Hello everyone.
Bear with me while I present my case; It is not straightforward at all.
I am the sad owner of a nearly defunct MBP 15-inch early 2011 (it could be late 2011 also. I could be mistaken).
This particular model has a few peculiarities:
1) the curse of the dying discrete graphics (Radeon HD 6490M or HD 6750M), where the high power GPU simply stops working. My machine DOES NOT have this problem yet, for I can boot MacOS from 10.7 to High Sierra with any graphics mode enabled, without a problem (toggled on the power management area).
2) a low power Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU, which is known not to be very well managed by Apple itself. There are two known facts about this particular GPU/setup: Apple recognizes this low power GPU cannot manage an external monitor (using the mini displayport) and from some Linux posts, from several falvors - not just on Macs - if more than one GPU is present on the system, there are severe conflicts that will cause many side effects, among them the black (purple-ish) screen after boot. Well, do not quote me on this last one.
3) Installing Ubuntu on such a machine (and possibly Arch, Mint, Debian) will require the Radeon to be disabled. As a matter of fact, this is a very popular hack (FIX ???...) used by people who suffer from the horrible death of the main GPU: completely disabling the GPU. (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro8-2/Raring and also the very good https://orville.thebennettproject.co...1-macbook-pro/)
None of this is the reason why my mac is nearly defunct. The problem is that it fell and irreparably damaged the body, shattered the screen and pretty much rendered it useless as a notebook.
Long story short, I've taken it apart, every piece, moved the system board to a regular case, and am running the MAINBOARD ONLY, with an SSD, connected to the external displayport. That means, no sound, WIFI, BT, DVD, camera or anything that is a regular "peripheral". It is the mainboard and the SSD. That's that. All the rest is connected via USB (except the power supply, of course).
As I mentioned, MacOS runs fine in that "configuration". I've installed it with the internet installer, and it is happy. Following that, I tried installing Debian 9.2.1 (Strech), whose installer works out of the box (no hacks required), but when it reboots, graphics go to hell. You can ping and SSH the machine, which HAS X running, but that 's it: no image. Haven't spent much time on it, and jumped to Ubuntu, which is what I want on that, well, system, for lack of a better word. I was also able to install ubuntu SERVER in text mode like that.
With all of that background in mind, here is the problem I need help with:
If I apply the hack described on point 3 above, I don't have any image at all. It is rather predictable, since the Intel card cannot generate images to the external monitor.
Among the many attempts on this system (about 30 to 40 hours of tests), I was able to disable the framebuffer (I think), quite and splash options, and got the system to continue the installer. It freezes (does it ? Or is it unable to output to screen, but continues to process in the background ?), and the last line I see stated it is switching from the EFI FB (framebuffer) to the radeondrmfb. Sounds clear that the radeon framebuffer is not a happy camper here.
Out of desperation I used my wife's macbook pro (identical to my shattered one) and installed the system on it, successfully, BUT with the Intel hack from point 3.
Still on her notebook, with my SSD connected directly (not USB), I tried installing AMD's latest drivers (proprietary), and removing the hack lines from grub configurations on boot, but something wrong must have happened. The system booted to a black screen (system is running in the background). Re-enabling the hack, I see that Ubuntu fails auto-login in X, and keeps prompting me for a password. I enter the password, it tries logging on, fails, and quits back to the login manager again.
What I think I have to do (and where I need help):
1) Install the system from scratch using the working notebook.
2) Boot in text mode (for the old timers like me, runlevel 3), with no framebuffer either. (I tried a few options, like nofb, nomodeset, and CONSOLE on grub. How to make sure it will have no framebuffer active, to avoid conflicts ?)
3) Disable the Intel GPU completely (I don't know the commands, but I guess i915.modeset=0 could be a hint. Need help here.)
4) Install proprietary or open source AMD drivers (suggestions ? opinions ? most importantly, procedures ? )
5) Force radeon only on boot (Maybe with radeon.modeset=1 on grub. Need help with the commands)
I THINK that, if I install the right drivers, force the Intel GPU to be off, and the Radeon GPU to be on, Ubuntu will use the correct drivers and will finally work for my VERY particular setup.
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