Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro

Proof at last! by oldmac31310 · 2012-08-16 06:24 · Score: 5, Funny

This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?

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Re:Proof at last! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-16 07:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well for my anecdotal hyperbole it sounds like every Windows installation I've ever done. Seems I need to download the network card drivers and change the display setting from VGA in a box that doesn't fit in VGA. Seriously, installing an operating system is never a piece of cake unless you have an OS image that is specific to the hardware you're installing it to. In that case it's always a piece of cake regardless of which OS it is.
Re:Proof at last! by mcgrew · 2012-08-16 07:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's been a while since you tried Linux, hasn't it? If not, you've chosen the wrong distro, which is what I suspect happened here (haven't RTFA yet). It's been five years since I've had any such issues.
That's the thing -- there is no Linux, there are a lot of Linuxes. For an example, in another thread a while ago someone was complaining that he couldn't play MP3s on his Linux box... of course not, he was running Red Hat.
OK, I'm back, just read the iApple ad (RTFA in this case means "read the fucking ad"). There's nothing there but pretty pictures of the macbook, descriptions of what a fine piece of equipment it is, and just says "Linux" without saying what distro, how he tried to install it, etc.
In short, TFA is bullshit. Tell me what distro you're trying to run! What drivers are lacking. If you've ever installed any OS on any computer.

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Re:Proof at last! by MikeBabcock · 2012-08-16 08:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

Linux has shipped with more hardware support out of the box than Windows for ages now. You just don't care that you have to download Windows drivers for hardware because its normal to you.

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- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Re:Proof at last! by Vintermann · 2012-08-16 09:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Installing Ubuntu has been a piece of cake on every system I've done it on over the years.
When I was asked by some friends to assist with a Windows installation, I was very surprised at how much manual work it was (getting the wireless drivers to work, for instance - that used to be a problem on Linux around 2003).
It's no surprise Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows, because Microsoft would much rather you have the OEM do it for you.

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Re:Proof at last! by Sir_Sri · 2012-08-16 09:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

You just don't care that you have to download Windows drivers for hardware because its normal to you

Which kind of takes away the advantage of support out of the box.
This is one of those points where it's only the marginal cases that matter. Whether I need to download drivers to reach the full potential of my video card or they come pre installed is of minimal importance, because there are only basically 3 video card makers and I either can find them easily, or I need someone else to manage my computer for me no matter what, because I can't find www.nvidia.com, click the drivers, GPU drivers, then auto detect buttons, I'm not capable of managing my own computer, windows or linux.
On the other hand, if I have some bizarro SATA controller on my MOBO or a video card from SIS or matrox or one of the other boutique guys or some other random weird crap on my computer I'm still probably going to have to find drivers for something, and it's a pain in the arse because you may have to navigate some taiwanese website looking for some numbers in the hopes that they will point you to the right driver. And that's about equally bad for both linux and windows, assuming you can find drivers at all, and assuming they would do anything on linux if you needed them.
Which takes us to why Linux doesn't work on a retina macbook. The APIC intel mobo thing seems like that's actually a linux bug, whatever they happen, I'm not going to rail on the Linux dev guys about it. But the rest of it seems to be all the marginal case stuff, some custom apple thunderbolt part that you need to get working so you can transfer over files to support some other custom apple part (or at least very new part that is currently only supported by apple). No one ever seriously thought a 2880x 1800 display was going to exist (same ratios at 1440x900 but 4x the pixels), so it works like shit, the wifi is probably some custom part, so it doesn't work, the GPU switching thing is relatively new, so it's hard to say if that's a newness problem or a custom Apple way of GPU switching problem. For windows you're stuck waiting for Apple to release a driver kit (although the retina display thing can be solved through nvidia's website), and everything else is about as bad as linux. In both cases you're waiting on someone else to solve the problem for you as an end user. On linux you're waiting for someone to basically reverse engineer the parts, on Windows you're waiting for Apple to release a boot camp disk or money to change hands and Microsoft to write their own.
So sure, Linux has more support out of the box, but if it doesn't support the marginal case stuff that's hard for me to find fixes for then it's not getting me a whole lot over windows (at least in terms of driver support). As is well exemplified by the macbook retina display, which is basically a series of edge cases linux doesn't support yet, and neither does microsoft. That's probably Apple being assholes more than the fault of the other two, but either way, the linux setup experience isn't winning out over windows.
Re:Proof at last! by ilikenwf · 2012-08-16 10:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Where is the "find drivers" button? Or right its called "Google your damned ass off" and you had BETTER know the exact make/rev/model of driver you need and pray to a statue of RMS someone has one. Even if they DO have one you better have enough skillz to be able to tweak that sucker, because it'll no doubt be written for make f, rev g, firmware h and you'll have make F, rev I, firmware j and the picky bastard just won't work.
It's not 1997 anymore...the kernel has 99% of the drivers you'll need, unless you need a proprietary one or something that's up for inclusion in the kernel that hasn't made it into the stable version yet.
Re:Proof at last! by tqk · 2012-08-16 12:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

Installing Ubuntu has been a piece of cake on every system I've done it on over the years.
You haven't been trying hard enough. I love Linux, and the *BSDs, but we're always going to find ourselves chasing hardware support since the manufacturers (well, many) couldn't care less about supporting us and they love to stick us with so far unsupported (by the devs) proprietary stuff. Even if you stick to older hardware to give the devs a chance to do something with that crap, some systems will inevitably fall through the cracks. I'm mostly talking about laptops in my case. In my experience, first it was video that could only barely (if at all) do X, then Winmodems (bleah!), then network interfaces, then sound, now WiFi. It doesn't much help when curveballs like PulseAudio get tossed in at the last minute. My HP dv4 AMD 64 bit Turion machine still won't do sound (using Debian testing), while my 32 bit Gateway AMD Sempron does *everything* swimmingly (running Debian stable).
I just spent a weekend trying distro after distro trying to find one that even detected the internal wifi in an Inspiron 1525. Finally, LinuxMint did. Woohoo! Unfortunately, it refuses to connect to my parents wifi router, while it has no trouble with my sister's. Needs research, and a wired connection (which isn't easy to do these days, damnit); pain in the butt. Sucks to be us sometimes, dependent upon hardware support.
Don't get me wrong, it's a lot better now than it used to be and live CDs/DVDs make the process a lot easier than it used to be, but there'll always be rotten boxes that refuse to play nice. Still better than banging your head on Win* and Mac, though.

--
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
Re:Proof at last! by darkpixel2k · 2012-08-17 07:35 · Score: 4, Funny

woooooooosh..
Did you hear that?
No, my sound card doesn't work under Linux.

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There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)

Linux on Mac?! by m1ndcrash · 2012-08-16 06:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why in the world would you even try to do it? What is the goal of this endeavour?

Re:Linux on Mac?! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-16 06:27 · Score: 4, Funny

Look, sometimes you just want to stick a Chevy four-banger in your Ferrari. It's not rational, it's just linux.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by erp_consultant · 2012-08-16 06:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

Actually I installed a dual boot of OSX and Ubuntu on my later model iMac. Not only does Ubuntu run flawlessly it's really fast. I was surprised to see that everything worked right out of the box, including the webcam, sound and wifi. Sometimes I have to test my software on a native Linux distribution so it helps to have the dual boot option. Sure I could run it in a VM but this is a bit more of a pure solution.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by amicusNYCL · 2012-08-16 06:46 · Score: 4, Funny

Just think how much more smug you are when you're running free software on over-priced hardware. It's a smug upgrade!

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Linux on Mac?! by hobarrera · 2012-08-16 06:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why not? It's the only notebook with a display capable of 2,880×1,800, so if you want a notebook with a resolution higher than 1080p, its your only choice.
The hardware specs of a Macbook Pro "Retina" are quite unique, so there's plenty of other reasons you'd want this particular model just for hardware.
Where I live, a Macbook Air is the only choice for something similar to an "ultrabook". Everything else weighs twice as much, and includes crap I don't want, like huge HDDs or optical drives. So even if I dislike Apple's software, their hardware is really the only choice for me.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by JDG1980 · 2012-08-16 07:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Just think how much more smug you are when you're running free software on over-priced hardware
I would be very interested to know where I can get a laptop with a 2880x1800 display panel for cheaper than Apple is charging. I am not aware of any others. It's a judgment call whether this is worth the money, as it is definitely a premium-priced product, but you are paying for actual hardware specs, not just snob appeal.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by PopeRatzo · 2012-08-16 07:08 · Score: 4, Funny

The hardware is nice, but OSX is terrible.
Oh boy, you did it now.
If I don't see you in a few days, I'll send a search party out to look for your karma.

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You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by Lord+Lode · 2012-08-16 07:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

The interesting thing is, this is the first time Apple sets a trend that I (who is not your average consumer) actually want: high resolution screens.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by h4rr4r · 2012-08-16 07:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you like having middle click copy past, functional number pad in vim, or focus follows mouse OSX is not the right choice.
I tried to use it, I paid for software to enable focus follows mouse. I tried to find a decent terminal app, I tried to find replacements for all I needed. OSX is just really meant to be for one kind fo user and that is not me.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by aztracker1 · 2012-08-16 07:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

For me the largest frustration, is the number of applications *only* available via the MacStore, and how cumbersome the MacStore is itself. Not to mention, the default setting for 10.8 (Mountain Lion) was to only allow app installs from "known" developers on the MacStore. The first few apps I installed were non-mac-store apps, and the new sandbox doesn't work for many developer oriented apps. One of the reasons I went mac for a laptop was relatively seamless software options, and it's less so imho now than before. Homebrew/MacPorts goes a long way, but just the same, at this point would nearly rather be on Mint/Debian/Ubuntu. If the next OSX release is *any* worse, I'm definitely going Linux.

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Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Re:Linux on Mac?! by jedidiah · 2012-08-16 08:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Jettison support? I run Linux on Macs because Linux has had better driver support for things like capture cards and 3rd party remotes and more complete support for things like video acceleration.
This MBP is one of the few exception when it comes to "support"
Apple reliability is overrated. So is Apple consistency.
"Elegance" is just subjective nonsense.
The problem with Apple is that things quickly go bad when you use it any manner remotely creative. It has an even worse group think than Windows. With Macs you will get shouted down for trying things that seem mundane on Linux or Windows.
apt-get is a killer feature and blows Apple variants out of the water when it comes to "elegance".
The main advantage of Macs is that you can "buy stuff" for it and Windows has a much bigger advantage in that regard.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Linux on Mac?! by X0563511 · 2012-08-16 08:15 · 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.

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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...

Hardly newsworthy by MrEricSir · 2012-08-16 06:26 · 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!

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There's no -1 for "I don't get it."

Re:Hardly newsworthy by jrminter · 2012-08-16 06:40 · 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...

NEWS Flash!! by JWW · 2012-08-16 06:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:NEWS Flash!! by JWW · 2012-08-16 06:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Exactly... I wonder how well OS X worked the first time Apple ran it on this hardware. I bet it didn't even boot.
I know you're joking, but the corollary here would actually be how good OS X would work on hardware tuned specifically for Linux. The answer to that would likely be "very poorly" as well.

And next by Dunbal · 2012-08-16 06:28 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.

Re:And next by Amouth · 2012-08-16 06:41 · Score: 5, Funny

That isn't linux's fault, it's Ubuntu's. Slackware will run just fine on your sundial.

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'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Re:And next by Darinbob · 2012-08-16 07:41 · Score: 4, Funny

My NetBSD install CD caught fire in my toaster. Still waiting for a patch.

Tell me why... by ak_hepcat · 2012-08-16 06:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?

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Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)

You spent $3000 on a laptop to run linux by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-16 06:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

You spent $3000 on a laptop to run linux. You are a strange person.

Re:Not just the retina macbook pro by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2012-08-16 06:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

But also all devices made by Samsung, LG, and HT....

But saying that doesn't draw any attention - mentioning Apple does. It's like when people talk about Foxconn. Nobody mentions they make stuff for HP, Dell, Lenovo, and others - they only mention the Apple connection.

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#DeleteChrome

Translation by Nexion · 2012-08-16 06:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:Translation by jbolden · 2012-08-16 07:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

It would be nice if Apple contributed to Linux.
They do. Their most notable contribution was all the work on the PPC version of gcc which is the reason Linux runs so well on XBox.
Most of their major open source projects do run on Linux today though: http://www.macosforge.org/

What a shame by frovingslosh · 2012-08-16 06:41 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.

Re:What a shame by the_humeister · 2012-08-16 07:05 · 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.

Instead of Linux laptop by Culture20 · 2012-08-16 06:43 · Score: 5, Funny

Package contained a retina MacBook pro. Would not buy again.

Video RAMM matters more than screen resolution by SplashMyBandit · 2012-08-16 06:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

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).

Re:Video RAMM matters more than screen resolution by gstoddart · 2012-08-16 07:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

First you say ...

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
And then you say ...

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, it's ok if you want to ignore people with smaller systems, but it's a bad thing that Apple isn't interested in selling niche devices to people like you?
They're not interested in chasing "trely powerful users of laptops" -- they're interested in chasing as many people as possible. You likely represent a tiny fraction of the market.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:Video RAMM matters more than screen resolution by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-08-16 08:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Now if you were developing an anal sex simulator, then you'd want to make sure it ran on Apple hardware.
You can't, at least not with iOS - remember that clause in developer license agreement that forbids products directly competing with ones offered by Apple?
Re:Video RAMM matters more than screen resolution by Voyager529 · 2012-08-16 08:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

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).
In most cases, higher quantities of VRAM tend to be a part of beefier graphic chipsets. In basically every one of *those* cases, beefier GPUs sit on the same motherboard as beefier CPUs. In every one of *those* units, you end up with extra runs of copper and beefier fan motors to keep them cool. Add all of that together, and you end up with a laptop that is powerful, but is large, heavy, and lacks battery life. There's definitely a market for this; Alienware, Origin, and Falcon Northwest all pay their bills based on catering to that market. HP has a wide enough product line that they can throw enough Jell-O at basically any wall and some of it will ultimately stick.
Apple, on the other hand, seems to have no desire to cater to people who are alright with a laptop that has only an hour of battery life and weighs 7 pounds. My best guess is that they feel that even having a monster-sized performance laptop would be impossible to make appear sexy, but I'm certain the Apple folk are aware of the Alienware/Origin market and have chosen not to attempt to cater to them. I've yet to meet a Macbook user who expressed unhappiness with their older graphics chipset, or one who was sufficiently unhappy as to express willingness to sacrifice half of their 2.5-hour battery life for the added performance. Ratcheting back the resolution and easing the antialiasing to 2X will get acceptable performance from most games Mac users are likely to play. After Effects comps of any consequence are generally rendered overnight, when the difference between 4 hour render times and 6 hour render times are effectively meaningless. Now granted, I have an Origin monster of a laptop that gets less than an hour of battery life and I'm okay with that, but getting acceptable performance by bumping down graphics detail is a lot easier to do than squeaking out extra battery life when you have a CPU/GPU that eats through it very quickly.

Re:This Just In: by tgibbs · 2012-08-16 07:01 · 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.

Well, speaking as a hipster by crazyjj · 2012-08-16 07:07 · Score: 5, Funny

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?

Re:As long as your hardware is common and old by MikeBabcock · 2012-08-16 10:46 · 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/

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- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)

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