Ubuntu on MacBook Air 3,2

[User4519]

OK, still not working. It's generated a full xorg.conf file, but brightness is still not changing. The Device block now looks like this:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

Sorry - I actually missed the point about brightness controls... This is probably ACPI related, and it may just be broken right now. Like this thread, which I'm following (though my machine isn't a Lenove/IBM): https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/625364

I have multiple issues with ACPI in kernels since 2.6.38-3 IIRC (current being -8), also with brightness controls. Just for the heck of it, try using the brightness keys straight after grub launches. For some weird weird reason, if I use mine while booting up, they work and keep working. If I boot into X without having used them, they do not.

Also, since Natty I no longer have a /var/log/messages (!!!!!).

I experienced ACPI regressions with Maverick on the desktop (had to boot with nolapic noapic or get kernel panics), and with Natty, the trouble is making its way to my laptop I believe patience will prove virtuous now. Guess that's why a lot of other distros are faaar from using 2.6.38 ATM.

[Luke.Hoersten]

My Nvidia display fails when I upgrade from linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic to linux-image-2.6.38-9-generic. Not sure what the problem is but if you hit this, roll back the kernel.

Anyone know how to actually fix the -9 kernel?

[lonflavio]

Hi,

I'm having an issue with installing the graphics card, I cant get the first step on to work
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookAir3-2/Meerkat

sudo apt-get install btusb-dkms applesmc-dkms hid-apple-dkms bcm5974-dkms xf86-input-multitouch snd-hda-dkms mbp-nvidia-bl-dkms -y

i get the following error

flavio@flavio-MacBookAir:~$ sudo apt-get install btusb-dkms applesmc-dkms hid-apple-dkms bcm5974-dkms xf86-input-multitouch snd-hda-dkms mbp-nvidia-bl-dkms -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package btusb-dkms
E: Unable to locate package applesmc-dkms
E: Unable to locate package snd-hda-dkms
E: Unable to locate package mbp-nvidia-bl-dkms

I am running Ubuntu Ubuntu 11.04 64bit on a MacBook Air late 2010 11" (new model)

any suggestions?

[pbhedlund]

any suggestions?

These are the mactel packages available for natty https://launchpad.net/~mactel-support/+archive/ppa?field.series_filter=natty. I simply ignored the rest on a fresh install and have not had any problems. I am on a Macbook Air 3,2.

[vickoxy]

Hi,
could someone post how long does air work on battery? My Macbook Pro has at least 60-90 min less with 10.10 as under MacOS.

And another question-after hibernation/suspense-how much time need macbook air to wake up and establish wifi connection?

[pbhedlund]

Hi,
could someone post how long does air work on battery? My Macbook Pro has at least 60-90 min less with 11.10 as under MacOS.

And another question-after hibernation/suspense-how much time need macbook air to wake up and establish wifi connection?

Your observation about battery life is probably correct. I haven't really measured on the Air but I get many hours on battery only.

Since there is no kms video driver for the air waking up from suspend takes up to 10 s. With the new in-kernel wifi driver in 11.04 the Air reconnects almost instantaneously. Much faster than than the previous version.

[vickoxy]

Thanks-well i meant 10.10 on may MBP...

[notsalty]

I just got one of the new MacBook Airs today and I'm trying to install Ubuntu. I've installed refit, resized the Mac Partition, created two new partitions, used dd to image a bootable USB to one of the new partitions and I'm able to boot off of it.

When booting into Ubuntu, the screen is off-center with vertical colored bars that roll on the screen. Has anyone figured out how to get around this yet?

I've seen the same thing. If you press F6 at the beginning of the setup you'll get a few options choose "no mode set" end then Esc. This may fix the problem.

[aengle1429]

Just successfully triple booted Windows Ultimate 64bit, Ubuntu 11.04 64bit, and Mac OS X... took forever. I'm on the 13" Macbook Air with upgraded RAM and 120GB SSD.

Here's how I did it... hope this proves to be useful to anyone:
First, I had 120GB only running OS X. I partitioned to 3 separate spaces, one 33 GB for Ubuntu (another user on page 25 told this, and I followed his method there), and 44 and 44 for Windows and Mac.

I also had rEFIt installed and ready.

I installed Ubuntu first (if you install Windows first, Ubuntu will hang at the Preparing to Install Ubuntu step). This is very frustating; I CTR+ALT+F1'd into the CLI and ran parted and parted would repeatedly crash with stack trace outputs... unhelpful. If you install Ubuntu FIRST, ubuntu won't complain about the windows + mac os x on there beforehand.

Ubuntu was made into 10GB on root, 15GB on /home, and 8GB swap. That was painless, after I deleted the original 33GB partition made by the disk utility.

Windows installed on the MS-DOS FAT32 (I had to delete this partition too since Windows uses NTFS...)
This was also painless.. except for when rebooting you must choose the proper partition or else the entire partition where Windows was being installed will wipe itself.

Soo that was that.. I had a lot of problems if I went OS X -> Windows -> Ubuntu, and I had a lot of problems if I didn't allocate three separate partitions at the very beginning in OS X rather than waiting until after one of the OS' was installed.

==============================================

So for people installing 11.04, the wikipage for meerkat's post-install instructions work very well, but for some reason whenever I added the extra part to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "InputClass" MatchIsTouchpad "true" Identifier "Multitouch Touchpad" Driver "multitouch" EndSection


This caused my mouse to stop working! So I deleted that and I have the mouse working again... is there some error in this part?

[gwillem]

MBA3,2

Spent about 8 hrs trying to install xUbuntu dual boot with macosx (without superdrive) and finally succeeded. Here are my steps for anyone to reproduce.

Install refit according to wiki.
Install unetbootin under macosx.
Create 2 separate partition using Disk Utility: disk0s3 (smallest, 1.07GB) and disk0s4 (target for ubuntu).
Download Ubuntu Live image (11.04, 64bit)
Use unetbootin to create a usb install stick.
Use unetbootin to write bootable image to disk0s3
Reboot 2 times (power off/on) WITHOUT the usb stick connected
Boot using refit from sda3
Pick "try ubuntu" option
At the desktop, start a shell
umount -r -l -f /cdrom
Insert usb stick
mount /dev/sdb /cdrom (your usb stick)
Double click "install ubuntu" icon
Enter through the installation process, no problems here

I couldnt get booting from USB to work and when booting from the SSD partition you will have the problems with unmounting cdrom and unity crashing, so that's why I used unetbootin to copy the installation .iso to both the internal disk and a USB stick.

Outstanding issues:

Backlight keys not working, always 100% lit. Edit: fixed this problem with: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/743352 but introduced another problem: after dim/suspend the backlight resets to 50% regardless of the previous setting. Edit2: Fixed this also by following the pm-utils suggestions from the Meerkat wiki page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookAir3-2/Meerkat

Palm detection on touchpad doesnt seem to work.

Two/three finger clicking on touchpad is very sensitive, it takes me a couple of tries most of the time.

Using the real touchpad button in combination with 2-finger right click (for example, when you have to drag something all over your screen) doesn't work, because keeping the 1st button pressed and then (after long delay) trying to drag, will fire up the 2 finger press event.

Sometimes after resume, touchpad doesnt work (manual fix by reloading kernel module). Edit: fixed with

$ sudo echo 'SUSPEND_MODULES="bcm5974"' >>/etc/pm/config.d/unload_modules

Thanks to all who made ubuntu possible on MBA! I love it.