ubuntu on new retina macbook : any experience ?

**houkouonchi** · June 26th, 2012

No. my X installation is pretty old and no intel driver new enough for it. Can't get the full resolution at all right now.

**Omni-Vi** · June 30th, 2012

Would you be willing to try the new Ubuntu alpha 2? It features a recent kernel and comes as Apple version.

**atte** · July 9th, 2012

Using rEFIt and booting USB with Alpha 2 gives boot menu but both Try w/o install and Install Ubuntu just gives black screen. Maybe I can get it to boot not so silently...

Oh, like you said, there is a Mac version, will give that one a try.

**atte** · July 9th, 2012

Sorry, even the Mac version of A2 gave black screen. Even when I removed silent and splash from the kernel boot line... any ideas?

**blayne** · July 10th, 2012

Originally Posted by atte

Sorry, even the Mac version of A2 gave black screen. Even when I removed silent and splash from the kernel boot line... any ideas?

I have been playing with the Xubuntu Alpha2 installer, I got it the "Install Xubuntu" option running by adding "nointremap nomodeset" to the grub boot parameters.

I made the mistake of using btrfs as my home filesystem as there is a bug in the 3.5 rc kernels causing segfaults. (I think its fixed in 3.5-rc6, Havent had time to test it yet.)

Before btrfs started segfaulting, I had a working terminal install (No X).

Thunderbolt semi works, booting with a apple thunderbolt ethernet connected, it gets detected in lspci but gave no network access. plugging it in after boot it was not detected.

**blayne** · July 10th, 2012

Originally Posted by blayne

I have been playing with the Xubuntu Alpha2 installer, I got it the "Install Xubuntu" option running by adding "nointremap nomodeset" to the grub boot parameters.

I made the mistake of using btrfs as my home filesystem as there is a bug in the 3.5 rc kernels causing segfaults. (I think its fixed in 3.5-rc6, Havent had time to test it yet.)

Before btrfs started segfaulting, I had a working terminal install (No X).

Thunderbolt semi works, booting with a apple thunderbolt ethernet connected, it gets detected in lspci but gave no network access. plugging it in after boot it was not detected.

So after updating to 3.5-rc6 everything is now comming together.

I installed the 302.17 Nvidia drivers I now have X working perfectly! I have dual screens working with a thunderbolt to DVI adapter. There are some issues with DPI on some applications. Some websites in chrome also render with tiny text.

I installed the broadcom wifi drivers they installed with out problems following the instructions on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/ I get about 2-3MB/s using rsync (about 1MB/s slower than in OSX)

Battery life is a little lacking, it is looking around 4 hours on wifi while surfing / apt-get installing packages.

Still no luck on the thunderbolt ethernet adapter, it is a :

Code:

0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57762 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 00f6
	Physical Slot: 9
	Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0
	Region 0: Memory at ce100000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
	Region 2: Memory at ce110000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
	Expansion ROM at ce120000 [disabled] [size=64K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

It looks like it should be supported via the tg3 module, however the tg3 module that came with 3.5-rc6 doesnt seem to support it. I had a quick look at building it myself as the source code does mention the model number. But I am having issues getting it to build.

**raccoonone** · July 10th, 2012

I got Ubuntu 12.04 mostly working on my Macbook Pro Retina, and wrote up a short blog post about it.

The thing I'm having the most trouble with now is the graphics. Neither the HDMI nor the DVI to Thunderbolt connector I got seem to work, so I can't use my external monitor. May have to give Quantal a try, since it sounds like people have been having some luck with that.

**raccoonone** · July 11th, 2012

Originally Posted by blayne

So after updating to 3.5-rc6 everything is now comming together.

I installed the 302.17 Nvidia drivers I now have X working perfectly! I have dual screens working with a thunderbolt to DVI adapter. There are some issues with DPI on some applications. Some websites in chrome also render with tiny text.

I installed the broadcom wifi drivers they installed with out problems following the instructions on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/ I get about 2-3MB/s using rsync (about 1MB/s slower than in OSX)

Battery life is a little lacking, it is looking around 4 hours on wifi while surfing / apt-get installing packages.

Still no luck on the thunderbolt ethernet adapter, it is a :

Code:

0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57762 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 00f6
	Physical Slot: 9
	Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0
	Region 0: Memory at ce100000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
	Region 2: Memory at ce110000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
	Expansion ROM at ce120000 [disabled] [size=64K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

It looks like it should be supported via the tg3 module, however the tg3 module that came with 3.5-rc6 doesnt seem to support it. I had a quick look at building it myself as the source code does mention the model number. But I am having issues getting it to build.

Did you have to do anything special to get your second monitor working? I've been trying to make mine work, but so far the Thunderbolt-to-DVI connector I have doesn't seem to be working

**blayne** · July 11th, 2012

Originally Posted by raccoonone

Did you have to do anything special to get your second monitor working? I've been trying to make mine work, but so far the Thunderbolt-to-DVI connector I have doesn't seem to be working

in your blog post it mentions you are using the 295.59 nvidia drivers. Have you tried upgrading to the 302.17 drivers?

on a side note, I now have the thunderbolt ethernet adapter working.

I had to make a minor change to the tg3 kernel module. It needs to be plugged in at boot as I still havent worked out how to get hot plug working.

**raccoonone** · July 11th, 2012

Ya, I tried the 302.17 drivers also, but didn't have any luck. I did an upgrade install from 12.04 though, so maybe I should just do a fresh install with 12.10 alpha.