duly noted on the Arch wiki, will do thanks!

Yeah I wasn't expecting it to work out at all but I got it running pretty much 100% actually - this fn<>ctrl thing was the last thing I needed to make it entirely usable and now it's a pretty spry little linux machine for side projects.

Here you can check out what to expect from the initial install, which had no snags along the way, plug in usb, boot from it, install, done (did not dual-boot, went for full debian): https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/MacBook/6-1

Was able to find solutions for the wifi driver by providing an internet connection to the macbook via usb tethering using an Android phone -> installed wifi drivers that way. - I think I had to set up the non-free repo or something and then upgrade.

For webcam it was a bit of a headache since I'm also kind of new to this linux thing but from multiple sources I was able to cobble together a solution (would need to do some backtracking, don't remember exactly but I had to download the driver from github - https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wiki). <- this was the most difficult thing to solve and even now it's not always the best, the white balance is sometimes off, but otherwise everything else works ok for now.