[ubuntu] Macbook Pro 11,1 (2013 Haswell Retina)

[bmerlover]

Frankly speaking I had a lot of work to do and thus was very lazy with the installation. All I did was installing Refind, using Mac's DiskUtility to free 450GB on the SSD, create an bootable USB stick under OSX, and then simply boot it. I did not had to change anyting or play with any config files.

I used an external ALFA USB wifi card during installation but after that the internal Macbook wifi is working just great. Sound is not working and I can neither restart the machine nor put it to sleep. Shutting it down is the only option. For some reason booting takes nearly a minute.

I am also only using the Nvidia card which is not good for the battery. I tried to install Bumblebee but this turns out to be a very bad idea and I ended up removing it for like 30 minutes running into multiple errors. Now I am using Nvidia's driver in version 319.

If anybody would know how to completely disable the external card and just use the Intel card, that would be great. Of course I want to use a mixed mode in the future (that is why I got the card) but for the moment I prefer 9 hours of battery over the ~5:30 that I would be getting with the Nvidia card running all the time (according to the power notification in Gnome).

I installed Gnome and increased the font scaling for the Retina display -- works great.

Offtopic: I hate the fact that I had to buy a Macbook Pro but it has the best hardware, best build quality, and since last weak is also the cheapest slim laptop on the market. Very sad... I initially wanted the Lenovo T440S or Yoga 2 Pro but the Yoga cannot show the color yellow (no kidding) and the T440s has a delivery time of nearly 4 weeks, the (by far) weaker hardware, and costs more....

Hi,

What commands did you type or where did you go to install nvidias 319 drivers? I've had way too many problems in the past with installing nvidia drivers on my previous pc's with it just showing a blank screen and having to reinstall ubuntu again.

I'm assuming 319 drivers work for your 15" haswell MBPr?

If so, can you tell me what I need to do to install it? I don't want to guess and reinstall ubuntu cause of it.

Thank you.

[bmerlover]

Is anyone else experiencing the computer freezing for a few seconds intermittently?

It looks like every 10 to 15 mins or so my computer freezes for about 10 seconds then it comes back.

Is there a fix for this? Does it have anything to do with me using the default graphics driver that was installed during ubuntu's installation?

[kjano]

Is anyone else experiencing the computer freezing for a few seconds intermittently?

It looks like every 10 to 15 mins or so my computer freezes for about 10 seconds then it comes back.

Is there a fix for this? Does it have anything to do with me using the default graphics driver that was installed during ubuntu's installation?

You have to add libata.force=noncq to your grub configuration file in etc to fix this.

[kjano]

@bmerlover: I followed this long blog post as well but you would have to redo this for every new kernel update. Thus, I removed ubuntu again and just went for the super simple grub-efi install with the boot repair tool (see above). You do not even need refind. You can see that others did so as well by reading the comment section of the blog post.

Nvidia: This will not work with the EFI install -- you will just get a black screen. I used the nvidia drivers when I did the grub bios mode install. In fact, there are many reasons why the bios compatibility mode may be the better way to go as the nvidia drivers give you clearly more battery runtime and the system does not run hot. On the grub bios mode my GPU temperature was about 55-60 while browsing, watching videos, and using pdflatex. Now with the EFI install and the open source drivers I get 70-75 degree celsius on my GPU doing the same tasks and the battery runs only for about 4 hours will full display brightness and regular workload. Unfortunately switching graphic cards only works in the EFI mode but as this feature does not work at all for now, it probably does not make a difference. Installing Bumblebee did not work in bios mode nor EFI mode (in my case).

[kjano]

Hmm, any idea how to get a projector connected (or any external VGA device)? I got a mini Displayport to VGA adapter from Apple a few days ago but putting it into the Thunderbolt port freezes Ubuntu?

[bmerlover]

@bmerlover: I followed this long blog post as well but you would have to redo this for every new kernel update. Thus, I removed ubuntu again and just went for the super simple grub-efi install with the boot repair tool (see above). You do not even need refind. You can see that others did so as well by reading the comment section of the blog post.

Nvidia: This will not work with the EFI install -- you will just get a black screen. I used the nvidia drivers when I did the grub bios mode install. In fact, there are many reasons why the bios compatibility mode may be the better way to go as the nvidia drivers give you clearly more battery runtime and the system does not run hot. On the grub bios mode my GPU temperature was about 55-60 while browsing, watching videos, and using pdflatex. Now with the EFI install and the open source drivers I get 70-75 degree celsius on my GPU doing the same tasks and the battery runs only for about 4 hours will full display brightness and regular workload. Unfortunately switching graphic cards only works in the EFI mode but as this feature does not work at all for now, it probably does not make a difference. Installing Bumblebee did not work in bios mode nor EFI mode (in my case).

I installed the boot repair tool and clicked on the recommended fix but that doesn't seem to help. What options do I need to select to actually do a grub-efi install? I'm assuming I have to go into the advanced options correct?

I also added "libata.force=noncq" without the quotes at the end of the file after #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 4401 1" in GRUB configuration file. I opened the GRUB config file from "Edit GRUB configuration file" from boot-loader just to be safe that was the one I was updating. After I added those lines at the end and typed in sudo update-grub in the terminal, I got some sort of error.

Can you please be more specific on how to do the above 2 steps (installing grub-efi and where exactly in the file to add libata.force=noncq? Thank you

[vic.jang]

bmerlover,

I have the same model as yours.
That tutorial is the first thing I tried and it wasn't able to boot. (repeatedly trying to kill some process but kept failing)
And then I found this post and started trying other things.

Yesterday I searched a bit more about hanging at purple screen and found that it's not unique to the Haswell model.
I saw this post http://askubuntu.com/questions/36323...n-on-boot-imac
and were able to successfully boot adding the option "nolapic".
I installed 13.10 using Refind, with grub.

Btw, my wifi doesn't work for some reason...

A general note: I don't think the intel iris pro 5200 is ready for Ubuntu. I originally purchased the standard 15" Retina and the screen would show up with lines all over the place. Horrible resolution.

Now I got the MBPr with the Nvidia card and that one seems to work fine. Although no sound like everyone else is what I've noticed.

To answer your question, I tried everything 100 times and now I know what to do, I had the same exact problem as you.

I followed this guide: http://randomtutor.blogspot.com/2013...on-retina.html (Please use this as reference, but I will try to explain the part that is relevant to you)

(neglected)

Hope this helps

[vic.jang]

The temperature of the machine feels very high...

Does this look normal or should I worry?

[kjano]

Temperature, graphics (!) and a lot of other details: Kernel 3.12 was just released and it addresses exactly those issues as well as better Thunderbolt [not for Mac ] and Haswell support. It clearly saves battery and keeps the temperature lower in my case (MacBookPro11,3). Just takes 3 min to install:

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-image-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.12*.deb linux-image-3.12*.deb

(thanks to http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-ker...y-and-kwheezy/).

Btw, 70-90 degree Celsius is abolutely fine for the CPU, just dont get it up to 105. Btw, I would suggest xsensors instead of psensor, there is no real need to monitor this constanty.

Conan? Can you help me with the external display as you got Thunderbolt working?

[conan.jen]

Temperature, graphics (!) and a lot of other details: Kernel 3.12 was just released and it addresses exactly those issues as well as better Thunderbolt [not for Mac ] and Haswell support. It clearly saves battery and keeps the temperature lower in my case (MacBookPro11,3). Just takes 3 min to install:

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-image-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb

wget -c kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.12*.deb linux-image-3.12*.deb

(thanks to http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-ker...y-and-kwheezy/).

Btw, 70-90 degree Celsius is abolutely fine for the CPU, just dont get it up to 105. Btw, I would suggest xsensors instead of psensor, there is no real need to monitor this constanty.

Conan? Can you help me with the external display as you got Thunderbolt working?

Hm... I haven't tried to do minidisplayport => vga. I've only attempted to do minidisplayport => minidisplayport / thunderbolt. In my case, it just works when you plug it in. Can you elaborate on what happens when you plug in the monitor? I'll see if I can find a minidisplayport => vga adapter at work today to test against.