3 ms·

Curious. Do older MBPs run Linux with better support? Perhaps longer battery life with the laptop project and stuff...?

OJFord 9y ago
Arch runs pretty well out of the box on my 2013 Air, it falls down slightly on battery life (3-4h rather than 8-10h with macOS) and CPU fan running wild with no load. Both things are much more configurable under Linux than macOS of course, and you should just be able to set it up once and forget it. (Or keep a note, in case you want to replicate it on another machine...) But the flip side being that it is something you'll have to configure.
- peterisza 9y ago
  falls down "slightly"...
tomxor 9y ago
I've been running debian on one of the first unibody MBPs (5,1) for maybe 3? years, all drivers work (closed source nvidia driver needed for proper graphics though) and it's mostly excellent, but not without a couple manual tweaks that I found necessary, mainly: 1) I can't speak for the newer models but many of the older models have an extremely blue monitors without colour profiles, however it's relatively easy to fish the icc colour profile from OS X, then it's just a matter of deciding on how to apply it to your xsession (simplest and lightest is manually with xcalib). 2) Dual graphics... these are a pain and I believe affect most of the newer models also, the solutions differ slightly depending on both the model and the combination of graphics cards. This can be confounded by old nvidia drivers that lack kernel mode setting and give you a nice black screen on ttys. My solution was to adapt my own tiny little utility for controlling the gmux switch (Apple specific, and also slightly model specific), this just basically just provides a switch between integrated and descrete graphics using slightly model specific GPIO ports... Once adapting and compiling that you need to automate calling the switch at various points, I found it was best to initiate the gmux (just by selecting you prefered GPU) when the xsession startsup, (this preserves the tty until X starts, and works around the annoying nvidia mode setting issue for startup at least), than also on wake when the gmux seems to forget itself. The main reason to do the whole GMUX thing is not necessarily to have choice of GPU (my discrete one doesn't actually work properly with nvidia's linux driver anyway) but to allow it power off the unused one GPU, without this selection you will have an instant cooker and it's really not pleasant to use. Newer MBPs or those without nvidia cards might not need so much messing around... a single card is always the preference because then you can forgo the whole GMUX nonsense (my model is 10 years old now). The linux kernel actually has some gmux stuff built in, but it didn't seem to work on my model, it may only apply to newer ones. I switched from 10.6 when OS X was still pretty lean, but even then I noticed many performance improvements... It's difficult to do direct comparison though because I don't run a full DE, just i3wm, the main advantage really is customisability, and being able to run something relatively far lighter. Graphics were noticeably faster though, Although I suspect that's because there was some sort of soft underclocking going on in the OSX drivers (these were the models plagued by the low lead solder micro fractures on the discrete GPUs, which apple "fixed" (read: pushed out of warranty) by underclocking)
lebrad 9y ago
Everything works with Debian 9 on my Macbook Pro 11,1 and it's noticeably faster than macOS Sierra and High Sierra.
reacharavindh 9y ago
This what I was talking about. The laptop Project : http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man... Does it bring down power usage in laptops enough to make it efficient?

Arch runs pretty well out of the box on my 2013 Air, it falls down slightly on battery life (3-4h rather than 8-10h with macOS) and CPU fan running wild with no load. Both things are much more configurable under Linux than macOS of course, and you should just be able to set it up once and forget it. (Or keep a note, in case you want to replicate it on another machine...) But the flip side being that it is something you'll have to configure.

peterisza 9y ago
falls down "slightly"...

tomxor 9y ago

I've been running debian on one of the first unibody MBPs (5,1) for maybe 3? years, all drivers work (closed source nvidia driver needed for proper graphics though) and it's mostly excellent, but not without a couple manual tweaks that I found necessary, mainly: 1) I can't speak for the newer models but many of the older models have an extremely blue monitors without colour profiles, however it's relatively easy to fish the icc colour profile from OS X, then it's just a matter of deciding on how to apply it to your xsession (simplest and lightest is manually with xcalib). 2) Dual graphics... these are a pain and I believe affect most of the newer models also, the solutions differ slightly depending on both the model and the combination of graphics cards. This can be confounded by old nvidia drivers that lack kernel mode setting and give you a nice black screen on ttys. My solution was to adapt my own tiny little utility for controlling the gmux switch (Apple specific, and also slightly model specific), this just basically just provides a switch between integrated and descrete graphics using slightly model specific GPIO ports... Once adapting and compiling that you need to automate calling the switch at various points, I found it was best to initiate the gmux (just by selecting you prefered GPU) when the xsession startsup, (this preserves the tty until X starts, and works around the annoying nvidia mode setting issue for startup at least), than also on wake when the gmux seems to forget itself. The main reason to do the whole GMUX thing is not necessarily to have choice of GPU (my discrete one doesn't actually work properly with nvidia's linux driver anyway) but to allow it power off the unused one GPU, without this selection you will have an instant cooker and it's really not pleasant to use. Newer MBPs or those without nvidia cards might not need so much messing around... a single card is always the preference because then you can forgo the whole GMUX nonsense (my model is 10 years old now). The linux kernel actually has some gmux stuff built in, but it didn't seem to work on my model, it may only apply to newer ones. I switched from 10.6 when OS X was still pretty lean, but even then I noticed many performance improvements... It's difficult to do direct comparison though because I don't run a full DE, just i3wm, the main advantage really is customisability, and being able to run something relatively far lighter. Graphics were noticeably faster though, Although I suspect that's because there was some sort of soft underclocking going on in the OSX drivers (these were the models plagued by the low lead solder micro fractures on the discrete GPUs, which apple "fixed" (read: pushed out of warranty) by underclocking)

lebrad 9y ago

Everything works with Debian 9 on my Macbook Pro 11,1 and it's noticeably faster than macOS Sierra and High Sierra.

reacharavindh 9y ago

This what I was talking about. The laptop Project : http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man... Does it bring down power usage in laptops enough to make it efficient?