Hello,

So, about a month ago, I bought a MacBook Pro 15.4". Today, I installed Ubuntu 9.10 64bit on it. When loading the live CD and clicking "test Ubuntu without making any changes to my computer", and the desktop was loaded, it detected that restricted drivers needed to be activated. I clicked the box, and installed one of them (Brodacom wireless driver), and the internet worked. Now, I restarted the system, and installed Ubuntu instead of selecting the "test Ubuntu" option. After the successful install, I went to check for the drivers, and it didn't detect them. It only detected them on the Live CD.

Here's my specs:

OS: Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.2) / 25.7 GB of Ubuntu (Hard drive capacity is 500 GB 7200 rpm)
Graphics card: 2 NVIDIA cards (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT) 256 MB
Memory: 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
Processor: 1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz (3MB L2 cache)

How can I detect the drivers?

You may have to tell it to look for them manually. go to the menu item in system -> administration, and it'll be named 'Hardware Drivers' or something (not used ubuntu in a while, can't give you the correct name). When you open that, it should search and tell you. The same thing happened on my laptop when I installed 9.04.

Unfortunately, I have tried that, and nothing happens. Also, I checked the box for "detecting restricted drivers", and still, nothing happens. Is it just the distro?

Hi, I googled for this exact same problem, and this post showed up. Im also on a Macbook Pro, but running Leopard 10.5.

Tried the Hardware Drivers application, and it said it was searching, but returned no results. It did return results while on the live cd (DVD in my case) however.

I hope i can get this working, im new to the world of linux, but I have found it to be great so far.

Update:

Ok, still cant get it but have a little more info.

Before when booting from the live cd I was able to get the internet fully up and running, at least to the point where nearby wifi connections in my neighbourhood were visible. I got to that point by simply entering my wifi network name and password into Network Manager and activating the proprietary drivers available for my wireless hardware, which had been found automatically by Hardware Drivers.


I didnt even bother starting up Firefox at that point, because I was too excited to do this on my fully installed partition. But as I said before, no luck in finding these drivers on the installed version

Well, I decided to try booting from the cd again, and this time I couldnt get as far. First try, I got it to find the drivers again, but it froze while trying to install them. An couple error messages popped up, one saying "Metacity" had stopped working, and another said something like "GTP" or "GTK" stopped. I restarted and tried again, and wasnt even able to find them. Sorry for not being fully clear on the error messages, I tried to get them back but they didnt pop up again. I have heard the word Metacity before I think, but dont know what it is.

Ok, while searching google trying to figure this out, I encountered two or three other forums where people had encountered similar problems. If I figure this out I will post the solution to those forums.

So, anyone have any ideas? ^___^

I'd still love some help. I've actually deleted the Ubuntu partition on this computer until this problem is solved.

Ok, I solved it, at least for myself.

Try putting the live cd in while running on the INSTALLED version of ubuntu. Then go to Hardware drivers and look for drivers, and your driver should be there. Why this is the case, I have no idea. I found someone talking about a tangentially related problem, and that gave me that idea.

Hope it works for you.

Hm, I tried and I got nothing. Can you give me the exact steps again?

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Ok, so basically I just get the Ubuntu install back to the place where we were having the problem not detecting drivers, and then put the Live cd in while the Ubuntu OS is loaded. Then I was able to detect the drivers. It almost seems as if the drivers are loaded onto the cd? It would make sense, considering you cant get on the internet to download these drivers (at least as far as I know, could be another way I dont know about I suppose).

Sorry if this doesn't work for you, best of luck!

PS I accidentally clicked on "No" for the "Did you find this post helpful" thing on your last reply, and dont know how to turn it off.