

Linux is a lemon on the new retina Mac Book Pro - disgruntledphd2
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple_mbpr_linux&num=1

======
trotsky
This article from a fedora developer seemed a bit more hacker newsish to me:

Playing with Thunderbolt under Linux on Apple hardware

<http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/15948.html>

~~~
rbanffy
Can anyone explain why ACPI would want to know what OS is running? Shouldn't
it just report what it can do and let the OS decide what to do with it?

~~~
archangel_one
You would think so, but unfortunately ACPI is horrendously overengineered by
committee and basically does have code running in it which can contain these
sort of checks. I once had to recompile some part of it (possibly the DSDT -
differentiated system description table - whatever that is) on an old Dell
laptop of mine which literally had

if (operating_system == "Microsoft Windows NT" || operating_system ==
"Microsoft Windows 95" || operating_system == "Microsoft Windows") { // make
stuff work }

baked into it. Linux worked fine once those checks were removed, of course.

Needless to say, my opinion of the whole mess has been pretty tainted by that.
I try to assume that it is incompetence rather than actual malice on the part
of Microsoft and/or the manufacturers, but it does do an awfully good
impression of the latter.

~~~
mjg59
This is why Linux now claims to be Windows.

~~~
agravier
The striking parallel with user agents makes a good case for a generalized
design rule of "don't assume anything about the ability of the other side to
handle your side's specifications. Let them make the decision."

------
cturner
I wouldn't buy a macbook for linux regardless of display. Mainstream linux
window managers expect two mouse buttons. If you want an ultrabook, there's a
great new Thinkpad just released made out of carbon fibre. Lenovo hardware
tends to work well with linux/unix. [http://gizmodo.com/5935723/lenovo-
thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-...](http://gizmodo.com/5935723/lenovo-
thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-what-the-future-of-laptops-should-be)

~~~
LeafStorm
I actually dual-boot Arch on my mid-2011 Macbook Pro, and two mouse buttons
has been the least of my problems -- you can configure Synaptics to recognize
a click on the touchpad with two fingers as a right-click, just like OS X.
(You can even set it up to recognize a three-finger click as a middle click,
which OS X doesn't do.)

The only real issue I have with Linux is that something keeps eating my
bootloader, so I have to keep a GRUB boot CD around to boot into it.

~~~
acomar
Are you sure it's getting eaten? I have had issues with efi bootloader, where
it'll forget to boot from the right OS but the bootloader is still there and
accessible from the boot menu.

------
es92
I'm currently tri booting arch linux, os x and windows on a retina macbook
pro.

I almost only use linux, support is much better than suggested here. Yes, if
you expect the latest build of Ubuntu to just work you're going to be
disappointed.

The trackpad works excellently, equivalent to os x (with mtrack), as does
wifi. Graphics are fine with the nvidia binary, which offers better
performance than nouveau anyways. On that note, there is progress with getting
nouveau to work. Just a few days ago a bug was fixed in the i915 driver, and
intel graphics work now. It is true though that Optimus support is bad on
linux, and probably will be for a while. That said I'm at 86% battery, and I
have about 3.5 hours left.

Its pretty easy in linux to change the font settings for applications, having
the 2880 resolution with a sane font size is really great.

Also switching between the os's is really really fast, around 30 seconds.
Probably in a month or two the majority of hardware will work without
development packages or other modifications on an arch install. Until then,
installation is tricky, I wouldn't suggest it unless you already know linux
pretty well.

~~~
AngrySkillzz
Optimus doesn't work, but there's a kernel module called VGA_Switcheroo that
you can use to switch between active graphics cards.

------
roma1n
Which begs the question: when are PC makers going to take their fingers off
their a$$ and start producing decent hardware? (with a non Linux-restricting
implementation of secure boot, KTHXBYE)

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_“Which begs the question”_

That doesn’t mean what you think it means.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question>

~~~
roma1n
Ah, I stand corrected. So that "raises the question", right?

~~~
slurgfest
Yes, that is a good substitute

------
PaulHoule
For that much money I got a machine from Lenovo with a nice screen (not that
nice) but also 32GB of RAM.

~~~
Evbn
I hope you didn't buy the RAM from Lenovo. They mark up 8GB sticks by $300
each.

~~~
PaulHoule
i got the RAM from crucial

------
ciupicri
> The various Linux desktop environments are also less than ideal in handling
> high-density displays. Compared to OS X 10.7/10.8, the Unity, GNOME Shell,
> and KDE desktops all looked like shit at 2880 x 1800 on the Retina MacBook
> Pro. The text was difficult to read and even when toying around with
> different scaling factors, the text ended up looking awkward in relation to
> icons and other visuals.

I wonder how could a better resolution make the text more difficult to read.
Too bad he didn't publish any screenshots.

~~~
Evbn
High density means smaller text, which is hard to focus on.

~~~
ciupicri
You can use larger text. GNOME has had this for some time, a common setting
for all programs.

------
arunoda
Why you need to run linux in a mac book?

~~~
sergiotapia
I have to work on an latest-gen iMac at work because that's what they bought
us. I tried for over a month to get used to it, but it's just too much crap
that accumulates. I waste too much time on things I shouldn't even be thinking
about.

Such as alt-tabbing doesn't cycle through the windows an application has, just
the application. If I have three Sublime Text 2 windows open, I have to hunt
it down like a predator.

So I just installed VMWare, and setup my Linux Mint 13 machine and work there
exclusively now.

~~~
jmelloy
Did you know about alt-` -- it tabs between windows.

~~~
DeepDuh
Exactly. Once you know that it's actually preferable to Alt-Tab doing
everything. If you are like me with sometimes dozens of open windows it's nice
to have one more layer of abstraction.

