On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 01:13:31AM +0530, Ankur Sethi wrote:
Hi,
I'm in the market for a high-end development + gaming machine (dual boot).
I've been a Mac user for the last 4 years and I'm used to their hardware, so
I'm naturally considering a MacBook Pro as one of my options.
Hello. I'm dual-booting arch/OSX on a macbook pro 7.1 from mid 2010. Not
sure how much my experiences with hardware/issues apply to the newer
ones, but in the interest of putting information out there, here goes:
1. Does suspend/resume work?
Yep. s2ram -fpm
2. Does WiFi work? Does it work even after you suspend/resume?
Occasionally have random DHCP timeouts when trying to connect, but
otherwise fine with both broadcom-wl and b43.
3. Can I boot the Arch installer from USB? This is a big one, since the
optical drives in MacBooks _always_ fail after a few months of use.
I've never had problems with the optical drive. I've had issues booting
from USB; there are workarounds, but I've only tried them for ubuntu,
not arch.
4. Does multi-touch work? If not, is the trackpad at least usable without
multi-touch support?
It's fine.
5. Does that AMD card play well with Linux? If not, is there a way to tell the
machine to ignore the discrete GPU and always use Intel HD Graphics?
Mine has a NVIDIA card, which works great with the proprietary drivers.
6. Does the keyboard backlight work? What about the ambient light sensors?
Audio? Webcam?
Keyboard backlight is fine; no clue about ambient light sensors. Webcam
is fine. Audio is fine, but I had to install pulseaudio to make the mic
work properly.
I know there are many guides for installing Arch on a Mac, and I've read a lot
of them, but none of them go on to mention how pleasant (or unpleasant!) their
long-term experience with Linux on Mac has been. Is it worth all the trouble?
I'm very happy with my setup.
Is it usable for doing actual work?
Yes.
Do things randomly stop working if you upgrade your firmware?
No.
Do the Apple Store employees try to wipe your Linux partition when you
take your machine in for repairs?
Not in my (limited) experience.
