Want Linux Mint on your Macbook Pro?
I’ll show you how to turn your Macbook Pro into a Mintbook Pro!
You may have noticed trying the latest Linux Mint 11 on a MacbookPro8,2 (AMD radeon based model) gives you what appears to be a black screen after booting the DVD.
The DVD actually boots up just fine – it is a video card driver problem that keeps the graphical desktop and installer from launching. I’ll show you how to fix it!
Warning: this is for uber-geeks only!
1. Boot the Linux Mint 11 Gnome DVD on your Macbook Pro by holding down ‘C’.
Choose Start Linux Mint (compatibility mode) from the boot menu.
2. After a couple of minutes the graphical desktop will fail to load. Press fn+control+option+F1 to get a command prompt window.
(FYI you can alternate through F1, F2, F3, etc to get different prompts as needed.)
All of the following are typed at the command prompt!
3. Edit the xorg.conf file as follows:
$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Change
Driver "vesa"
to
Driver "radeon"
Control+X then Y to save in nano.
4. Stop gdm
$ sudo stop gdm
5. I could never get the regular gdm to load correctly, so from the command prompt just type:
$ startx
6. Find the “Install Linux Mint” icon on the desktop, and proceed as normal.
So, any issues?
Wireless
The main thing is that wireless is without a driver right now. So no wireless support. Though as I found in the comments below a new driver should be available soon. I tried the various ndiswrapper methods which did nothing but leave me with a fully locked up system. I had to boot a live CD, do a chroot to remove ndiswrapper, and then boot back normally. So… yeah.
Touchpad
The touchpad worked out of the box, but was a little weird. Doing this helped the touchpad seem more normal and act similar to the multitouch in OS X:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support && sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install bcm5974-dkms xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xf86-input-multitouch
Then create/edit this file, adding the entry below:
$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "true"
Identifier "Multitouch Touchpad"
Driver "multitouch"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection
Sound
I made this change to get sound working properly:
$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Add to the very bottom:
options snd-hda-intel model=mbp55
Sweet!
Related posts:
Twitter: shawkinsl
Hey Scott, Does wireless work on mint 11? It looks like the wireless card isn’t yet fully supported in ubuntu just yet, but if it works in mint, maybe that just means i need a kernel update.
Thanks!
Twitter: scottlinux
Hey looks like that is a nope on the wireless. At least no wireless out of the box. It appears to be a Broadcom 4331 chip.
Edit: Looks like a driver should come soon ->
http://66.135.57.166/lists/linux-wireless/msg69900.html
mint@mint ~ $ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Device 1c2c (rev 05)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Device 1c27 (rev 05)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6470M]
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device aa98
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
02:00.1 SD Host controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Memory Card Reader (rev 10)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4331 (rev 02)
04:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW643 PCI Express1394b Controller (PHY/Link) (rev 08)
Hi Scott I have bought a MacBook Pro 8,2 with snow leopard but I need linux too and I used to use Ubuntu but I have had a lot of problem to install it, so I tried linux mint as you wrote in this page but ok boot start but when graphic starts I seen black screen so I taped fn+control+option+f1 and I changed screen but I see only some sentences or nothing and waiting I get same error that ubuntu say to me: unable to find medium containing a live file system! help me!
Twitter: scottlinux
You can try different consoles – F2, F3, F4, etc. Keep tapping until you get one that comes up or works for you, perhaps?
Hi,
I think the problem is RAM, in fact system doesnt allocate ramfs, and if I start memtest mac reboot :S
if I switch to f1, f2, f3 etc I only si a cursor with blank page mmm IDK.
Twitter: scottlinux
Hm that is weird. Bad ram or bad install DVD?
I am stuck… I get the message:
“(initramfs) Unable to find medium containing a live file system”
This seems to happen if I am trying to install linux mint 11 or ubuntu 11.04. I think that it is a compatibility problem with the cd-drive but I got to that conclusion by comparing similar issues on online forums…
I am desperately trying to get a version of linux up and running on my macbook pro 8,2. Any suggestions?
Twitter: scottlinux
Are you installing from a USB thumb drive? That error means you have a bad USB image or bad install disc.
I ran into the same issue on my recent 13″ macbook pro. Don’t know where I saw it (ArchWiki?) but the suggestion was to use both a USB key as well as the CD/DVD iso image. It’s how I actually installed Linux Mint on my mbp.
Twitter: scottlinux
Thank you for your post – this works.
If you are getting that above error, make a bootable USB for Mint and have that plugged in while also booting from the Mint install CD/DVD. It will first boot off the CD, then use the USB media for the install with no fuss.
To get around the lack of support for the builtin wireless I purchased a Netgear WN111 USB wireless-N adapter. It was automatically recognized and works great. It will do until the kernel get the support for the builtin wireless.
Ok. Now I have Linux Mint installed as a double boot with Mac OSX Lion. The big question is how do I do a right mouse click with the mouse touchpad? Nothing seems to work reliably. Although I’ve managed without it, seems like it could become an issue.
Thanks for posting this up.
Another cool feature that I am waiting for is gpu switching.
Anyone else have thoughts on that?