Buying a new MacBook? Think twice...

[cleentrax]

Here are the details on the new version of the MacBook, at least my new MacBook, which is the black 2.2ghz model, purchased on Nov. 1 when it was released. I love Gutsy, and I love my new MacBook, but the two aren't working smoothly together yet.

While the Apple MacBook update seems modest to the casual observer, the MacBook is now quite different inside. So existing Wikis and walk-throughs will not work for you.

I was able to install Gutsy rather painlessly as a dual boot, using Leopard's Boot Camp to resize the partition, installing rEFIt, and then Gutsy.

Some big differences from the previous C2D generation MacBook, as relates to Gutsy:

1. The Intel chipset has been upgraded to the "Santa Rosa" platform, the same as is currently in the Mac Book Pro. This is a good thing for several performance reasons, especially the faster (800mhz) front side bus and higher upper limit for RAM (4gB).

2. The new chipset replaces the "950" video with "X3100" video from Intel. While this is a more capable video chipset for things such as running 3D games in Windows, it does not currently work well with Compiz. The X3100 is actually blacklisted, and does not work with video. So if you want a smooth Compiz experience out of the box, you may have to wait for the next version of Ubuntu, or cough up the extra cash for a Mac Book Pro, which has discrete Nvidia graphics.

3. The WIFI chipset has changed from Atheros to the Broadcom 4328. This is a bad thing, in that Broadcom does not play nicely with Linux. To this point, I have not been able to get it working in 64-bit Ubuntu Studio. I have tried madwifi, ndiswrapper, and the bcm43xx firmware. The 4328 has been reported to work for some people in 32 bit mode.

4. The trackpad appears to have been updated, and does not respond to the synaptics driver settings in xorg.conf. While basic use is possible, I have not been able to add clicking and scrolling actions, or fine-tune the accuracy and speed. The GUI slider in the Mouse applet does work.

The physical keyboard layout has also changed, especially the multimedia and screen/volume controls. I have not yet been able to get the Ctrl+click to work as a right-click, which is a problem, since the trackpad doesn't seem to respond to xorg.conf customization

5. Sound doesn't work "out of the box" but I haven't tried too hard to get it working yet. Same goes for the iSight.

Any questions for prospective buyers?

Anyone have some hints for me as I try to resolve the above issues?

[cyberdork33]

I would like to help you with the Wi-Fi, as we have been using that chipset in iMacs for awhile now.

Second, I would like to make sure everyone knows that if you want a computer that will run Ubuntu well, you should not be buying a Mac. There are always incompatibilities with every hardware update. In fact, the above sounds very similar to the problems with the Santa Rosa Macbook Pros when they first came out. On the other hand, I have no doubt that many of the issues will be worked out eventually.

I suggest filing bug reports for the sound, graphics, and touchpad. That will hopefully get a developer looking at the issues.

[cyberdork33]

Here is a workaround for Compiz until the isues are fixed:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3451249

[Seq]

I have updated the appletouch driver to recognize the new ids of the trackpad. It appears to be functionally identical. The patch is attached to Bug 162090.

Martin Szulecki wrote a patch to support the aluminum apple keyboard, and I have updated it also to support the macbook3,1 keyboard. This is attached to bug 162083.

The mactel-linux site was an aid in this process.

I created a personal package archive on my launchpad account, and am looking at patching this into the current gutsy kernel (2.6.22-14.46 at time of writing). When I have that working, I'll post back.


Regarding wireless, it seems as if we are stuck with ndiswrapper at the moment, which is extremely unfortunate. I am using an amd64 system on it, and unfortunately have some random freezes (apparently this is not unknown with ndiswrapper).

Update: This bcm4328 howto worked for me on 64-bit system. I haven't had a freeze all day, but I would love to go back to the ath driver (which also would need an update for the current atheros cards)

I actually had forgotten about sound not working until I read your post. I am going to hope that the update will be the same as for the recent macbook pro, so I'll see about patching that in as well.

[cleentrax]

Originally Posted by Seq I have updated the appletouch driver to recognize the new ids of the trackpad. It appears to be functionally identical. The patch is attached to Bug 162090. Martin Szulecki wrote a patch to support the aluminum apple keyboard, and I have updated it also to support the macbook3,1 keyboard. This is attached to bug 162083. The mactel-linux site was an aid in this process. I created a personal package archive on my launchpad account, and am looking at patching this into the current gutsy kernel (2.6.22-14.46 at time of writing). When I have that working, I'll post back. Regarding wireless, it seems as if we are stuck with ndiswrapper at the moment, which is extremely unfortunate. I am using an amd64 system on it, and unfortunately have some random freezes (apparently this is not unknown with ndiswrapper).

Thanks for the info. I'll eagerly await news of your kernel patch. As for the wireless, I will give ndiswrapper another try. I have yet to get it to work with my card, after several hours of trying. Is there a particular guide you could point me to? I've tried 5 or 6 of them.

[Seq]

Originally Posted by cleentrax Thanks for the info. I'll eagerly await news of your kernel patch. As for the wireless, I will give ndiswrapper another try. I have yet to get it to work with my card, after several hours of trying. Is there a particular guide you could point me to? I've tried 5 or 6 of them.

I updated my post with a link to the howto I used. I did this after you clicked reply, but before you posted, apparently.

[cleentrax]

Thanks, but I'm having no luck on the last wifi step. Everything goes quite well until the modprobe. Then the Terminal just hangs. I've tried it several times.

[cyberdork33]

Originally Posted by cleentrax Thanks, but I'm having no luck on the last wifi step. Everything goes quite well until the modprobe. Then the Terminal just hangs. I've tried it several times.

Is the Abovementioned driver the only one installed to ndiswrapper?

Check installed drivers with

sudo ndiswrapper -l

You can remove drivers with:

sudo ndiswrapper -r driver_name

Make sure there is only one driver loaded (the correct one).

[cleentrax]

Originally Posted by cyberdork33 Is the Abovementioned driver the only one installed to ndiswrapper? Check installed drivers with sudo ndiswrapper -l You can remove drivers with: sudo ndiswrapper -r driver_name Make sure there is only one driver loaded (the correct one).

I get:

bcmwl5 : driver installed
        device (14E4:4328) present

[Seq]

Alright, some news on the patch front. I have successfully patched the kernel package, though I realized afterwards I should have done a custom kernel (-macbook) instead of patching it into the regular source so you could fall back to -generic via grub.

This is hosted on my home server right now, so I don't have a lot of bandwith. I'm going to assume that not a lot of people have the macbook3,1 yet, so hopefully I will be fine. Please be nice

I have signed up for the launchpad ppa, but am waiting for approval to join the beta testers team before I can utilize that functionality. When that happens (hopefully tomorrow?) I will post back with the PPA information.

Patches included so far are the keyboard and appletouch patches. Tomorrow I will be looking at sound. I offer no warranties, blah blah blah.

Update/ Warning: I should mention, this updates 2.6.22-14-generic. It works for me, but YMMV.
Update 2007-11-23/: I have updated the address to use the launchpad PPA system now.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chrisirwin/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chrisirwin/ubuntu gutsy main

Source does not compile cleanly due to my never doing this before. After running `debuild`, wait until after the .diff is made (takes a few minutes), then make the following symlinks in another terminal:

ln -s debian/abi/2.6.22-14.46cwi1 debian/abi/2.6.22-14.46
ln -s debian/abi/2.6.22-14.46cwi1 debian/abi/2.6.22-14.46.1

I updated xorg.conf with some synaptics changes. I am having a very hard time doing two-finger-tap clicks, as it seems to both scroll and click (thus, click on the wrong part of a page). Does anybody what synaptics voodoo is needed to fix this?

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"

        Option          "HorizEdgeScroll"       "0"
        Option          "VertEdgeScroll"        "0"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "30"
        Option          "VertScrollDelta"       "30"
        Option          "VertTwoFingerScroll"   "1"
        Option          "HorizTwoFingerScroll"  "1"
        Option          "PressureMotionMinZ"    "10"

        #Option          "FingerLow"             "10"
        #Option          "FingerHigh"            "18"

        Option          "LeftEdge"              "10"
        Option          "RightEdge"             "1200"
        Option          "TopEdge"               "10"
        Option          "BottomEdge"            "375"
        Option          "MinSpeed"              "0.8"
        #Option          "MaxSpeed"              "1"
        Option          "AccelFactor"           "0.015"
        #Option          "MaxTapMove"            "20"
        #Option          "MaxTapTime"            "100"

        Option          "TapButton2"            "3"
        Option          "TapButton3"            "2"

        Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"
EndSection

Regarding Wireless, I may actually swap the wifi card from this notebook with my girlfriend's macbook1,1 just to get away from Broadcom. I looked up some instructions online, and aside from being a ridiculously large number of screws, it does not seem overly difficult.