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Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro

Posted by timothy on from the but-it-might-soon-be-awesome dept.

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."

6 of 780 comments (clear)

  1. Hardly newsworthy by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Informative

    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."
    1. Re:Hardly newsworthy by jrminter · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is one thing to have an older MacBook and think about moving to a Linux distro when the current OS no longer supports your hardware, but unless you are a hobbyist who get pleasure from tinkering and wants to see "if I can...", it seems like a waste of time and money. Note that I am writing this on a 2009 MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion but I also use Linux for many aspects of my work. If I wanted a Linux laptop to just "get my work done," I would look carefully at one of these: http://zareason.com/shop/Laptops/ The key is to let your supplier work out the hardware details. That is part of why one buys from a given supplier. We are all free to tinker to our hearts content, but if our objective is to use the system to do something useful, it is typically more productive to get something that works on the OS of choice. This is hardly a new concept...

  2. Re:This Just In: by tgibbs · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:What a shame by the_humeister · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is if you aren't legally allowed to run it on anything other than Mac hardware. The $20 you pay is technically the upgrade price since the actual price has been rolled into the cost of the hardware.

  4. Re:Linux on Mac?! by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lets be clear (pun intended): higher DPI screens. Resolution is only half the battle. What good is 1680x1050 if it's on a 30' screen? Much better on a 15" I'd say.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  5. Re:As long as your hardware is common and old by MikeBabcock · · Score: 4, Informative

    I install over 20 Dell servers a year running CentOS. I've never needed a single driver update. All of them are fully supported. Dell manufactures their servers specifically to be Linux supported.

    cf. http://linux.dell.com/

    --
    - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)