Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro

An anonymous reader writes "It turns out that Linux doesn't work too well on the Apple Retina MacBook Pro. Among the problems are needing special boot parameters to simply boot the Linux kernel, graphics drivers not working, no hybrid graphics support, WiFi requiring special firmware, Thunderbolt troubles, GNOME/Unity/KDE not being optimized for retina displays, and other snafus, including 20% greater power consumption with Linux over OS X. According to Michael Larabel, it will likely not be until early next year when most of the problems are ironed out for a clean 'out of the box' Linux experience on the Retina MacBook Pro."

Hardly newsworthy

[MrEricSir]

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!

Re:Linux on Mac?!

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's your purpose, you could also get a proper laptop instead, like one that actually has a middle mouse button such as the Thinkpads.

Re:Hardly newsworthy

[jrminter]

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/ [zareason.com] 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...

I would have to start with "Why?"

[MadCow42]

I have the new Retina MBP... and it's a fantastic machine. But WHY would you buy it just to install Linux on it anyway? It's a very expensive computer for that - you can get other laptops with similar specs (other than the display, yes) for a lot less. In almost all cases I'd suspect that people want to use both OSX and Linux - and in that case, I'd highly suggest running Linux in a virtual machine anyway (Parallels/VMWare).

Sure it'd be nice to have a pure dual boot for Linux, but until drivers are written and fine tuned for that specific platform it will do just fine.

I use Parallels for that, and for running WinXP (believe it or not) for one old app I need. The new MBP is so fast that I can cold-boot WinXP in 3 seconds! - making it a breeze to get to the one app I need when I need it.

MadCow.

Re:This Just In:

[tgibbs]

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.

Re:What a shame

[the_humeister]

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.

Matt Garrett has Fedora running on one

[Medievalist]

See his blog post -

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/15948.html [dreamwidth.org]

As for "why try to do it?" - well, probably because liking Apple hardware and high-res displays does not automatically create a liking for XNU/Darwin. Some people prefer Open Source.

Re:Linux on Mac?!

[h4rr4r]

I don't care.

OSX screws up just too much. The whole interface is dumbed way down, it is not configurable to any real degree and it is missing lots of normal features. One of the first that springs to mind is having one wallpaper across more than one monitor. Instead I have to cut the image up into two then place one on each screen.

Re:Linux on Mac?!

[X0563511]

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.

Re:Linux on Mac?!

[Alex Belits]

Over fast connections X over ssh is faster than VNC. On the other, hand VNC is (barely, and not for any practical purposes) usable on connections that are so slow, X can't work over them without minutes of redraw delays.

Re:As long as your hardware is common and old

[MikeBabcock]

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/ [dell.com]