Matthew Garrett ([personal profile] mjg59) wrote,
@ 2011-05-18 02:49 pm UTC
  • Previous Entry
  • Add to Memories
  • Tell someone about this!
  • Next Entry
Entry tags:advogato, fedora
Firstly: If you want to buy a computer to run Linux on, don't buy a Mac.
Secondly: If you have a Mac and want to run Linux on it, the easiest approach is going to be to run it under virtualisation. Virtualbox is free, and worth every bit of what you're paying.
Thirdly: If you're going to boot Linux on bare-metal Apple hardware, boot it via BIOS emulation.
Fourthly: If you're going to boot Linux on bare-metal Apple hardware via EFI, and it doesn't work, write a patch. Apple's firmware has a number of quirks that I'm aware of and we're working through them, but anyone filing bugs against Apple hardware on EFI right now is likely to be ignored for a significant period of time until there's an expectation that it'll actually work. Maybe in six months or so.

(Read 32 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)

Bummer


(Anonymous)
2011-05-18 08:23 pm UTC (link)
Well, that's a shame. I love my MacbookPro7,1, and I only run Debian on it. I see where you're coming from with 'quirks' though, but things mostly work now - it just needed a bit of time.

- When it got it, it didn't have any SATA support at all, which was fixed relatively quickly. AHCI mode only works when you're booting via EFI though.
- EFI boot needs "noexec=off". And last time I tried it, nouveau had some problems on EFI mode.
- 2D worked without acceleration for a long time - but now I've got 3D running well enough for Gnome Shell. Thanks nouveau guys!
- Backlight needed a trivial patch with a DMI entry. But you've reworked the whole backlight driver to not need separate patches for all models anymore (thanks!). Would've been nice if the trivial patch would have been mainlined while waiting for your proper fix, though.
- wireless (BCM4322) was only supported by the binary broadcom driver at first - but since 2.6.38 the b43 driver can do it too.

So if I were to give any recommendation to people considering linux-on-mac, it would be this: don't expect the latest, shiniest Mac to work immediately out of the box without tinkering. In my case it went from barely usable to fully functional in about six months. But I knew this going in, and still wanted to do it.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


Re: Bummer


[personal profile] mjg59
2011-05-18 08:34 pm UTC (link)
The noexec=off stuff is now understood and I've got an almost working patch for it, but right now it results in a pile of holes in your memory map and about 20MB of RAM missing. Since this is less than ideal, I'm trying to find a better approach. Meanwhile, nouveau on the current Airs fails on EFI because the panel never talks to us so there's still plenty to be fixed there.

If people are happy to do the tinkering and stuff then that's great, but right now I'm just seeing masses of bugs full of people who are confused about why things don't work and attempting increasingly elaborate hacks to work around them. With a bit of luck once we've got the EFI patchset landed and I've done a bit more work to figure out the precise relationship between Apple's nvram variables, the EFI boot variables and the startup choose screen we'll actually have usefully installable media.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent)  (Thread) 


Re: Bummer


[identity profile] https://profiles.google.com/holisme
2011-05-22 02:53 pm UTC (link)
Hi,
with 2.6.39 i can run imac12,2 27" in EFI physical-mode-patch, but not without. BIOS mode is mostly all right.
I tried (without the physical-mode-patch) booting with noexec=off, it hangs shortly after initrd is loaded (no noise from hard disk);
and tested your 5-patches set from
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip.git;a=commit;h=935a638241b0658b9749edd060f972575f9d4a78
but it gives the same result : black screen just after initrd is loaded.

Config is : updated 1.6 apple firmware, grub-efi-amd64, pristine efi firmware (no refit), gpt (no mbr).
I'm willing to help testing, if needed. Not desperately :)

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent)  (Thread) 


Re: Bummer


[personal profile] mjg59
2011-05-22 03:18 pm UTC (link)
Can you try with https://lkml.org/lkml/diff/2011/5/19/377/1 ?

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent)  (Thread) 


Re: Bummer


(Anonymous)
2011-05-22 06:04 pm UTC (link)
I applied this patch on top of your other five efi patches.

"It" works ! You probably don't need that, still, let me say
YOU ROCK :)

i'm rebuilding the kernel with your patches only, just to make sure
i'm not wildly hallucinating.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


(Read 32 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)