first-class Linux support for OpenCore without any chainloading required like GRUB or rEFInd. @MikeBeaton did a really great job on this. His driver supports all sorts of distributions, including blspec compatibility, automatic detection of other installation types / schemes, and even manual configuration for particularily peculiar setups. There is a comprehensive section on how to use it in the reference manual, as well as in the discussion for the PR. While we have had positive experiences so far, we must still warn you that the driver has just landed and is still in a beta stage.

Among other bootloader changes there are several stability fixes, new quirks for older hardware courtesy of @mhaeuser, and security revampments by @MikhailKrichanov. As for the drivers, WhateverGreen got a long awaited backlight smoothing support for the Intel GPUs thanks to @0xFireWolf. After months of hard work from @Goldfish64 AppleALC and VirtualSMC are now available on 32-bit macOS versions up to 10.4 for the first time. To add more, VoodooPS2 also received support for the touchpad muxers thanks to @1Revenger1.

— Vit

Changelogs

OpenCore 0.7.3

  • Improved SSDT-PNLF compatibility with CFL+ graphics
  • Fixed OpenCanopy performance loss due to redrawing introduced in 0.6.9
  • Added pattern-based automatic variable initialisation for better security
  • Updated underlying EDK II package to edk2-stable202108
  • Updated Apple Secure Boot variables for x86legacy
  • Updated Linux variants in Flavours.md
  • Implemented Boot Entry Protocol, allowing plug-in boot entry drivers
  • Added StringBuffer and FlexArray libraries
  • Updated Drivers to support arguments (requires config.plist update, see samples)
  • Added OpenLinuxBoot driver: OC-native Linux autodetect and boot without chaining via GRUB
  • Fixed overlong boot entry names breaking text flow in builtin menu
  • Added ForceOcWriteFlash UEFI quirk to enable writing OC system variables

Lilu 1.5.6

  • Added the circular buffer API.
  • Added convenient helpers to check a value (available as of C++17).
  • Added the OSObjectWrapper API to wrap a non-OSObject value.

AppleALC 1.6.4

  • Added 10.4 and 10.5 support, and 10.6 and 10.7 support in 32-bit mode
  • Update STAC9200 layout-id 11 to support 10.4 to 10.6
  • Added STAC9205 layout-id 11 for Dell Inspiron 1520 and Latitude D630
  • Fixed crash on GPUs without digital audio support introduced in 1.6.1
  • Added ALC623 layout-id 21 for Lenovo M70T by Andres ZeroCross
  • Seperated Laptop/Desktop patches for 8086:A171 to fix HDMI audio on Intel NUC
  • Added ALC236 layout-id 36 for Lenovo Ideapad 510s 14isk by volcbs
  • Added ALC235 layout-id 12 for Dell Optiplex 7040 MT by wern-apfel
  • Improved CA0132 layout-id 7 by removing not needed MuteGPIO by wern-apfel
  • Added ALC235 layout-id 8 for Intel NUC 8 by wern-apfel
  • Added ALC269 layout-id 69 for MSI GF63 Thin 9SEXR by Vorshim92
  • Added ALC289 layout-id 93 for XPS 9500 4k by sweet3c
  • Added ALC892 layout-id 32 for custom G4/G5mod

VirtualSMC 1.2.7

  • Fixed build settings for 32-bit
  • Added EC fan monitoring support on HP OMEN Laptop 15-ek0xxx, thx @lunjielee
  • Added fan0-dividend to support more EC fan monitors

WhateverGreen 1.5.3

Note: This release requires Lilu v1.5.6 or later.

  • Added no-gfx-spoof to avoid forcing device-id values from PCI I/O.
  • Added the backlight smoother submodule that makes brightness transitions smoother on Intel IVB+ platforms. (by @0xFireWolf)
  • MMIO Register Access submodules are now available on Intel IVB+ platforms. (by @0xFireWolf)
  • Improved ASUS-made AMD R9 380 GPU identification
  • Fixed applbkl property with <00 00 00 00> value failing to disable backlight patches

HibernationFixup 1.4.3

  • Use method routeMultipleLong instead of routeMultiple in order to avoid conflict with DebugEnhancer

DebugEnhancer 1.0.4

  • Use method routeMultipleLong instead of routeMultiple in order to avoid conflict with HibernationFixup

VoodooPS2 2.2.5

  • Added support for touchpads with multiplexors

RestrictEvents 1.0.4

  • Fixed dual-core CPU spoofing on macOS 10.14 and earlier
  • Allow preserving MP7,1 UI through revnopatch in NVRAM or boot-args
  • Skip leading spaces for automatically received CPU names

CpuTscSync 1.0.4

  • Added constants for macOS 12 support
  • Added macOS 12 compatibility for CPUs with MSR_IA32_TSC_ADJUST (03Bh)