This is my first Mac computer. I went with Mac this time because they have a reputation for quality hardware and they're comparatively consistent with their hardware choices: they don't just throw in whatever fell off a truck and there isn't a lot of variety, both in number of models and between models.
The most difficulty I had during installation came from trying to dual-boot with OS X because of GUID partitioning and booting. rEFIt boots both the OS X and Kubuntu partitions if GRUB is installed on the Kubuntu partition.
Here are the things that work:
1680x1050 Display - No configuration required for 1680x1050. The
Nvidia driver (downloaded and installed manually rather than via the update manager) works well, although it takes some work to get Kubuntu to proper runlevel 3 without video drivers loaded (more of a distro problem.)
Ethernet - no configuration required
Built-in Sound
- add option snd-hda-intel model=mbp55 to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf (good enough to stop here)
- install pulseaudio and padevchooser
- add users to "pulse-access" group
- move pulseaudio to the top in sound settings (make it the primary sound device for everything)
- mess with padevchooser to manage input and output
Built-in Mic - I needed to do the pulseaudio steps above, plus it took a lot of mixer tweaking. You can adjust the gain with PulseAudio Manager (padevchooser) -> Devices -> Sources ->
alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo (increase volume to 300%)
Built-in Camera - no configuration required
Wireless - install
Linux STA Driver (follow the directions!), or search for "broadcom wireless driver" (provided by Broadcom)
power button - no configuration required
Sort-of working:
Keyboard
- sound buttons work
- eject (^) does't work (I think I just need to set a keyboard shortcut to eject)
- screen brightness buttons are detected but don't change brightness
- keyboard-backlight brightness buttons don't do anything (but brightness is accessible via /sys)
- "proper" [delete] is available with [fn]+[delete]
IR receiver - has a LIRC driver (Apple USB,) but I haven't messed with it enough to get my remote to do anything (already paired the two from OS X)
touchpad - works like a PC touchpad, but I haven't set up multi-touch
Over all this has been my easiest *nix install yet. Dual-booting with OS X is easy as long as you partition via OS X (
gparted won't do,) boot with rEFIt (don't bother with Boot Camp,) and avoid MBR tools (like
cfdisk and the FreeBSD installer.) If you want to share a partition for data between the two, format one with "
something extended (case-sensitive)" (not journaled!) in OS X and mount it with
hfsplus in Linux.
Kevin Barry
