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

[SoulTechnologist]

I have been using 12.04 and it works GREAT!

[nsicad]

I have been using 12.04 and it works GREAT!

What is the CPU for your retina and the kernel?

Could post the results of ddcprobe in the terminal.

sudo ddcprobe

Edit: This is fedora forum for mac.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forumdisplay.php?f=51

It seems that Ubuntu is ahead than fedora in booting Macbookpro retina.

Please note that if you are posting in this thread, kindly indicate your Macbookpro retina CPU and kernel that you are booting and also the upgrade if you make it working. It night also good which nvidia driver you are using and resolution.

Again, 2.6Ghz CPU macbookpro retina seems to be working well with current status of the kernel.

[longint]

Thx raccoone, why do you still need/install grub when using rEFInd anyway? Skip it.
Do you encounter any issues with suspend so far? This strange things is driving me crazy, mostly working now, but not always and for sure not some days ago...

[longint]

You should not specif both DPI and DisplaySize as they overwrite each other, I'd recommend to stick with Displaysize. This reveals 221x217 dpi for my 15" Retina.

# xdpyinfo | grep -B2 resolution
screen #0:
  dimensions:    2880x1800 pixels (331x211 millimeters)
  resolution:    221x217 dots per inch