2012 MacBook Air Isn't Trouble-Free On Linux

[russofris]

because its the same when we would talk here about windows

I believe that you might be lost. Let's begin again. Since we cannot force Sony and Apple to bundle linux, your plan is to:

1: Litigate?
2: Start a company, build better hardware, bundle Ubuntu, sell it?
3: Buy a laptop from $OEM, install linux, figure out what doesn't work, file bugs, fix some code, wait for next kernel release?
4: B&M on Phoronix's forums under the guise of "promoting linux"?
5: All of the above?

If you have something that we're missing, I'm all ears. What you're doing (the blame game) isn't helping to promote linux. Truth be told, you're probably doing more harm than good.

F

[blackiwid]

I believe that you might be lost. Let's begin again. Since we cannot force Sony and Apple to bundle linux, your plan is to:

1: Litigate?
2: Start a company, build better hardware, bundle Ubuntu, sell it?
3: Buy a laptop from $OEM, install linux, figure out what doesn't work, file bugs, fix some code, wait for next kernel release?
4: B&M on Phoronix's forums under the guise of "promoting linux"?
5: All of the above?

If you have something that we're missing, I'm all ears. What you're doing (the blame game) isn't helping to promote linux. Truth be told, you're probably doing more harm than good.

F

who talked about bundleling, I said they should support linux, why should they bundle it for that?

To:

1. suing? no why?
2. I thought about something like that but thats another story, no just find out which laptop company gives best linux support and promote them for that and warn anybody to buy not hardware from other vendors if they want to use linux.
3. driver issues I will not report mostly because they should work if the companys did there work, and I try to only buy hardware with good linux support but because there are no good sites that tracks that that sucks. building such site would be good.
4. hmm thats a stupid question because I did it the question is just unnessacary because it seems that I think its a good idea, else I would not have done it.
its not my part to promote linux, I say, just dont switch around the world for linux, if a vendor gives no good windows support, the vendor sucks not windows, so if the vendor gives no or bad linux drivers that vendor sucks... thats all I am saying, and if a vendor gives bad hardware support, warn people that this company sucks. (for linux users).

If some random noob comes to this site, he reads linux does not support apple well, instead of apple does not support linux well... they then think, linux devs did a lousy job... whats not true. If you really not want to blame apple or sony, at least mention that linux devs did a very good job without support of the companies to get it in this state and then you can say it does not work well and if they are so nice to fix it, even if they dont get money and support for that.

If you can definatly say thats only a intel-driver problem go one blame intel... so why is there no big problem with my lenovo thinkpad? I agree what they are doing is also not perfekt support for linux, but it seems they do a better job so buy such software and if thats normal that apple dont care about how it works under linux, stop buying that shit.

Linux is in the long run more important for such companies than a few of this oems/... for linux. Thats how competition works, you give better support for linux more linuxer buy your stuff you get no good support nearly no linux-users buy your stuff... if that dont work because some people try to fix the support for them... they will not change their behavier.

Its a bit the same with the nouvou drivers, I cannot forbit them to develop their stuff and at the moment the driver is way behind of the radeon driver, but if they would work like monsters and make the driver better or at the same quality speed than the radeon have, next thing happens if amd does stuff logicaly is to stopp paying people for developing opensource drivers, because they see you can get that for free other people make whats your job is....

[AdamW]

So...to summarize this entire thread 'minor bugs in support for very new hardware, THE SKY IS FALLING'?

There's nothing at all new about any of this. When extremely new hardware comes out from _any_ vendor there's usually some quirks in the Linux support. Early adopters report this, and they get fixed.

When I got the 2010 Vaio Z soon after it came out, the video didn't work at all with either adapter without the proprietary NVIDIA driver, the sound didn't work, and the keyboard failed to work on one boot out of ten. And probably some other stuff I've forgotten. A couple months later, all of these were fixed. It's the same story with Apples. It's nothing remotely new. I would be amazed if most of these issues aren't fixed in a few weeks.

One specific note: talking about the Z, 'the storage requires using fake RAID' isn't quite the best summary. More accurate is just 'the system uses fake RAID out of the box' - (most) Zs have two SSDs inside, which are by default configured as BIOS RAID-0 for increased performance. But they're just disks, and the BIOS works like any other - you can reformat 'em as BIOS RAID-1 if you like, or switch them to regular mode and use them as separate disks or use kernel softRAID if you like (this is what the blog post author did). It's just how the stock config happens to be.

[kraftman]

Why are we blaming Apple and Sony for the kernel's inability to deal with mobile implementations of Ivy bridge? Why are we even placing blame to begin with. Install linux (or try), file bugs, fix bugs, linux works. This is our SDLC. It seems like every time an OEM/HAR/VAR releases a new product, people bitch and moan as if they have committed some great injustice.

Everyone stop B&M. We have cool new tech to play with. This is exciting. This is fun.

F

Because article sucks. Try running os x on something different than apple's hardware and you'll run into troubles.

[susikala]

God take ***** and every prick who uses it.

Or in Arabic: Every dog has its day.

[curaga]

One specific note: talking about the Z, 'the storage requires using fake RAID' isn't quite the best summary. More accurate is just 'the system uses fake RAID out of the box' - (most) Zs have two SSDs inside, which are by default configured as BIOS RAID-0 for increased performance.

That's pretty horrible. You advertised those as great reliable models, and then it comes out that they default to RAID-0. For the new readers here, the 0 stands for how many files you get back when one disk fails.

Then there's the physical space, weight and power used by two disks instead of one.

[blackout23]

Because article sucks. Try running os x on something different than apple's hardware and you'll run into troubles.

True. OSX on Intel Hardware somewhat possible. OSX on AMD really tricky. I'd also say that it has more to do with Apple than the
current state of linux kernel development.

[russofris]

True. OSX on Intel Hardware somewhat possible. OSX on AMD really tricky. I'd also say that it has more to do with Apple than the
current state of linux kernel development.

Indeed. There's even an entire community dedicated to supporting OSX on non-apple hardware, including as a VMWare guest. Aside from contributing in a tangential, if not entirely unintended fashion, Apple has almost nothing to do with Linux. I don't think that they're actively trying to prevent Linux from working on their hardware, I just think that they don't care. I've noticed the same thing about the hackintosh community. Apple could, with little effort, make it extremely difficult to run OSX on non-apple hardware. They don't, because it's not on their agenda. Why spend cycles killing a community that loves your products when you could spend the dev time making the product better? Running OSX on a Dell/HP is a very different experience from running on OSX on a Mac.

F

[3diStan]

Yeah, like more ram, more storage, a keyboard, and the ability to run a multitasking desktop OS. Oh, wait.....

well, i sure expect for apple's sake that it does have all those given the price premium.
What i don't understand is why it has a much lower screen resolution, especially because the higher resolution would be much more important on a notebook than on a tablet (and of course because the macbook air has such a price premium that you'd take it for granted that it would _at least_ have the same resolution as the cheaper device)

[ajbuck68]

me@MacBookAir:~$ uname -a
Linux MacBookAir 3.2.0-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 21 16:52:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
me@MacBookAir:~$

Some trackpad guesters and slightly less battery life are about the only issues you adjust to when running linux on an MBA.

for me, the improved os env benefits out weigh the issues listed above


ubutu 12.04 on MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011)

Are you running Mountain Lion? I can't get mine to work at all, and I think it's because I upgraded to 10.8