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Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro
An anonymous reader writes "It turns out that Linux doesn't work too well on the Apple Retina MacBook Pro. Among the problems are needing special boot parameters to simply boot the Linux kernel, graphics drivers not working, no hybrid graphics support, WiFi requiring special firmware, Thunderbolt troubles, GNOME/Unity/KDE not being optimized for retina displays, and other snafus, including 20% greater power consumption with Linux over OS X. According to Michael Larabel, it will likely not be until early next year when most of the problems are ironed out for a clean 'out of the box' Linux experience on the Retina MacBook Pro."
This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Why in the world would you even try to do it? What is the goal of this endeavour?
Linux doesn't exactly have a reputation for working well on brand-new hardware. The new MacBooks only came out a couple months ago, give Linux some time!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
But also all devices made by Samsung, LG, and HT....
Linux doesn't work completely on brand new hardware!!
This is totally shocking to me. This has only been a problem since the 90's.
Let's trash linux a little more by complaining how this Ubuntu DVD fails to load on this sundial. There you have it, linux can't even run on one of the most primitive time-keeping devices. It must suck.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why would you run Linux on a MacBook? Just but a cheap non-apple laptop or run Linux in a virtual machine if you need it.
Doesn't work on my Asus notebook, either. And probably never will, despite all the alleged solutions to the problem that are floating around.
It is so shocking to think that an operating system doesn't work well on hardware for which no drivers have yet been written?
And yes, folks have been working on this. It's all up on the G+.
But seriously, until somebody is paid to write the drivers prior to hardware release, why expect it to work?
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
FTFA: "Aside from the Linux troubles encountered, the only other negative point about this high-end laptop is its price, which for the 2.3GHz Ivy Bridge model is $2199 USD or $2799 for the base price on the top-end model and not counting optional upgrades."
Let's shell out 2K for a laptop with a pretty face and stick Linux on it.
Linux FTW!
Also.... "The Retina MacBook Pro does away with any DVD drive and there is no Gigabit Ethernet or Firewire on the unit itself, although Apple is now making Thunderbolt adapters to offer these connection interfaces."
WTF?!
My 10,2 still doesn't have wireless support w/o a wrapper.
You spent $3000 on a laptop to run linux. You are a strange person.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Firstly, this is fairly new hardware, in a newly released, expensive configuration, which relatively few people possess. Waiting 4 to 6 months for "out of the box" support on brand new, proprietary technologies (from a company (in)famous for being secretive and unwilling to co-operate), is not and should not be surprising to anyone. It's a simple fact of using Linux. It'd be nice if Apple could write the drivers for us, but instead we have to wait until we can get out hands on it, reverse engineer everything, write the code, test it etc. If anything it should be news that we're expecting drivers fairly soon!
Why waste so much time/effort with a BOS install? Run it in VMware Fusion full-screen like I do. Pick your battles, my friends.
You mean to tell me that software that has never before run on a piece of hardware, which is brand new, doesn't work as well as software which was custom designed to work on that hardware and tuned for more than a year? HOW OH HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Next thing you will tell me is a 10 year old child born in the US and never having even met anyone of Chinese origin and never hearing any language other than English, can't speak Chinese nearly as well as a 25 year old person in China. What the hell is wrong with the little tyke? Can't speak hardly any Chinese at all! That's terrible! Oh, and Linux not working on the Apple hardware perfectly, that's bad too. SURPRISE! (How is this exactly news, and how did it get past the moderators? Are there any?)
Fuck you Timothy. There HAS to be a better way to express Linux's unoptimized performance on new hardware.
Surprise! Software not designed for hardware platform fails to work properly. Hardware to blame say sources. More at 10.
Don't buy a Mac.
Don't get me wrong fan boys... Apple does make good gear, and it isn't Apple's fault it doesn't run Linux all that well on this particular device. However despite having a good operating system for a workstation I'm just not a big fan of OSX at home. I use Linux primarily at work and I am quite happy with it. Given the choice between Windows and OSX at work it will be OSX every time. However, I DO have a better choice in workstation OS that more closely mirrors our production servers on which to develop software.
I also don't care much for Apple as a company. I find Microsoft more trustworthy, and that really does say quite a bit.
It would be nice if Apple contributed to Linux. I know that is asking a lot of them as they throughly enjoy tieing two products together by virtue of license and copyright law. It is something they are unfortunately unlikely to change and as a result I try to avoid purchasing their hardware. Much like I will try to avoid any "secure boot" BIOS gear in the future.
That's too bad, 'cause, like most people, I was looking forward to buying overpriced hardware bundled with an expensive operating system and then just running free open source software on it instead.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Seriously this is news?
I have the new Retina MBP... and it's a fantastic machine. But WHY would you buy it just to install Linux on it anyway? It's a very expensive computer for that - you can get other laptops with similar specs (other than the display, yes) for a lot less. In almost all cases I'd suspect that people want to use both OSX and Linux - and in that case, I'd highly suggest running Linux in a virtual machine anyway (Parallels/VMWare).
Sure it'd be nice to have a pure dual boot for Linux, but until drivers are written and fine tuned for that specific platform it will do just fine.
I use Parallels for that, and for running WinXP (believe it or not) for one old app I need. The new MBP is so fast that I can cold-boot WinXP in 3 seconds! - making it a breeze to get to the one app I need when I need it.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Lets buy some over priced shoddy bleeding edge hardware from Apple and then complain when we can't run an Open Source OS that has had no chance to develope for it as the horrible vendor hasn't released with an open spec since the late 70s.
Package contained a retina MacBook pro. Would not buy again.
The Ford engine doesn't fit well into my Chevy car. Come on people! Of course Apple isn't going to make their hardware work well with Linux. They have no need to.
K Man
Sad... but true.
The article also states that Linux runs quite well indeed in a VMware virtual machine.
If you install Fedora 17, you can even enjoy hardware- assisted 3-D graphics.
Pop the virtual machine into full screen mode and you might as well be running Linux on the bare metal, practically speaking there is no difference.
would you want to hurt that little Linux distro? Have you no shame?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's the recent Apple products that are the lemons. You can't even pull the battery in that thing if you spill something on it. It's garbage.
Can I run Win7 on the new MacBook Pro without any problems?
Seriously who lets these Fanboys into /.?
I guess was totally wrong thinking that other than the UEFI/bootup that Macs were basically just commodity Intel/Nvidia/AMD computers...? And that PC drivers should just work? (Not that I've kept up with Linux on Macs at all...)
Unsupported hardware is unsupported.
What a bummer that is, eh?
In fact I just tested an upgrade to one of our Ubuntu instances on it. Oh you meant not in a Virtual Machine (on VirtualBox). Why on earth would you buy a Mac and NOT use OS X? Hell, my Linux instances run better under a VM on this system than they do on the stand alone systems bought just 2 or 3 years ago. Hell I've even installed several games under VirtualBox with Windows 7.
Except for the fact that you're actually running all of OS X's overhead in addition to Linux, and that you don't have full control over /dev, and that certain key commands are intercepted by OS X so you can't actually pass them, and the fact that you have to fake a hard drive and send all your IO through convoluted loops that slow down the system even more...
Yeah, except for all that, it's just like running natively!
Apple currently has the high resolution screens. Too bad you can only get 1GB of video RAM on the MacBook Pros though. What is the point of having such a high resolution screen if you run out of VRAM for textures etc? I'm thinking about a Retina Mac to replace my existing Mac but at the lack of video ramm is putting me off.
Why does this matter? Because I'm developing a cross-platform OpenGL flight simulator and I would like to have plenty of Video Ram to go around (many flight sim gamers have very high end Windows rigs with 2-4GB of Video RAM, and this is my target [TBH, I don't care about those who want to game on less capable hardware - profit limiting I know, but I'm writing the sim for myself first and foremost and I have great hardware that is poorly utilized by many mainstream games]).
So, my point is while Apple has a lovely display resolution that will probably soon be matched by others. Other laptop manufacturers (eg. HP) produce machines with 2 GB of Video RAM, which is unlikely to be matched by Apple (none of their latops have more than 1 GB of RAM, Apple don't seem to be interested in trely powerful users of laptops - I guess that's what they have the Mac Pro for - but it doesn't help folks like me).
So, let's start with this hardware... Apple developed it, and spent years+ of R&D on software, hardware driver enablement, tweaking and tuning, and making a sweet, integrated, and, let's just say it -- proprietary piece of laptop computer artistry.
Then these Linux guys come and say "oh, it's x86, huh? so let's boot our Linux kernel and watch it go" -- only to be disappointed that it won't boot (without tweaking), devices don't work (driver support, anyone?), and a whole laundry list of complaints.
And people are surprised? Come on!
If, and this is a big IF here... IF you wanted to run Linux on this, then you go ahead and spend the same (or almost the same) R&D effort and $ to get the drivers and tweaking/tuning sorted out.
And I'm not even sure why this is a discussion. Most Linux folks are the ones looking to make it run super fast on super old hardware that can be obtained for $100 or less... The Linux folks I know are not the ones forking out big bucks on a shiny new Apple, only to nuke the HDD and try to install Linux on it.
None of this makes any sense.
Clean, 'out of the box' linux experience. That's the problem.
If ya can't configure it, don't install it!
Linux has the same problem as Windows. It needs to run on all kinds of hardware. Apple's integration give it an advantage wrt to making the software work with the hardware. By the time the Linux guys have it working, the Apple product cycle will have moved on. That's not to say it's not worthwhile. If you're willing to work with Apple hardware that's a year old, you get the savings on older hardware along with a free OS. It'll probably never beat Apple clean out of the box though, unless somebody comes up with some real killer hardware abstractions and a really kickass driver dev team.
It is flamebait because it makes blatantly false statement the Retina MBP is not in any sense "locked down." Apple does not block installation of 3rd party or open source software or operating systems on any of its desktop or laptop computers. So its merely a matter of an open source OS not yet having been tweaked to run perfectly on a new, and somewhat different, hardware design.
I love Linux but the Retina is probably the best laptop ever sold precisely because of the unusually high level of harmony between the top-notch hardware and the OS it was designed to run. That is the whole point of Macs - complete focus on the best possible user experience, and complete disregard of the opinions of zealots who call the lack of support for an entirely diffferent OS to be a "snafu".
Great!
Because it's obvious the Apple fanboi's have mod points. Any argument that returns true for Apple == Bad is an immediate down mod from the fanboi's regardless of the merits of the argument.
But what is really interesting is that the fanboi's must be feeling especially especially vindictive today since the argument (with the dripping sarcasm scrapped) in essense says: Linux doesn't work on hardware with no open specs. We see the same problems anywhere in the laptop market. Try installing Linux on an Asus laptop running Win7. You can probably get it to about 75%, but the other 25% (like the Optimus NVidia) will probably never work.
Please don't feed the trolls
See his blog post -
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/15948.html
As for "why try to do it?" - well, probably because liking Apple hardware and high-res displays does not automatically create a liking for XNU/Darwin. Some people prefer Open Source.
Why in the world would you even try to do it? What is the goal of this endeavour?
When I first got into Mac, it was still a rare thing. And so that made me better than everyone else. I got to look down on PC users and call everyone who came after me poseurs. Then, as Mac's became more and more popular, I started noticing that EVERYONE was carrying them. I even saw people using them in Starbuck's, for Christ's sake (as I passed by the window on my way to an indie coffee shop that you've probably never heard of).
This forced me to do something to set myself once more off from the pack, so that I might reaffirm my moral and intellectual superiority. Obviously, I couldn't go to Windows. So naturally I turned to Linux, and an obscure distro than only a few of us know about (if you have to ask which one, don't bother).
It was perfect. Now when people saw I was using a Mac and asked me about it, I could tell them "Yeah, it's a Mac, but not the kind YOU'RE using" and blow off any subsequent questions with "I could tell you more, but you wouldn't get it." Once more, I was whole!
I would talk more about it, but I've got to get to a Semertian Poetry reading. Not that I expect you to know what Semertian Poetry is.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
What a captivatingly sharp image of a walled garden topped with razor wire! Look at it glisten in the sunlight coming through the walls of our crystal cathedral!
So a computer is "garbage" if it is not designed to deal with users who are so careless as to pour liquid into it? Face it: removable batter or not, if you spill liquid into your laptop keyboard, the likelihood that you will be able to pull the battery before anything is damaged is very close to zero. If you really are that clumsy, you probably should not buy any laptop computer--or at least buy one of those plastic keyboard protectors to go with it.
Thats what you get for buying apple. You deserve every problem you encounter.
Don't come complaining to the rest of the world like we give a damm.. You KNEW going in what kind of company apple is. Or you damm well should have. it's not a fucking secret what kind of company apple is.
And now you're shocked that they don't wanna let you do whatever you want with your hardware.
If it works? Good for you. If it don't? It's your problem and your fault. Go talk to apple about it and stfu.
Fuck off.. really.
A great OS is even greater with great hardware. I run Linux on a MacBook Pro because I like the hardware. I wouldn't want any other laptop.
Twinstiq, game news
Does it run Windows XP??
whatever comes after (HouseCat?) will probably be more IOS-likeâ"i.e., sucky on a laptop.
People have been saying that for years, even though Apple has repeatedly said that a desktop OS is different than a mobile device OS and held to that statement through a number of OS releases.
Meanwhile Microsoft is the only company that has gone ahead and said "no, both platforms should run the same OS".
You can always install Linux later IF Apple turns that way as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fix it yourself by hacking the drivers. I had to do that with the sound hardware fitted to an old PC of mine. The card worked fine, apart from the MIDI interface which I could never get to work. It turned out that the main sound controller chip had a slightly different model number to the ones listed in the source of the kernel driver, and the mechanism for setting the MIDI hardware base address and interrupt was somewhat different. One evening spent disassembling the hardware's DOS driver later, and I had a patch that added support. It eventually ended up in the kernel source tree (2.2 perhaps?), but the whole driver was purged from the kernel a long time ago.
Oh, so that's why you have to use 3rd party "hacks" to enable native 2880x1800
Wrong, the OS is running at 2880x1800 all the time.
The hacks are all about turning on use of the higher resolution for apps that have not provided graphics for the higher res, so the text will look better. By default so OS X does not mess with the look of an app, it will keep the whole app running at the older resolution and simply scale up the display.
All of the system apps (like Mail and Safari) of course support native 2880x1800, and all the other apps really have to do is re-compile (it's optional to add higher resolution image assets, though of course a good idea).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Don't you mean that the Macbook Pro is a lemon under Linux?
Don't blame linux for not operating at peak performance on every piece of hardware you install it.
To everyone asking "Why would you do this?" I can see two reasons:
1) It is nice to have a nice, lightweight, high-end laptop that can run OS X, Windows, and Linux. The Macbook Pro 17" was great for this.
2) People try to run Linux on crazy things, just for the challenge. It won't be too long before someone actually tries running Linux on an actual lemon. :-)
Why not just run Linux in VirtualBox or Parallels then? I long ago gave up on desktop Linux as a primary OS, and prefer to run a mainstream one (OSX for work [employer mandate], Windows 7 at home) but when I need Linux I can just fire up a VM. I currently have Backtrack and a headless Debian server VM on my 16GB i7-based Windows box and honestly when I go "full-screen" running Backtrack I can't even detect that I'm running virtual.
Hell, Ubuntu in Parallels on my i5 MacBook Pro with 8GB runs several times faster than it did on the old Athlon64 machine I used to run it on at home. I don't understand why someone would limit themselves to a Linux-only machine or the inconvenience of dual-booting now that we have excellent virtualization available for free in the case of VirtualBox.
You Don't Say?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
It's certainly locked down in the sense of the physical nature of it. The RAM is soldered in, the battery glued on, the main storage is designed specifically for the one machine and the usual Gigabit Ethernet port is gone, replaced with a proprietary dongle that you plug into a Thunderbolt port. It may not be software lockdown, but it certainly is hardware lockdown. And that's not to mention that in order to boot Linux, you have to jump several hoops to get the bootloader to realise there's something other than OS X there.
Mac OS X is Unix, and then there's virtualization, why even bother getting Linux native to a Mac anymore?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
I wonder: if you networked the raspberry pi to this lemon, would it still be so sour, at first byte?
(sorry..)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Thank God they didn't copy Apple or you'd see stuff like this pointed at Samsung.
Any argument that returns true for Apple == Bad
That is plain bullshit. Almost everyone with enough experience using Apple products thinks Retina MBP is utter crap.
Linux is also a lemon on my new Asus N56 notebook. No FN keys, and random total-freezes. It's a pity, forced me to go back to windows, while I used ubuntu since version 6.06.
I got OS/2 running just fine.
Since when did Apple become a sponsor of /.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Whether or not it is easy it is to swap hardware components has nothing to do with software compatibility. And if you really want a standard wired ethernet port (most people use laptops on wireless these days, you know, so it is hard to justify making a laptop thicker just to make room for it), you simply buy the computer with the adapter that provides one. And the problems reported were not in getting the Mac to boot from Linux (which is quite routine; people have been doing for years and Apple has not changed anything to prevent it), but rather minor glitches with the new hardware.
What is there about the linux kernel, developed to run on scores of different hardware options for cpu alone, would make mac os x run poorly? The only thing I can see is poor software on mac os x.
OS X is a Unix-like operating system. No need to install Linux to get the features of Linux!
Likely to get the retina display on your operating system of choice. I considered it myself for the very same reason.
that initially helped me to transition to Mac OS. :-)
Not wanting to shell out for a Mac without being sure I could acclimatize to the environment that I was thinking about switching to, I dual-booted a hacked up T60p with Linux+Hackintosh partitions. Still a great machine, and there are some ways in which it definitely outclassed my MacBook Pro (albeit not in the area of OS X compatibility, alas...)
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Your eyes will howl at a return to lower resolution displays. It'll make you feel like you need serious glasses.
You notice the difference at the end of the day—you really do.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Sounds like every Linux experience I've ever had.
TFA is lame. Doesn't mention what Linux distro (and there are a number) they tried. Nothing to see there..
Though it does make me curious.. Anyone have trouble / success with boot camp and windows? Same issues? Work better?
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
I wonder if that has to do with Apple creating their own *ix-sh operating system that haven't been
concentrating much on getting Linux support. From what I understand Apple favors their own
home-grown OS over Linux etc. because they need a way to corral users into their various
schemes from iTunes to their "Appstore" and enforce those things.
Me I'm typing this on OSX right now. I don't develop for the platform, I find no use for anything
platform specific in my life and so it's just a very expensive amd64 notebook from a dubious
vendor with an attitude running a proprietary ix-ish operating system and a proprietary windowing
system that is frankly a pain in the ass.
On this box I use the Terminal application, Firefox and of course VirtualBox. Out of that list
only Terminal.app is from Apple. It is well done but in the end no better or worse than
KDE's or Gnome's Terminal.
The MacBookPro itself I'm typing on I actually find to be an inferior device despite the nice
case and extremely good screen. It's full of cheap Broadcom chips, the wifi, the usb. The issue
with broadcom is that they do not make documentation available to linux driver developers.
The reason behind this is not necessarily only ill will but also that they have very hard time
integrating the third-party designs they buy from third parties, which is often very tricky.
This is why they prefer to work with only a handful of driver developers instead of allowing
the whole world to see their dirty laundry.
Last Macbook here I'm not going to ask for another one.
I already have serious glasses. In order to look at an iPhone I have to take off the glasses and hold it about 4 inches from my face to read the text on it. That's why when I finally was forced to get a smart phone I got one with a larger display.
And really "Retina" is only a marketing term, it's not scientific, it has nothing to do with retinas or level of details that eyes can see.
Not entirely true. Google has said the same thing quite explicitly, they've just also said that that OS isn't here yet. That's quite the point behind their whole overt plan to eventually convergence ChromeOS and Android.
Because Åpple provides drivers for windows under boot camp, including for the retina display. I do recommend using virtualization instead though.
Its an expensive computer to run OSX on, too, because its just flat out an expensive computer.
You pay the steep price of the Retina MBP because you want a laptop with a super-high-resolution display, which is the Retina MBPs core outstanding feature.
You put Linux on it for any or all of the same reasons you'd want Linux on any computer.
Why? Particularly, why would the (hypothetical) fact that I want a super-high-resolution display on my Linux-based laptop mean that I also want to run OSX? And...
I've never had a newest model Dell server (very common) work with a distribution considered to be stable. Even the slightly older ones require very new kernels and binary drivers to support their broadcom nics, raid controllers, etc.
Generally it's two years or more for new hardware.
In other news, OS X works terribly on my Windows laptop.
They installed Ubunturd. They didn't run any other distros. So it required some tweaks to boot the kernel? Ok. Either way, the article's own comment thread has mentions that Archlinux runs perfectly fine, albeit without some of the graphics stuff.
This is just FUD by the Windows and Mac crowd. Move along.
I find it hilarious that even after almost 20 years of continuous development Linux still cannot do even the SIMPLEST of things. What the fuck are you losers spending your time on? Apple, by contrast, has only been working on OS X for about 10 years, and it is MILES ahead of Lin-sux in every conceivable way. Lin-sux is a joke.
Think different.
Think BETTER.
Think Apple!
Why would you screw up a perfectly good macbook pro by putting Unity crapware on it?
This signature intentionally left blank.
"The Retina MacBook Pro is a lemon because it won't run Linux"
There, I fixed your title for you...
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Fixed that for you.
Other than proving it can be done, why would you drop that amount of money on a retina display macbook pro and then install linux on it? OS X is already *nix and has a much, much cleaner and better looking gui than anything available for linux.
There's MacPorts, which hardly runs on OS X..
To see if it can be done.
This is what getting Linux (or X, at the very least) working on any laptop used to be like, 15 years ago.
I bought a NEC Versa 2000C (486DX-75, 9.5" 640x480x16bpp, etc.) which worked well enough that I don't recall having to screw around too much with the settings - though of course I maxed the RAM and got a bigger HD and spent a lot of time messing around with different window managers to decide which one was good given the limited screen size.
A year or two later, I got my ex a Versa 4080H (P-120 with F00F bug if I recall, 10ish" 800x600) which in theory could run 800x600x16bpp, but after tons of messing with xconf (I think there may have been one other person who had one and was trying to run Linux on it) she pretty much wound up stuck at 8bpp forever. And although headphone audio worked, I don't know whether I ever got the built-in speakers to work.
So, somebody comes out with a laptop that makes use of hardware that no one's ever seen the likes of before and Linux isn't instantly somehow magically ready to run on it? This is my complete lack of surprise. (And I'm sure people are already slaving away on support for every feature of the Retina MBP.)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Ahh, yes. It's pure coincidence the firmware disables the thunderbolt controller when a OS doesn't identify itself as Darwin. Right.
Linux isn't the lemon, that would be the Macbook Pro. I have an older one, and it's definitely an oddball. Especially with it's sad excuse for an EFI.
Getting this far involved rather a lot of irritation at Apple for conspiring to do things in a range of non-standard ways, but it turns out that the real villains of the piece are Intel. The Thunderbolt controller in the Apples is an Intel part - the 82524EF, according to Apple. Given Intel's enthusiasm for Linux and their generally high levels of engagement with the Linux development community, it's disappointing[1] to discover that this controller has been shipping for over a year with (a) no Linux driver and (b) no documentation that would let anyone write such a driver. It's not even mentioned on Intel's website. So, thanks Intel. You're awful.
So yeah, dont let facts get in the way of your rant.
Monstar L
... Or OpenDarwin... or .. there is some spiffed up version with a nice GUI, what's that called again?...
Its ok to say that Linux or even Windows could not run well on a Apple Hardware, but you could found many more hardware that OSX does not run. :)
Intel Thunderbolt drivers are particularly poor - not supporting hot-plug in windows yet.
This is not really a problem with the hardware itself just Intel/Microsofts priorities are not aimed on thunderbold, considering it isn't on that much hardware at the moment.
How would you then expect that it will work immediatly on linux - where typically the developers don't get pre-release hardware or even specs.
"Who would install Linux on a Macbook Pro?"
-- Linux guru
A 15 inch screen simply doesn't need a resolution like that.
Shut up and change you username to "OldManEyes" or something. It's still a fraction of the dpi of newsprint. Increases in monitor resolution will make it possible to have crisper text (or just more text, but crisper is a better choice), which is easier to read.
I'm typing this in a 13" monitor at 1280 x 800, and looking at the jagged edges and aliasing around my icons and text and thinking that I would even like more than 2880x1800, but at least it's a good start. It's not worth it for me at the current price, but that's an issue with my limited resources, not with the idea of a higher dpi screen.
Stop thinking in terms of, "What's the minimum we can get away with and still be useful." That's an oppressive philosophy when applied in the way you have, implicitly impugning those who want more than the minimum as frivolous. Instead, try thinking about "What's the best we can do with the resources we have." instead.
Just going with the minimum bearable specs got us stuck for 100 years with an abysmal academy frame rate of 24fps that we're only just now starting to talk about getting out of.
Don't put stuff down just because you can't enjoy it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
For the last week, the entire work week I have been studying centos - installation, configuration, ... I constantly create new VM's, clone them and so on. The only unusual thing is I resize the window, then back to full screen, - this sets the right display settings. That takes about 1 second after each start. Using vmware. If you are using MBP Retina in Bootcamp, then... WHY? Using VMware and it rocks!
Sounds more like the kind of routine driver problems that almost invariably crop up with a new hardware platform or a new interface.
Don't we already have this on Linux?
If not, why not?
We're still in the era of bitmapped fonts and icons?
And what's the point of all the required 3D and compositing business if you're not going to have scalable icons and text?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Is this NVIDIA's fault? I want to know who to flip the bird to.
Are you five years old, or six? I ask merely for information...
is a win.
But on desktop side, one of the things that's often behind are support for common desktop file formats and standards, and amongst the most common management issues are hardware support bugs and instabilities. In hopes of getting features and bug fixes, you run updates to relevant packages. Those packages then depend on other packages—to get the bug fix or the feature/support you're happy to see has been implemented, you end up either:
(1) Spending time trying to figure out dependencies yourself, disconnect other dependencies with your own configuration and compiles, and only upgrade those packages that absolutely must be upgraded to get the updates you want.
(2) Updating everything to save the time otherwise spent doing (1), but then dealing with shifting filesystem standards, codebases, infrastructure implementations, etc. and having to essentially manage your own projects/code/work in relation to these in order to get your system back to the functional state it was in just before you ran the update. And there are often regressions.
It's a sort of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't phenomenon on the Linux desktop; either way you're going to . These days I tell people:
- If you install Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. and immediately find every last thing that you need and a well-supported system, great. Linux may be for you.
- If you feel as though you're "almost there" and are just waiting for those one or two precious updates that will fulfill your needs, steer clear. You'll probably never get there, and you'll spend a lot of time tracking the evolution of the codebase(s) and doing system management as you wait.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
don't see the issues that you experienced.
But I do use vim on a regular basis for little things and have had no issues in iTerm, so it may depend (for the benefit of info for others) on the level at which you use Vim. If it's just to bung on text files here and there, it might be Good Enough[TM] for many. (It is for me—no issues.)
Sounds like for serious Vim users (I was always in the Emacs camp instead for big work) iTerm, too, may be lacking.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
but that doesn't mean that it's content-free. No, it doesn't actually have to do with scientifically established property of retinas, nor does it magically reach out and paint your retinas with pleasant fairy dust.
But the marketing department uses "retina" to indicate a very high resolution display. To those of us that like them, that is a feature, which makes the term useful, though any word designating the same feature would have had the same information function in the end.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I don't want your damn lemons! What the hell am I suppose to do with these?! Demand to see Life's Manager! Make Life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons!!! Do you know who I am?! I'm the guy who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!!!
Darn it, Apple! Now I'll have to install Linux on my computer and pay only 1/3 as much!
WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY MY LIFE, APPLE???
In Reason We Trust
This is a completely stupid and ill-informed article. The real problem lies with Apple's proprietary junk hardware and their intolerance for users running anything other than that dreaded Mac OS X. Hence the real lemon is Apple and it's overpriced hardware. Linux can easily adapt to any hardware platform - the same can't be said about OS X and it's bastardized implementation of BSD.
To all the people asking why, I have a better question... WHY NOT? I'll run whatever the fuck I want I on my hardware. You don't like it? Tough shit.
/rant
What happened to choice is good, diversity is good? Look at all of these so-called nerds, shouting down the few who don't conform to running Windows on $300 laptops.
Congratulations, you've become what you despised.
So, full disclosure here (and you're going to love this): I have several Macs; my current rigs are 2011 iMac 27" and 2011 MBP 17". They both run Fedora. 90% of the time anyway. (They multiboot Fedora, Mint, Snow Leopard & Mountain Lion.) Oh, yeah: I went to Starbucks yesterday, ordered a quad Iced Latte and enjoyed the hell out of it. My television broke over a year ago, and I never got it fixed: I cancelled cable instead. So you could say that I don't watch television! I do not own a beret, nor do I wear one.
My point is, I don't have one. I'm just a regular guy, and I don't care what you think of my choices.
The Pope is Catholic! And bears have been spotted defecating in the woods!
This happens every time Apple releases new hardware. This is just Phoronix trolling for clicks again. Give it 6 months and the picture will be better. I had the exact same problems with my 2009 MBP, even used the exact same boot parms fr 6 months before things were sorted out.
I'm gosgog:
I f you have nothing else to do but waste your Money, then either of the first two will help you do it! LINUX is FREE, ITS perpetually being updated, way ahead of anything the other two do and its a firm believer in "Open Source" and it offers all kinds of choices FREE of CHARGE!! AND IT DOESN'T GO AROUND SUING over whether it has rounded corners!
Android is just a marketing term, it's not scientific it has nothing to do with humanoid robots.
Just asking :/
or maybe i just bought crap hardware, but, and this is going to prompt the usual 'well it works alright here' ries, but Linux, My OS of choice since 1997 - isn't perfect of course, and i'm interested in power management, i just am, so imagine my dismay (ok - outright anger) as on my 2009 AMD Turion x2 64 laptop, overheated as i was installing Linux, Slackware to be precise. Halfway through the install the laptop went off, and wouldn't come back on until, during fault-finding, a 2GB RAM stick was removed. The damn laptop got so hot, the ram socket failed, taking the RAM with it, new RAM proved the socket or possibly worse, was dead. for good. Linux Fail. It hurt the Packard Bell hardware. t was sold as a 2GB Windows laptop. Cooling on many laptops needs to be fixed. Some *nux distro's worked well. Mainly the *buntu ones, they were a little less evil to the hardware, Yes, some will say it was a hardware fault, and you are wrong. The hardware worked well on the OS it was designed for, Linux, of course, even tweaked and prodded, still heated the laptop beyond what was normal, and even sometimes it cut out, performance was acceptable, but battery life was reduced. Not a good OS for *that* laptop. I had enough of cheap crappy keyboards, poor build quality, squeaky cabinets and all that nonsense, wanted a solid dependable non-windows laptop with decent battery life, quality build (which in my book, means metal) great keyboard and was well designed. after months or reading, a Macbook Pro from early 2009 replaced the overheated plastic laptop i sold on. 30 minutes after i waked in with it, Kubuntu 10.04 booted, Mactel's PPA tweaks were done and i was happier. hardware support was okay, obviously the usual Broadcom tweaks were done, manual fan speeds were implemented, propriety 'drivers' installed and it was ok. i ignored OS X. performance would sometimes be dreadful, sometimes excellent, i think the dual-graphics of the MBP were confusing Linux, as EFI booting / BIOS emulation weirdness meant Linux only really saw the Nvidia 9600, with the consequent higher heat generation and lower battery life associated using the so called 'performance' card. ah well. Fast forward to *buntu 12.04 .. oh dear. There's a Mac ISO that Canonical make for Intel Mac users, with better support (they say) for Mac Owners.
well, first, dont download it on a OSx system, or if you do, especially dont bother trying to mount or burn it in OSX. It'll likely not work. Canonical's
ISO for Macs is unmountable - for most people using er, Macs. Are you serious ? Grub *EFI* is mostly pointless on Canonical's Mac ISO
so i installed generic 12.04 .. after burning it on my other Linux box.
I Love Linux, have done since 1997when i first installed it (and Yes, it was Redhat!) and its my OS of choice, its on all my machines, I give back, i have sent money to free and open source devs, and will continue to do so, .. because i think the way Windows and OS X are going, its going to be very sad for anyone
with anything other than a passing interest in *using* computers, to do anything that the OS disagrees with, worse still if you're not using a touch screen interface that seems to be the fashion at present, or god help us, is also 'cloud centric'
Linux, BSD et al, will of course be the only refuge from this buzzword controlled direction the two other main OS' seem to be heading.
but for gods sake, lets get power management right, on all laptops for a start, desktops are usually much less of a pain in this direction,
lets also leave stuff like pulseaudio and the dumbed down interfaces to those that need them, and let us Linux users use Free software
on our paid-for-cash hardware, until then i shall keep looking for the ultimate distro i can make run the hardware as efficient as OS X
does on my Macbook, as frustrating though as OS X is.
until