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Below are the 11 most recent journal entries recorded in Running Linux on Apple Macintosh's LiveJournal:

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
4:12 am
[opensusein]
Opensuse.in - Suse по-русски
 Какой операционной системой вы пользуетесь?Windows, MacOS?А может быть Ubuntu или каким-то другим дистрибутивом? В любом случаи вам стоит попробовать что-то новенькое - операционную систему OpenSUSE .На новом сайте suse.in посвященном  этой системе вы сможете узнать много полезной информации об этой системе, а так же скачать ее если она вас заинтересует.
Разделы сайта:
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
7:39 pm
[phrench_phried]
April fools extravaganza (or something)
 As luck would have it, it's all at once the one-year anniversary of the creation of linux_on_mac , April Fool's Day, and the day on which I review the pre-release of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope or something.

As a reminder, Here's my hardware.. I performed the upgrade the easy way:

update-manager -d

The rest happened pretty much all by itself.

I haven't made a thorough test of every in-and-out of the system, but here are the things I've noticed:

Bad:

  • The i-sight webcam quit working. It needed a bit of encouragement and a proprietary driver to work in the first place so I'm sure there's an easy work-around. I'll post more when I figure it out.
  • The soundcard bug where if you boot up with the headphones plugged in the speakers and headphones work at the same time hasn't been fixed.
Good:

  • The touchpad has noticeably improved. It acts a lot more like it does under OS-X (acceleration, for example). I don't know exactly what's changed and why and might not take the time to figure it out since I have other things to do. I just wanted to point out that there's a noticeable improvement.
  • Suspend seems to work a lot better and more predictably.
  • It seems like it's shiner, slicker, more streamlined, but that might just be placebo effect.
  • So far, no noticeable bugs even though the distro doesn't go live for a few more weeks.

All in all, a score for Ubuntu!
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
11:16 am
[phrench_phried]
Skype under Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid ibex
 FolIowing the upgrade,  had some trouble getting Skylpe to work.  Installing it was no problem.  It's on the medibuntu repositories, but it wasn't playing nice with the audio.  I finally found the fix here and here.

1. 
  • killall pulseaudio
  • sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
  • sudo apt-get install esound
  • sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio
2.

I'm not sure how much of this will turn out to be necessary.  For me, all I had to do was insure that the "capture" block was checked but I'd been futzing with my audio settings for several hours before I stumbled on the solution.

A) The microphone capture is turn off by default to turn it on:
  1. Double click the volume icon on the panel.
  2. Now click Edit, Preferences.
  3. You then need to make sure Microphone, Mic boost, and Capture are ticked.
  4. Now there should be a Recording/Capture tab in volume control panel.
  5. Go through each volume setting and make sure nothing is turned down or muted.
  6. In the Switches/Options tab make sure you select the Microphone as the input source.
B) Edit /etc/esound/esd.conf to look like this:
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 1
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=

C) Restart alsa-utils:
# sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Friday, November 14th, 2008
4:28 pm
[phrench_phried]
Upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
 I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.  Here's my hardware.  At the same time, I decided to downgrade to the 32 bit version.  The main reason for this, as lame as it is, is that there isn't a 64 bit Java browser plugin out there that works right.  This is an old story with me; I've switched back and forth between 64 and 32 bit Ubuntu several times on my other machines that have 64 bit processors.

Notes
  • The install went really easily, as expected.  There's still an option for Macintosh keyboard in the setup menus.  I guess you're still supposed to install the package pommed, but it's hard to see, for the moment, what it's doing.  As a matter of fact, I don't think it's working properly because I'm supposed to get an audio signal when increasing or decreasing the audio volume using the function keys and I'm not.  I'll have to look into this more later...  *Edited* it does seem like pommed makes the optical disk eject button work.
  • One cool thing:  It seems that there's now a restricted driver for the Broadcom wireless; no more ndswrapper!
  • There's a package called mouseemu that needs to be uninstalled.  It was build for imacs and ibooks but it doen't work properly with the new macbooks.  Among other things, it makes it so that the capslock light doen't come on and F12 and F11 don't work properly.  I just used the synaptic file manager to remove this package.
  • I ran into some touchpad problems right off the bat.  It didn't have mac-like behaviour and the fix that I used under Hardy doesn't work.  In any case, don't use the touchpad fix that's mentioned under the Gutsy tutorial.  You must use a .fdi configuration instead of modifying the xorg.conf file.  The driver and config file found here make the touchpad work very nicely; about like it does under Leopard.  The .fdi file recommended works just fine but I like the two-finger scroll, two-finger tap, etc. that I'd got used to.
After some experimentation, here's the .fdi file I pieced together (called /etc/hal/fdi/policy/appletouch.fdi)

( behind cutCollapse )

Now I have one and two finger tap, two finger scroll, right edge scroll, plus one and two finger click.  Overall, it works better than my old setup.  I haven't played with it a lot yet, but my initial feeling is that it works just like it does under MacOS Leopard.
Monday, September 8th, 2008
4:19 pm
[phrench_phried]
skype audio
 I was having a hard time getting Skype to work.  Every time I tried to make a call, I received an 'Audio output error'.  Google revealed a number of similar errors and solutions, but most of them seemed outdated or not not to apply to the specific problem I was having.  For example, in all other cases, the Macbook audio was working fine.  I finally found the solution (I think) here and here .

I killed skype, executed "asoundconf reset-default-card" rebooted and re-started Skype.  I don't know why this fixed it, but it did.  So, now, I have Skype, mic, audio, i-sight...  just like it should be!

Once again, this is on:

Black macbook Santa Rosa 4.1, 2gb Ram core 2 duo 2.4ghz 250gb hard drive

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 "Hardy Heron" AMD 64 version http://www.ubuntu.com

Friday, August 29th, 2008
2:54 pm
[phrench_phried]
i-sight
 Today I got my i-sight working.  It was easy; I wonder why I put it off so long...

I have a black macbook 13.5" 2.4ghz, 2 gigs of RAM, 250g hard drive, version 4.1

I followed the directions here .  I mounted my macos partition and copied the AppleUSBVideoSupport file over to my /home/~ (as described in the instructions) directory instead of downloading another one. 

Easy.  Really easy. 

Thursday, August 7th, 2008
4:05 pm
[phrench_phried]
Horizontal scrolling and firefox derivatives
 Firefox and its relatives (Flock, Icecat...)treat horizontal scrolling motions as forward and back commands.  It's very annoying because the Macbook scroll pad is much too sensitive to make good use of it.  The fix is easy though, I ganked it from here.

There are lots of other touchpad tweaks that I'd like to play with when I find a little time here.

Fix Firefox Scrolling Issue

Firefox is a great browser but it has a bit of a hiccup when it comes to horizontal scrolling. By default it interprets horizontal scrolling as forward/back commands. To fix this type about:config in the address bar and change these two lines (click lines to edit). This is not a specific issue to the Santa Rosa version but its a common problem and an easy fix.

mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action (change it to 1 to allow scrolling or 0 to turn it off) mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines (change it to “true”)
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
3:58 pm
[phrench_phried]
Cleaned up install notes
 I had really gotten used to Linux being painless.  Thanks to Ubuntu, the last few times I've installed Linux on a PC, it was a piece of cake so putting Ubuntu on my Macbook was quite reminiscent of the good ol' days when Linux was a true blue PITA.  I had to do this by trial and error and a half-dozen failed installs.  I hope that if you take the same steps I took, you'll save yourself some time and possibly heartache, YMMV:

For the most part, I used the tutorial here:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook_Santa_Rosa

The hardware: Black macbook Santa Rosa 4.1, 2gb Ram core 2 duo 2.4ghz 250gb hard drive

The OS: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 "Hardy Heron" AMD 64 version http://www.ubuntu.com

Steps:
  • I followed the instructions in the tutorial all the way down to the reboot part.

  • If you only reboot, an error will occur when you try to boot up under Ubuntu to the tune of "No boot media...".  You must use the rEFIt partition tool to re-sync the partition tables.  After that, everything is just peachy.  You can boot under OSX or Ubuntu at will.  This one really got me and I wasted a lot of time figuring out the solution (which was brutally simple once you figure it out).  I'll also point out that you really can't (at least I don't think you can) have a swap partition.  Ubuntu simply won't boot.  I'll have to look into this more later.  It's a good thing I have lots of RAM.

  • I attempted to install the patched kernel as described in the tutorial.  Obviously, the repositories should be:

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main 
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main

    The thing is, it seems like the problems that the kernel patch are supposed to fix are already fixed. Namely the touchpad.  It appears that no kernel update actually took place which tells me that the mactel folks either haven't made a patched kernel because it's already patched or hardy is just too new.

  • Either way, I've skipped step 5 for the moment because the keyboard and touchpad, while not behaving exactly as they do under OSX, are actually working really well and haven't bothered me that I've noticed.  I may futz with this more later...

  • The next thing I attacked was the wireless.  I use wifi a lot and I can't live without it (or barely).  I followed the instructions in the tutorial for Gutsy and it worked (as far as I can tell for the moment) perfectly.

  • Next I jumped to the 'disable touchpad while typing' fix.  The Macbook touchpad is really large and it's nearly impossible to type without bumping it all the time.  Follow the instructions here:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271052

  • Next, I looked at sound because, well, it wasn't working.  The fix in the tutorial worked fine.  I also had to fiddle with the audio controls and I don't remember exactly what I did or in what order... sorry.  I seem to remember having to check the 'speaker' switch in the Alsa mixer.

  • On the function / media keys.  Some of them 'just worked', namely the eject, the three volume controls and the play / pause key.  The brightness keys didn't seem to work so I went ahead and installed the pommed package.  Remember, I'm using the 'hardy' repositories.  Pommed fixed the brightness keys.  The dashboard and other keys don't do anything for the moment.

  • Suspend works fine.  Actually, this is the first time I've successfully gotten any Linux to suspend without harsh side-effects.  Need more time to be sure...

  • So far, I can't get the i-sight to work.  I'll have to revisit this.

  • If you boot up with your headphones plugged in, the speakers and headphones work at the same time - known bug.

  • I can't get Compiz Fusion to work exactly the way I want.  I'll be disappointed if I can't get this figured out because Compiz is about the best thing to happen to Linux since the penguin.

Now I need a break, stay tuned!

x-posted to My own LJ

Observations:

I was really pleasantly surprised to see 'U.S. Macintosh' proposed at setup time for a keyboard map.
3:51 pm
[phrench_phried]
First steps part II
 Okay, we're getting somewhere.  Like many things Linux, most of ones best help comes from the Internet and there is always varying and sometimes contradictory information out there.  Lo and behold, I'm not alone: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4792181 .  I'm surprised and I'm not, I get it and I don't, but the trick is to get rEFIt to re-sync the MBR... to the extent that there is one.  Anyway, now my macbook boots to Ubuntu.

To be continued...
2:40 pm
[phrench_phried]
First steps
 I'm the proud owner of a new macbook.  My first ever apple computer.  It's a black macbook 13.5" 2.4ghz, 2 gigs of RAM, 250g hard drive, version 4.1 (I think).  I've had it about three weeks.  I predicted that I'd be installing Linux on it a lot earlier than I actually did.  That, in itself, is a tribute to how good Leopard really is.  But I finally gave in and took the leap.

I discovered, much to my dismay, that installing Linux on a macbook is far from the straightforward task I had hoped it would be.   I followed various tutorials, mainly this one https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook_Santa_Rosa and attempted to install Ubuntu both the latest release, 'Heron' 8.04 and when that fell through, 'Gutsy' 7.10 both times the AMD 64-bit versions.  I got as far as installing rEFIt and walking through the install up to reboot.  On either install, I receive an error:

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

Pressing any key does nothing, with or without a boot disk.  I have to hold the power button until it resets.

Back to the drawing board...

 
Friday, April 4th, 2008
4:32 pm
[phrench_phried]
Welcome
 Here we have it, our very own community to discuss all aspects of running Linux on Apple computers.  I started this community because that's exactly what I plan to do.  At the time of this writing, I'm picking up my first Macintosh in three days.  I'll let all of you masses of people who are sitting on the edges of your seats know how it goes!

Until then, stay fabulous!

Current Mood: happy
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