ubuntu on new retina macbook : any experience ?

[pounsg]

Hi,
I'm just creating this threat to know if someone have any experience with linux on the new retina macbook pro...
Does it work ?
Thanks for sharing

[AntiHero86]

Want this unit too. Only got to play with it for a few minutes at BestBuy but was very fast in OSX and Ubuntu off a flash drive. The screen would only do 1024 x 768 but it also had no internet connection to look for drives. So another question, how well does Ubuntu work with thunderbolt (thunderbolt to ethernet)

[pounsg]

So it boots
thanks

[ASven]

Hello!

Can anybody make some statements regarding the hardware support?

I want to know what works under Linux and what does not.

And maybe somebody can post the output of "lspci " and "lsusb"?

Thanks,
Sven

[houkouonchi]

I have been pain-stakingly trying to get this working in linux (migrating my gentoo install to it).

Migrating was a PITA due to the fact that hunderbolt ethernet does not work at all on linux. I bought some usb ones oneline in the meantime but they have not yet arrived.

I had to do my install by rsyncing off my desktop to my latop (while running windows) and accessing the drive in a vm (mounting the root file-system) and then manually installing grub 0.97 after.


Right now I am able to triple boot. I was having a long boot delay with the 2.6.39.4 kernel I initially had but using 3.4.1 with some of the patches for the retina macbook its much faster during udev stuff (I believe due to the apple_smc stuff).

One guy reported getting full 3d working on opensuse. I am not sure how as I cannot for the life of me to get the nvidia drivers to work. I just get:

(==) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Using HW cursor
(==) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Video key set to default value of 0x101fe
(==) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Not mapping the primary surface by default.
(**) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): check your system's kernel log for additional error
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common Problems in the
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): README for additional information.
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!
(EE) Jun 22 04:00:03 NVIDIA(0): Failing initialization of X screen 0

and kmesg:

nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X
NVRM: failed to copy vbios to system memory.
NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffffffff:858)
NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed


I was able to get wireless working using the method mentioned here from the ubuntu live cd:

http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c705283/..._81/index.html

However; it was 802.11g and i was getting so much packetloss after doing a large transfer i was lucky to get 200-300 KB/sec (compared to 9-10 megabytes/sec I get from Mac OS X and windows).

So I am not having much luck so far. A real bomber as the main purpose of buying this macbook was to run linux.

[gschwind]

Hello houkouonchi,

did you try an up-to-date kernel and switcheroo ?

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Vga_switcheroo

I don't find a better howto. As far as remenber the best way to start is to start without modeset enable ( nomodeset=1 as kernel option ). from that you can select your video card with /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch then load the coresponding driver.

I know switcheroo working with radeon (I already used it), but I have no idea whether it's work with nvidia.

Another question is since nvidia driver doesn't work, do intel driver work ?

Thank you

[houkouonchi]

Hello houkouonchi,

did you try an up-to-date kernel and switcheroo ?

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Vga_switcheroo

I don't find a better howto. As far as remenber the best way to start is to start without modeset enable ( nomodeset=1 as kernel option ). from that you can select your video card with /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch then load the coresponding driver.

I know switcheroo working with radeon (I already used it), but I have no idea whether it's work with nvidia.

Another question is since nvidia driver doesn't work, do intel driver work ?

Thank you

I am running kernel 3.4.1. I do have vga_switcheroo set to y in my kernel but doesn't appear to do anything (no /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo dir).

[gschwind]

you have to enable debug file system :

Kernel hacking --->
   [*] Debug Filesystem

and then mount it as root :

mkdir -p /sys/kernel/debug
mount -t debugfs /sys/kernel/debug

then you should have the vgaswitcheroo should apear, you can make cat over it to get the list of videocards

[EDIT]
I can't enable it on my system, so I can't be more precise
You mustn't start X to be able to switch, if you use gentoo use : rc-update del xdm

[houkouonchi]

you have to enable debug file system :

Kernel hacking --->
   [*] Debug Filesystem

and then mount it as root :

mkdir -p /sys/kernel/debug
mount -t debugfs /sys/kernel/debug

then you should have the vgaswitcheroo should apear, you can make cat over it to get the list of videocards

[EDIT]
I can't enable it on my system, so I can't be more precise
You mustn't start X to be able to switch, if you use gentoo use : rc-update del xdm

All my kernels I build myself and X was not set to start at boot (the only way for me to get X working at all is via the VESA driver).

Anyway I have CONFIG_DEBUG_FS=y and /sys/kernel/debug is mounted. I see quite a few directories/files in there but no vga_switcheroo =(

I verified it is enabled even with zcat /proc/config.gz.

[gschwind]

it's not a good news :/ , I hope this could be solved.

then do you are able to start X at native resolution with intel driver ?

Thanks for you report, That help me to make my choice.