I had a Macbook Pro with two graphics cards, one AMD Radeon and an integrated
Intel. When I use the BIOS emulation then the system selects the AMD chipset,
and I can't switch to intel graphics. I had to install a patch to supports
the apple_gmux which handles the switching beetween graphics cards, and
setting the screen brigtness. To use the Intel graphics you will have to boot
in EFI mode.
Apples EFI is nonstandard, I heard that installing Ubuntu can brick a Mac.
WiFi did not work with Ubuntu, I guess that it won't work with Trisquel.
The newest Macs (and iPhone) support AirDrop which requires a WiFi card that
allows you to be connected with two different SSIDs at a time. Maybe a binary
blob is required to use WiFi.
When you buy an Apple product, you pay for a license for a nonfree OS.
Some companies offer a Windows refund, and Apple is as bad as the other
companies which do not offer a Windows refund. Or even worse as the use the
term "Open Source" to target free software users. I used Debian on my old PC
before I switched to Mac. Apple avoids the GPLv3 and contributes a little bit
to non copylefted free software.
I sold my MacBook Pro and baught an Emperor Penguin GNU / Linux Notebook from
ThinkPenguin. I still use some of the non copylefted free software packages
that was written by Apple employees (mostly libdispatch and LLVM/clang). But
I prefer copylefted free software. Currently I'm working on a free
replacement for Mac OS X, based on Trisquel, GNUstep and some components of
the GNU hurd.
The only Apple hardware that I own are a Magic Trackpad, a wired Apple
Keyboard an Apple IR remote. No nonfree software is required to use these
devices. I use the Magic Trackpad for testing multitouch support in free
operating systems. Right click did not work on Ubuntu when I enabled two
finger scroll on my Mac. Think Penguin hardware also offers two finger
scroll.
