MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support

[jebus_beler]

The xorg edgers launchpad ppa site had a note that the ppa could not be used with Unity 3D. However, that was fixed in the ppa updates today. So you could enable it again now and you should find that Unity 3D works. Gnome-shell has worked all along and is better than Unity anyhow

PS I am a linux guy who has never had a Mac but am looking around here because the current offer of intel ultrabooks is so pathetic.

Thanks for the pointer. I can confirm that the xorg edgers ppa suddenly works with unity 3d which was never the case for me before.

[jebus_beler]

Will also add...since switching to xorg-edgers my resume problems seem to have gone away even using unity/compiz. So I guess that was the difference between my setup and many other peoples. In any case the whole linux experience is becoming much much nicer. Thanks for all help everyone here!

[poliva]

@jebus_beler: weird, I'm not using xorg-edgers and never had a suspend/resume problem at all.

[jebus_beler]

I must have bungled something on my install but somehow when running compiz (with or without unity) resumes would consistently fail within a couple of cycles (usually less than 5). Disabling compiz and just using gnome classic resolved the problem and I also never noticed in in KDE (though I didn't run the latter for long). But now with the new xorg-edgers I don't have this problem. Not sure why but am just very happy its gone!

[jebus_beler]

I am using the 13" model.

I found that I cannot use xorg-edgers, otherwise I cannot login to desktop (the screen is blank except background wallpaper).

For mtrack, I found that I need to tweak /etc/X11/xorg.conf to have the trackpad working properly.

Replace the whole mtrack InputClass with the following:

Section "InputClass"

    Identifier       "Multitouch Touchpad"
    Driver           "mtrack"
    MatchDevicePath  "/dev/input/event*"
    MatchIsTouchpad  "on"
    Option           "CorePointer"     "true"
    Option           "Sensitivity"     "0.65"  #    1 : movement speed
    Option           "ScrollDistance"  "100"   #  150 : two-finger drag dist for click
    Option           "ClickTime"       "25"    #   50 : millisec to hold emulated click
    Option           "ClickFinger1"    "0"
    Option           "ClickFinger2"    "3"
    Option           "TapButton1"      "1"
    Option           "TapButton2"      "3"
    Option           "TapButton3"      "2"
    Option           "ScrollUpButton"  "5"
    Option           "ScrollDownButton" "4"
    Option           "ButtonTouchExpire" "0"
    Option           "GestureWaitTime" "200"
#   Option           "ThumbSize"       "35"    #   25 : min size of thumb
#   Option           "PalmSize"        "55"    #   40 : min size of palm
EndSection # "Multitouch Touchpad"

The ScrollUpButton and ScrollDownButton are swapped from the default to have the same "more natural" behaviour as MacOS.

Also, to have 2 finger+click = right click, I have to set ClickFinger2 to 3. Also, you need to set ButtonTouchExpire to 0, otherwise 2 finger+click works only when you put the 2 fingers on touchpad and press the trackpad button simultaneously.

After editing xorg.conf, restart lightdm service (service lightdm restart) or simply reboot to make new config effective

The meaning of the options are documented in
https://github.com/BlueDragonX/xf86-input-mtrack

@leecy0: I'm currently using the synaptic drivers (default) which actually work quite well except they don't support click plus drag and that's annoying so I'm thinking of trying your mtrack config. With synaptic i seem to have the trackpad nicely disabled while typing. I had setup syndaemon manually and used to have to restart it after resumes but it now seems to be mysteriously behaving very well (not complaining but its nice to see stuff all come together). I'm a little worried that I'll spoil this nice setup by switching to mtrack -- does it require dispad or something to disable the trackpad while typing? Would be useful to hear what people are doing to sort out trackpad while typing. My syndaemon options are as follows:

syndaemon -i 2 -d -t -K

[tlee]

First of all, I have to say that I am extremely pleased to be running Linux again. Been with OS X since I bought the MBA last summer, and it has been maddening. Finally worked up the courage to try putting Ubuntu on this weekend. Great success. Much gratitude to everyone for the hard work.

I am encountering one small problem that I can't figure out... my option and command keys keep getting switched. The command key will function as the "alt" key, but then after waking up from a suspend, it's the option key that functions as "alt."

Any thoughts?

[ceti331]

anyone know if linux wm's can be setup to trigger expose/spaces on trackpad gestures , & 3 finger drag... the pinnacle of desktop management IMO was SnowLeopard with multitouch.
I would be interested in configurations such as pinch to 'zoom out' (show desktops) or maybe multiple fingers to drag and resize windows simultaneously

[sinzui]

I have upgraded to 3.0.0-13-generic and ran the post install script before rebooting. X does not start properly. I was able to get it to start after several attempts from recovery mode, but the resolution is buggered. Could fix-i915.sh be incompatible?

I am running 3.0.0-12-generic for the time being.

[Murphy2712]

Thanks for the pointer. I can confirm that the xorg edgers ppa suddenly works with unity 3d which was never the case for me before.

In my case Unity 3D is now launching (both top bar and left bar), but it's still not fully working:
- no alt-tab to switch between windows,
- no alt-right/left to switch between desktops.

My alt key is working well otherwise.
Any hint?

[jebus_beler]

I'm also very glad to be running Linux as for a while I was worrying that it wouldn't happen. Its still not perfect but my current setup is much more stable than it used to be and with some trackpad fixes and battery life improvements will not want for functionality over OS X.

@tlee: I had the same issue. The post install script sets up a resume script to reload Xmodmaps on wakeup but the latter fails because for some reason its called when the X environment isn't fully setup yet. I actually like using the "command" key as a super key so I just removed the ~/.Xmodmap (which also implements annoying reverse scrolling btw -- so called natural scrolling). I also removed the script 00_usercustom that the post-install script sets up in /etc/pm/sleep.d. Unfortunately if you do want the keys reversed I'm not sure how to fix this though maybe someone else can pipe in.

@ceti331: first I guess you might need the touchegg drivers to do this. Not sure if compiz has support for gestures yet but you can look in CompizConfigSettings. I noticed KDE does allow one to define arbitrary actions for gestures. I for one use hot corners (which are supported by Compiz via CompizConfigSettings) and that's good enough for me. If you get gestures to work, either via mtrack or touchegg, then please let us know.

@sinzui: Is this part of the latest ubuntu update (haven't run it myself) or did you do something special? I'm loath to break my install by updating with some borked kernel.

@Murphy2712: sounds weird. i had something happen in gnome2d. I would recommend installing CompizConfigSettings and try setting whichever window-switcher you prefer to use alt-tab. Btw try super-tab as well since that's often set to be an alternate window-switcher. This can also be used to configure switching desktop (and all other) shortcuts.