Fedora 16 on MacBook Pro (2008 model)

[SoldierSvejk]

Hello everyone,

my MacBook disk finally died so I got a new one (500 GB Toshiba) and made a fresh install of Fedora 16 (KDE).

At the installation I had to add "nogpt" parameter so that the MBR partition was created, otherwise I could not boot Fedora.

I have three issues concerning the install (from most to least important):

1 DISPLAY

the display seems too dark, both with NVidia and nouveau drivers. It used to be much brighter on OS X, and I have to work all day with my laptop - my eyes are getting really tired after several hours. The colours are also a bit dim, I couldn't correct them with the gamma utility of KDE. Oddly enough, it seems brighter when booted from Live CD.

cat /sys/class/backlight/apple_backlight/max_brightness
15
cat /sys/class/backlight/nv_backlight/max_brightness
100

The same values are reported for actual brightness and I can change it with F1/F2 keys.

lsmod | grep apple
apple_bl               13225  0 
applesmc               19355  0 
input_polldev          13646  1 applesmc

I would be really grateful for you suggestions on that issue.

2 FONT RENDERING

It's commonly known that Fedora 16 has not too nice font rendering by default, so I installed the infinality patches:

yum install freetype-infinality infinality-settings

Now the fonts are much nicer, but... I need to restart the applications for them to take effect. I've got a few things as start-up apps: KMail, Konsole, Krusader, PidGin, and once they start after reboot, the fonts look sluggish, restarting them switches font to nice-looking infinality-corrected fonts. The rest of the fonts (in KDE menus) seem ok without the trick.

3 TRACKPAD

Trackpad works all right, but I put my macbook to sleep and wake it up, the tapping doesn't work - I've got to go to the settings to turn it back on.

A big thank you for your suggestions and help!

[miceblue]

Sorry that I can't offer any help to you, but I was wondering how exactly did you get Fedora 16 on your Macbook Pro? I've been trying for the longest time to get it on my 1st gen aluminum unibody Macbook (late 2008 5,1 model) and every time I try to install it, it says the bootloader could not be configured and I could never boot Fedora through rEFIt. I have heard about the "nogpt" thing, but I'm not sure how/when to enable it.

I've been trying to install Fedora 16 via a burned DVD if that makes any difference.

This my first time participating in the forums, so if there are any resources I should look at regarding my specific Macbook model, any help is appreciated.

I'm currently using Ubuntu 11.10 on my Macbook for the time being as an alternative to Fedora and I don't like it very much. :X

[SoldierSvejk]

Originally Posted by miceblue

how exactly did you get Fedora 16 on your Macbook Pro?

Miceblue, since my Mac OS X hard drive finally failed with too many bad sectors, I simply bought a new 2.5'' SATA device and changed it myself. The next obvious step was clean install of Fedora 16. I also couldn't get it to work first, but the solution is the magic worg "nogpt". You simply add it before booting from Live DVD to the kernel options (pressing e and then typing "nogpt" and then booting), next you proceed with the installation, for the reference I include my partitioning scheme (I'm always a big fan of LVM2):

df -lh
Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                      2.0G  629M  1.4G  32% /
devtmpfs                    2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev
tmpfs                       2.0G   12M  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-root     2.0G  629M  1.4G  32% /
tmpfs                       2.0G   49M  1.9G   3% /run
tmpfs                       2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                       2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /media
/dev/sda2                   248M   85M  151M  36% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-tmp      5.0G  1.2G  3.7G  24% /tmp
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-usr       15G  5.8G  8.4G  41% /usr
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-scratch  5.0G  334M  4.5G   7% /scratch
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-var      4.0G  2.4G  1.5G  62% /var
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-opt      5.0G  485M  4.3G  10% /opt
/dev/mapper/vg_mcb-home     426G  199G  205G  50% /home
/dev/sdb2                   186G  179G  7.8G  96% /media/Macintosh HD

By the way, the last entry is my old disk connected to USB pocket - I managed to recover some data, but I always keep full network backup, so luckily I didn't loose any data.

I hope this helps!

[appaloosaa]

are you guys still looking for help ? I went through the same problem, I am now using Fedora 16, GNOME Shell installed on a Macbook ( old MacBook).

I also had issues with the installation, specifically, booting from the hard drive, due to MBR issues.

[SoldierSvejk]

Originally Posted by appaloosaa

are you guys still looking for help ? I went through the same problem, I am now using Fedora 16, GNOME Shell installed on a Macbook ( old MacBook).

I also had issues with the installation, specifically, booting from the hard drive, due to MBR issues.

Hello appaloosaa!

I'm actually running Fedora 16 (KDE) without too many problems on my MacBook pro, as I described in the first post. As I mentioned, I find the screen a little too dark, plus I have some problems with fonts/trackpad.

How is your Fedora - do you have any issues? (Or rathet, what issues do you have?)

Cheers!

[appaloosaa]

Ohhh the KDE, thats the first one that I installed, i was deceived by its looks

i downloaded the gnome today and replaced the kde. i like gnome better.

i dont have any issues with fonts nor track pad, i also had the track pad working for kde.
i could do two finger scrolling, double click, etc...is that what u are having issues with ?

right now, i have another post here, trying to figure out how to get isight to work, i installed the driver, but no luck...light turns on, but nothing on screen.

does isight work for u ?

---------- Post added at 06:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:36 AM ----------

okay, I figured it out, i had to do the following :


lsusb , which will list devies, among them is the isight. you get the idProduct from this list.

now you edit the file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/isight.rules

and update the idProduct with the one u got from lsusb.

now i have a working isight

---------- Post added at 04:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:46 AM ----------

never mind, it worked for a bit, and now its not...this is WEIRD !!

[SoldierSvejk]

Originally Posted by appaloosaa

i dont have any issues with fonts nor track pad, i also had the track pad working for kde.
i could do two finger scrolling, double click, etc...is that what u are having issues with ?

My tackpad works fine instead when waking from sleep tapping stops working, I've got to turn it on again in KDE preferences.

Originally Posted by appaloosaa

does isight work for u ?

Yes, without any problem.

Originally Posted by appaloosaa

you edit the file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/isight.rules

and update the idProduct with the one u got from lsusb.

Strangely, this file does not exist on my system.