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

[ChinaSailor]

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/75820.html

For those Unity lovers, don't bother reading..... All others, you might enjoy this article...

"For me GNOME has been irrelevant since they went from 2.x to 3.x," Pogson said. "I have been using XFCE4 ever since," he noted. "

I can manage my own desktop, thank you very much.

[berryman77]

I may have found a solution to the external monitor problem. Previously, I've had to run Ubuntu 2D because my screen would freeze using the default Unity. While addressing a video tearing issue, I enabled settings in Compiz which also corrected my external monitor issue.

Turns out I still ran into trouble. After using Unity 2D, I finally decided to give xubuntu another chance (tried it years ago). I was impressed and how much it had improved (more polish), while still remaining simple. I'm using compositing and I've had no graphics issues at all. I'm still running xorg-edgers because ppa-purge can't revert it, so I don't know if there are any issues with xubuntu and the main drivers/xorg. While there are some things about Unity I do like, for now I am most satisfied with XFCE4.

[zmiq2]

Hi All,

after coming from vacations this past Monday, and proceeding with the usual packages update, my 4,1 11' mba had very frequent x-logouts. I never happened that to me before.

I'm using an external monitor, I don't known if that's the cause.

After being impossible to work, I decided to upgrade to ubuntu quantal, 12.10, which is already in beta.

Been a happy camper since!!! 12.10 seems smoother to me, and external monitor, which was a real pain, now works smoothly.

HTH

[warpino]

Dear all,

I'm a happy macbook air 4.2 + ubuntu 12.04 64 bit user since a few months.
There are just three "minor" issues I have not been able to solve yet:

1) bluetooth is not working. I can turn it on from the tray, but when I go into bluetooth settings it is stuck on "off" and can not be switched to "on" in any way

2) I wish I could reproduce Max OS X 10.7 Lion touchpad gestures. Any straight guide about how to achieve that?

3) Each time I turn on, reboot, revert from suspend or even unlock the computer screen the keybord light is back to the maximum. Any way to make it keep the last value?

Thanks for your help!

[xHrvoje]

I recently got a MBA 4,1 and installed 12.04 alongside OS X and my main concern are somewhat higher CPU temperatures. I'm running 3.2.0-29-generic, broadcom-sta WL driver, using Unity-2D, have enabled i915 rc6 powersave and every other power saving technique I could think of (post-install along with few others). My powertop reports 8.79 W at idle and tunables all report "Good". I can't think of anything else to do, my laptop gets significantly hotter after using it for a while than it does on Os X which remains at 2000 rpm fan and 44 degrees CPU at idle (quite comfortable). Please offer any advice, I really want to use Ubuntu on this laptop. Thanks!



Summary: 244,2 wakeups/second, 0,0 GPU ops/second and 0,0 VFS ops/sec

Usage Events/s Category Description
16,0 ms/s 68,7 Process /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background n
1,4 ms/s 37,3 Timer tick_sched_timer
0,8 ms/s 22,5 Timer hrtimer_wakeup
3,9 ms/s 21,1 Process /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser
9,8 ms/s 16,7 Process gnome-terminal
145,1 µs/s 18,2 kWork flush_to_ldisc
1,7 ms/s 16,0 Process metacity
5,2 ms/s 10,6 Process /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=renderer --lang=hr --force-fieldtest=C
1,4 ms/s 9,4 Interrupt [6] tasklet(softirq)
384,3 µs/s 5,9 Interrupt [11] ata_piix
183,2 µs/s 3,1 Process syndaemon -i 2.0 -K -R -t
1,1 ms/s 1,8 Process powertop
467,6 µs/s 2,0 Interrupt [21] i915
5,5 ms/s 0,0 Timer wl_timer
2,7 ms/s 0,1 Process /usr/sbin/macfanctld
2,3 ms/s 0,0 Interrupt [11] ehci_hcd:usb1
185,9 µs/s 0,8 Interrupt [9] acpi
155,4 µs/s 0,8 Interrupt [9] RCU(softirq)
83,5 µs/s 0,8 Process /usr/sbin/mouseemu
543,5 µs/s 0,6 kWork acpi_os_execute_deferred
184,4 µs/s 0,7 Interrupt [4] block(softirq)
13,8 µs/s 0,7 kWork i915_gem_retire_work_handler
1,6 ms/s 0,1 Process /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=renderer --lang=hr --force-fieldtest=C
494,8 µs/s 0,5 Process unity-2d-shell
1,4 ms/s 0,0 Interrupt [11] wlan0
81,6 µs/s 0,5 Process update-notifier
699,3 µs/s 0,2 kWork kcryptd_crypt
2,4 µs/s 0,5 kWork blk_delay_work
384,6 µs/s 0,3 Process [ksoftirqd/1]



coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +56.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +53.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +55.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

applesmc-isa-0300
Adapter: ISA adapter
Exhaust : 3009 RPM (min = 3010 RPM)
TB0T: +36.2°C
TB1T: +36.2°C
TB2T: +35.2°C
TC0C: +53.8°C
TC0D: +54.0°C
TC0E: +55.0°C
TC0F: +57.0°C
TC0P: +50.8°C
TC1C: +54.0°C
TC2C: +54.0°C
TCGC: +54.0°C
TCSA: +53.0°C
TH0F: +249.0°C
TH0J: +249.0°C
TH0O: +249.0°C
TH0o: +28.0°C
THSP: +45.8°C
TM0P: +50.0°C
TPCD: +53.0°C
Ta0P: +47.5°C
Th1H: +38.0°C
Tm0P: +44.8°C
Tm1P: +45.8°C
Ts0P: +34.8°C

[berryman77]

The lowest I've gotten the power to under Linux is 7W and I haven't heard of anyone doing better on the Macbook Air. Under OSX, I can get it down to 4W.

I'm running Cinnamon (with compositing) on Ubuntu and all the latest stuff from xorg-edgers.

Here are my sensor readings for comparison.

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +58.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +59.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

applesmc-isa-0300
Adapter: ISA adapter
Exhaust : 2005 RPM (min = 2000 RPM)
TB0T: +34.8°C
TB1T: +34.8°C
TB2T: +31.5°C
TC0C: +57.5°C
TC0D: +56.8°C
TC0E: +57.8°C
TC0F: +59.5°C
TC0P: +53.0°C
TC1C: +56.0°C
TC2C: +56.0°C
TCGC: +56.0°C
TCSA: +56.0°C
TH0F: +249.0°C
TH0J: +250.0°C
TH0O: +250.0°C
TH0o: +24.0°C
THSP: +47.8°C
TM0P: +54.0°C
TPCD: +69.0°C
Ta0P: +57.8°C
Th1H: +38.0°C
Tm0P: +48.8°C
Tm1P: +55.5°C
Ts0P: +32.2°C

I have no idea what's drawing the extra power. I've tried shutting down the radios (wifi and bluetooth) and unloading as many modules as possible.

I think the ZenBook can get under 5W, but it has its own issues:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

Please post if you make any progress in this area. I get the impression that most people here are content with the higher power draw and heat or don't know that the hardware is capable of better power conservation. I'm willing to try new ideas.

[pindar]

Here are my sensor readings for comparison.

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +58.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +59.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

I have no idea what's drawing the extra power. I've tried shutting down the radios (wifi and bluetooth) and unloading as many modules as possible.

Please post if you make any progress in this area. I get the impression that most people here are content with the higher power draw and heat or don't know that the hardware is capable of better power conservation. I'm willing to try new ideas.

I was going to post that Ubuntu 12.10 handles the MBA better, but after one hour of light use, I get temperatures in the 90˚C range. I had hoped that the kernel 3.5 would make progress in this area, but alas... I'm not willing to risk frying my MBA, so I guess I will delete the linux partition.

[jonkue]

I installed Debian wheezy and Ubuntu 12.10 on my Macbookair 4,2.
On both systems I had temperature problems until I installed under Debian the kernel 3.5.5 from the experimental Repisitories (they removed it some days later from the repistory). In Ubuntu I tested 3.5.5, 3.6.0 and 3.6.3 and some days ago there was a update from 3.5.0.17 to 3.5.0.18.

With the standard kernel 3.5.0.17 I had some crashs. Nothing really chrashed, but I got a popup message. I thried the other kernels but didn't use them because of no wlan support.

Now I got an external USB-Wlanstick. So, I tested the Kernel 3.6.3 and the temperature is ok (watch a flash video 10 minutes ago):

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +64.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +61.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +65.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

applesmc-isa-0300
Adapter: ISA adapter
Exhaust : 2012 RPM (min = 2000 RPM)
TB0T: +36.5°C
TB1T: +36.5°C
TB2T: +33.8°C
TC0C: +63.2°C
TC0D: +61.0°C
TC0E: +65.5°C
TC0F: +66.5°C
TC0P: +56.5°C
TC1C: +64.0°C
TC2C: +64.0°C
TCGC: +63.0°C
TCSA: +54.0°C
TH0F: -5.5°C
TH0J: -6.0°C
TH0O: -6.0°C
THSP: +42.5°C
TM0P: +54.2°C
TPCD: +60.0°C
Ta0P: +51.0°C
Th1H: +38.2°C
Tm0P: +44.2°C
Tm1P: +51.2°C
Ts0P: +32.8°C
Ts0S: +40.0°C

This is the good news. But the bad is, that I don't get the internal wlan to work. In debian with kernel 3.5.5 it works.

Tried to reinstall the module (ignore the german words ) :

sudo apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source
....
Vorbereitung zum Ersetzen von bcmwl-kernel-source 5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3 (durch .../bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Ersatz für bcmwl-kernel-source wird entpackt ...
bcmwl-kernel-source (5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3) wird eingerichtet ...
Loading new bcmwl-5.100.82.112+bdcom DKMS files...
Building only for 3.6.3-030603-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
ERROR: Module b43 does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module b43legacy does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module ssb does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module bcm43xx does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcm80211 does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcmfmac does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcmsmac does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module bcma does not exist in /proc/modules
FATAL: Module wl not found.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Trigger für initramfs-tools werden verarbeitet ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.6.3-030603-generic

Anybody with simular problem or with a hint?

[jonkue]

wifi now works. Had to install the packages:

• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603-generic_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_amd64.deb
• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_all.deb

and reinstall:

• bcmwl-kernel-source

[pindar]

wifi now works. Had to install the packages:

• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603-generic_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_amd64.deb
• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_all.deb

and reinstall:

• bcmwl-kernel-source

This sounds promising. Did you get the kernel and these debs from the kernel-mainline ppa?