ubuntu on new retina macbook : any experience ?

[raccoonone]

Added these into my rc.local if anyone needs them:

echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode #swap fn keys
echo 2 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness #screen brightness
echo 100 > /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness #backlight keyboard

I have a HDMI and thunderbolt dvi cable, but both only give me 1980. While my U3011 supports 2560x1600. I was able to force 2560 using xrandr, but only on the thunderbolt plug. It also was terrible, text was very fuzzy. Apparently you can get 2560, because someone on the Apple forums has (on windows).

The support for higher res external outputs lack in Apple OS X too, which is annoying!

I have actually got 3 screens working, Laptop, HDMI and thunderbolt DVI which is pretty cool! Although I did have a Kernel panic, relating to the HDMI.


Can the mbpr 13" support 2560x, on a external screen? I'm pretty sure it can. And has anyone got this resolution working on a external screen here?


Thanks

What driver were you using? I've gotten external monitors to work with the proprietary nvidia driver, but haven't gotten it to work with any of the open source ones

[Sc0rian]

I am using the driver that came with raring ringtail. I got a MBPR 13" not 15" so I do not have the nvidia problems...

I have not got any fan control though... Anyone got some tips on this?

[longint]

Hey guys, I'm not using Ubuntu (yet) but get stuck with the nvidia stuff in other linux distributions. I've read several times that Ubuntu users have been able to use their MBPr running the proprietary nvidia drivers. Let me be clear - I've read this for other distributions as well but after digging deeper it turned out that it only worked in very special configurations using 3.6 kernel and specific (non recent) versions of the nvidia drivers. So what is your experience? If you are running the nvidia drivers I would be interested to hear which kernel, nvidia driver version, if you use EFI and if there is something special you did.

I also read about ubuntu 13.04 planning to get official support for this box and that the nightly builds (using kernel 3.8) are already working quite well, can you confirm this?

Other question: Is your SD-Card and Bluetooth working well?
I guess Thunderbold is also just working when plugged in before booting?

Thx a lot, looking forward to hear from your experiences, lets see if they can me make switch to ubuntu

[Sc0rian]

I had to reinstall ubuntu, but not for some reason my audio has no bass at all. Sounds terrible.

/etc/rc.local

rmmod snd_hda_intel
modprobe snd_hda_intel

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

options snd-hda-intel model=mbp101

Anyone know why?

[Umbra Diaboli]

Hey guys, I'm not using Ubuntu (yet) but get stuck with the nvidia stuff in other linux distributions. I've read several times that Ubuntu users have been able to use their MBPr running the proprietary nvidia drivers. Let me be clear - I've read this for other distributions as well but after digging deeper it turned out that it only worked in very special configurations using 3.6 kernel and specific (non recent) versions of the nvidia drivers. So what is your experience? If you are running the nvidia drivers I would be interested to hear which kernel, nvidia driver version, if you use EFI and if there is something special you did.

I also read about ubuntu 13.04 planning to get official support for this box and that the nightly builds (using kernel 3.8) are already working quite well, can you confirm this?

Other question: Is your SD-Card and Bluetooth working well?
I guess Thunderbold is also just working when plugged in before booting?

Thx a lot, looking forward to hear from your experiences, lets see if they can me make switch to ubuntu

Nightly builds? I'm sorry for my noobishness, but there is something called the nightly builds?

[Sc0rian]

nightly builds are developments builds. So they are built nightly with the changes. You are now out of date after a night, since you can get the update however nightly changes can mean you might pick up bugs since it has not been fully tested. This is where you use launchpad.

@longlnt I got a 13", which means I do not have the nvidia worries. However I would use the 13.04 build. Just wack it on a USB pen, boot up from it and see. My bluetooth does work (but cannot get audio working), SD-Card, not sure since I do not have the card type. Thunderbolt works fine, its only ethernet port does not work from cold boot.

[nmushkin]

Im triple booting windows, osx and ubuntu on my retina. I used the windows ubuntu installer while in windows and ubuntu seems to be working pretty well. From the linux boot manager i can choose to boot into all three os. I got the wireless working, by sudo apt-get update, and then using the proprietary driver. there are a few crashes here and there, what would cause this?

[ksatta1]

Lots of replies, haven't had time to visit the forums for a while

just about to get my 13" macbook pro retina, is it good enough to run Ubuntu daily?

I'm hoping to use Ubuntu as my daily operating system.

Or is it really buggy and just a complete nightmare?

Do we have better support for intel drivers now?

I have the 15" Retina model.

I'm using 12.10 Xubuntu with some stuff added from 13.04 daily (the WiFi drivers mainly). I use it at least 8h each day at work. I'm happy with it. It's stable etc, but there's some annoyances like for example the thunderbolt-ethernet adapter stops working after suspend, have to reboot. Using only the Intel adapter and turning off Nvidia, I get about 13W power usage when idling, battery time estimation 7h

In 13.04 more stuff works out-of-the-box, but for me some process keeps crashing and I get notified about it etc. Haven't had much time to look into it.

Dear All,

Could anyone be kind enough to explain how to install the WiFi drivers without an ethernet adapter?

I'm finding the broadcom chip will drop out after 10-30 minutes of use, then the way to get it working again is the reboot the system. It also doesn't support 802.11n

It also looks like the Airport Extreme Atheros AR5008 should fit in fine and will give 802.11n too.

In 13.04 software properties / restricted drivers / broadcom. In 12.10 mine works with bcmwl..something package from 13.04.
EDIT: if you don't have an ethernet adapter, just downloading the bcmwl..something package (for 13.04) from packages.ubuntu.com on another computer should work.

With all the b43fwcutter methods etc I kept having disconnections etc, with the 13.04 restricted driver no problems.

That driver still doesn't support 802.11n though. By the way, I also purchased a cheap USB WiFi which had Linux drivers, but it kept disconnecting too. Haven't tested it in another machine yet (might just be faulty).

The Airport foo seems to be a new module to put inside the macbook, that might also fix it, but I suggest trying the 13.04 restricted driver first

I have not got any fan control though... Anyone got some tips on this?

mactel ppa, package macfanctld

Hey guys, I'm not using Ubuntu (yet) but get stuck with the nvidia stuff in other linux distributions. I've read several times that Ubuntu users have been able to use their MBPr running the proprietary nvidia drivers. Let me be clear - I've read this for other distributions as well but after digging deeper it turned out that it only worked in very special configurations using 3.6 kernel and specific (non recent) versions of the nvidia drivers. So what is your experience? If you are running the nvidia drivers I would be interested to hear which kernel, nvidia driver version, if you use EFI and if there is something special you did.

I also read about ubuntu 13.04 planning to get official support for this box and that the nightly builds (using kernel 3.8) are already working quite well, can you confirm this?

Other question: Is your SD-Card and Bluetooth working well?
I guess Thunderbold is also just working when plugged in before booting?

Thx a lot, looking forward to hear from your experiences, lets see if they can me make switch to ubuntu

I have NVidia working in 13.04 daily with the latest NVidia driver from nvidia.com. I had to add:
Option "UseDPLib" "off"
to the "Device" section.

There's a black screen for maybe 10-20 seconds when it boots, but then it boots and works. Haven't tested it much yet though, ran some glxgears tests

And oh yes, I recently discovered that the MB can't use the external video outputs with the Intel display adapter (it switches to Nvidia in OSX when you plug in DVI or HDMI). My first disappointment with this MB hardware-wise. Now I'm thinking of buying a USB display adapter So that I don't have to use the discrete Nvidia adapter, which heats up the Macbook and eats battery etc. And also there's no easy way to switch between Nvidia and Intel in the same Ubuntu installation (I have 12.10 for daily use, 13.04 for testing some stuff, and Nvidia working there).

I had to reinstall ubuntu, but not for some reason my audio has no bass at all. Sounds terrible.

/etc/rc.local

rmmod snd_hda_intel
modprobe snd_hda_intel

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

options snd-hda-intel model=mbp101

Anyone know why?

The bass speaker sometimes goes to volume 0 or mute. I usually just check it with alsamixer from the command line (I use command line 99% of the time ). There's probably a way to get the bass channel to show up in the GUI mixer too.

My bluetooth does work (but cannot get audio working)

I have BT audio sink working on mine (streaming music from my Android phone to the MB), had to go to the bluetooth settings (right-click BT icon in Xubuntu), and enable "advanced audio receiver". It was skipping etc, but when I disable WiFi it works fine.
EDIT: In 12.10 I had to install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth to get it working, forgot that.
EDIT2: The BT setting is actually left click bt icon, then local services / advanced audio receiver

[Sc0rian]

Thank you for the help ksatta1.

I installed macfanctld and it works a treat.

I got WIFI and bluetooth working, I was missing pulseaudio-module-bluetooth. Once I installed it I was able to see the headset in sound. I installed bluez and got the AD2P profile working, they work great.

So currently I have a completely working laptop on Ubuntu (pretty much) (SD Card untested).

I am using https://launchpad.net/~poliva/+archive/lightum-mba which works a treat. This uses the Mac's light sensor to control screen and keyboard brightness.

I installed https://launchpad.net/~daniel.pavel/+archive/solaar which allows my logitech K750 and MX performance mouse to work and up the DPI. Although from cold boot it does not work, have to unplug and plug the adapter. Cannot get it to scroll more than one line too, which is annoying. Also the unify device only work in one usb port, the right side. The left side just will not work .

Not a big problem since I only run one monitor at work but at home:

I cannot run two external monitors. I have a mini display port -> display port, which allows me to run 2560x1600. I also have a HDMI cable. If I plug it up to both, the 3rd monitor will not enable. The only way I can get it to enable is if I run them all at the same resolution. I can obviously have them all working in Mac OS X no problem. I'm guessing it is a bug with Ubuntu.

I do sometimes get very slow WIFI, so that is not perfect.

[longint]

Hey guys, I'm on 13.04 based on the raring ringtail nighly builds now. For more informatoon have a look to this: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/
I already did some dist-upgrades and got several new kenerls (3.8.0.7-21 or something like this at the momen), no major bugs which prevented me from using the box so far (beside playing around with installing/removing packages by my own .

Considering that 13.04 is supposed to support the box very well and there is a specific build for MAC there are quite a lot of hings not working well. Just want to share my own experiences:
-- suspend is not working at all while it was working without a single issue in Fedora 18, already tried some things, would like to get some hints as this is quite important for me
-- touchpad is not supporting 3finger click as middle click (worked out of the box in Fedora18), please advice how to fix this
++ battery life time is much, much better than in Fedora18! (there seems to be a long known but not solved bug in gnome-shell or Fedora eating up the machine)
++ graphics performance ist much, much better than in Fedora 18, in F18 you have not even been able to watch fullscreen videos, both running not nvidia drivers
- I've not been able to get nvidia drivers running, mainly I'm not on EFI yet
- adjusting backlight is not working while it was in F18
+ better support for basic stuff than F18 which restricted users in much tighter way (grabbing and renaming device names is really annoying)
- the Ubuntu UI (Unity?) is something really strange, but I'm willing to try further
- even compared to the already restricted gonme3 in F18 there are a lot of configuration possibilities missing. How to add additional workspaces?
- while there is less bloatware installed as in F18 there is still something one has to get rid of
- same issues with SDcards not read properly and bluetooth not working (for my devices), might be an general issue

Conclusion: Given the much better better graphic performance and the much better battery lifetime I'll stay on Ubuntu for now. I'll definitely not go back to Fedora as I just did not like it in general. Might be I'll give Arch or Gentoo another try sometimes in the future. Looking forward to get the issues noted above solved, suspend and 3finger click is a must to have...

Question:
* Did anyone install rEFInd right from Ubuntu or any other Linux and not from OSX? Thing is, I already removed OSX completely (first thing I did).

Update:
There is one thing which is really annoying and which I did not face before: The boxes freezes quite often. This only happens when running chrome and trying to input something into the adress bar. Any idea anyone? Chrome got updated today to a new version but this still happens. Not sure if this is really related to chrome as I did not have any issues running it on F18...