Linux 5.8 Picking Up A Quirk For Being Able To Reboot The 2009 MacBook Without Hangs

With the upcoming Linux 5.8 cycle a quirk is being added to be able to reboot the 2009 era Apple MacBook without needing to boot with any special flags.

Up to now the 2009 Apple MacBook (Macbook6,1) required a reboot=pci boot parameter added to the kernel otherwise when rebooting the system there would be a hang. This late 2009 MacBook (MC207LL/A) with Core 2 Duo CPU is very slow by today's standards and hopefully many of you still aren't using it in production, but should you be doing so and running new kernel releases, with Linux 5.8 the kernel can reboot without hanging or needing to manually add the flag.

Queued now in x86/misc is a quirk adding in the MacBook6,1 DMI information so the PCI reboot method will be set by default and thereby avoiding the hang.

The Linux 5.8 kernel is set to see its merge window open at the start of June and should debut as stable in August with a number of promising improvements and new features.