Q4OS Forum

Mzungu

Member

Registered: 2026-01-03

Posts: 2

Kernel driver for FacetimeHD required for MacBook Air 7,2

Hi,
I'm pretty impressed by Q4OS and consider installing it instead of Kubuntu on my dual-boot MacBook.

But there is a catch: For my Mac's FaceTime HD Camera I need a driver — which so far I load via a PPA-repository, as described here: launchpad.net/~greg-whiteley/+archive/ubuntu/facetimehd

How could an installation be done on Q4OS?

Thanks…

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Bene vixit, bene qui latuit

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,291

Website

Re: Kernel driver for FacetimeHD required for MacBook Air 7,2

PPA repositories are mostly incompatible with Debian/Q4OS. Unless you are absolutely sure what you are doing, do not add PPAs to Q4OS systems. Instead, we recommend to use Debian based instructions or installing Quarkos, which includes Q4OS tools and features while being based on Ubuntu, see https://quark-os.sourceforge.io/.

theasmitkid

Member

From: NCT of Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 357

Re: Kernel driver for FacetimeHD required for MacBook Air 7,2

Or you could try installing the driver via the guide provided in wiki

https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wi … -on-debian

And I'd also recommend setting up dkms for future ease, it makes a .deb file you can easily install

https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wi … l-update-1

Last edited by theasmitkid (2026-05-18 14:04)

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Coding & Robotics Enthusiast | Windows 7 x86 @ n2600 · 2GB · 320GB HDD (No graphics acceleration available in linux)

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,591

Re: Kernel driver for FacetimeHD required for MacBook Air 7,2

As per Q4OS Team - don't use PPAs on Debian.
I use a Macbook Air 7,2 with Q4OS plasma and can confirm that the process mentioned by @theasmitkd above works.
DKMS is strongly recommended especially with all the kernel updates flying about at the moment.
Make sure you have the metapackages linux-image-amd64 and linux-headers-amd64 installed so the bits needed to recompile the driver will be on your system.

You will also need to watch out for the wireless card - it requires the broadcom-sta-dkms package which is not part of the standard install and you cannot connect without it. I use a USB>Ethernet cable from Amazon if I find wifi has stopped working. Again DKMS is your friend when updates arrive.