Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#61

Post by qaq » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

std_throwaway wrote: post #40

adiabatty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple seems preternaturally constrained by engineer time; I can't see why they would devote a scarce resource like that to qualifying drivers for anything older than Windows 10 Anniversary Edition.

They could pay a third party to do this and provide them with the necessary documentation of the internals (which probably don't stray very far from standard hardware). A simple announcement as in "We're working on it. Expect Linux drivers in 6-12 months." would suffice to calm the waves.

In our bubble we see waves, Apple is just seeing huge sales numbers.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#62

Post by nextos » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #44

Macbooks were never good choices to run Linux on, and it's naive to think it would've gotten any easier. Apple's version of EFI is slightly different than the standard. The laptops are filled with custom hardware that you won't find anywhere else. It took Dell months of effort by a dedicated team [1] to get all the features of a subset of Dell XPS13 laptops working under Linux. I'm actually considering buying one as…

That depends. MacBook Air 2012 11 inch is one of the best machines I have ever seen for Linux. In fact Linus himself used one for some time, which he praised. It's a very standard Ivy Bridge machine, also extremely silent.

Everything just works with a stock kernel. Only minor caveat is that the wireless card has bad range. But also in Mac OS, so not sure this is a driver fault. Easy to fix, I use an external Atheros from Alfa which has incredible range and is great for pen-testing.

Apart from that, the only annoyance is that the battery does not emit ACPI discharge events. But very few laptops do this, apart from some ThinkPads. (I would love to know which do! These are really useful to set up udev sleep rules instead of polling the battery on a tiling window manager & no-desktop-environment setup, but it is a feature rarely documented.)

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#63

Post by Koshkin » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #60

ilaksh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$150 Chromebook works great and runs Ubuntu with crouton.

$150 isn't a very good status symbol.

Linux isn't, either... Otherwise, it's great!

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#64

Post by cpncrunch » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

To be honest I'm not sure why you'd really want to do that. For a developer OS X gives you everything that linux offers that you would need, with the advantage of a better GUI. I only ever use linux on servers these days. OS X is a much more usable client-side OS for a variety of reasons.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#65

Post by xorxornop » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:05 PM UTC

givinguflac wrote: post #42

na85 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. By buying Apple you're funding walled gardens and anti-choice design patterns, abusive labor practices including child labor and sweatshop conditions at their prime contractors, and collusion with NSA et al via PRISM.

This comment is just ridiculous. Apple does more than ANY manufacturer to improve working and supply chain conditions, anywhere, and most OEMs use the same facilities so blaming Apple specifically is doubly silly. How is the Mac even close to a walled garden or anti choice??? They allow Windows and any app you want to be installed.. What are you talking about? And please, do provide a source for your "collusion with…

Hmm, let's see: can't run OSX and variants thereof except on Apple hardware (despite acceptable to flawless hardware compatibility), can't build software for OSX and variants thereof except on a Mac (despite being perfectly workable), can't use a different app store on iOS...

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#66

Post by ilaksh » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

I think they said they spent like $2800.

For that amount of money you could get 2 Chromebooks ($179 each), build two decent gaming PCs ($900 each), and rent 5 Digital Ocean VPSs ($5 per month) for two years.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#67

Post by vbezhenar » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

chadgeidel wrote: post #28

notadoc wrote: post #9

$2800 on a laptop with only 16GB RAM that you're going to run linux on anyway? If you're going to run Ubuntu, why not get a Lenovo for much less and with notably better legitimately "Pro" specs?

Build quality. It's difficult to find a computer that matches the quality of a MacBook for fit and finish, trackpad quality, and battery life. I haven't used the new one, but the 2015 models were among the best hardware on the market - regardless of what OS was installed.

Build quality is awesome. But parts themselves are just ordinary cheap things which fail. And some of them are just an example of poor engineering. I use rmbp 15". My audio port failed in funny way. It's combination of audio port and laser port in one hole. There's some kind of switch there and it's stuck, so computer thinks that I plugged optical cord and refuses to play sound at all. And it's actually not that rare problem, it happens. Some people had luck with wooden stick, didn't work for me. So I basically have to pay some crazy bucks to replace motherboard because of bad port and bad driver, which can't switch to audio (fun thing is, Windows driver can do it).

Terrible keyboard, terrible cords, glued battery (really???), display which can't forget previous image (crystallization or w/e it's called), terrible mic. Macbooks are not that good.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#68

Post by xenihn » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

notadoc wrote: post #9

$2800 on a laptop with only 16GB RAM that you're going to run linux on anyway? If you're going to run Ubuntu, why not get a Lenovo for much less and with notably better legitimately "Pro" specs?

$2800 is nothing to a very significant portion of American developers. No, I am not one of them.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#69

Post by 5ilv3r » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

Idiots don't seem to realize that there are two ways hardware is supported by linux. Either the vendor writes the driver (like in windows land) and releases or merges it, or some other guy figures out how to twiddle the hardware and make it work, and merges it. You must wait for one of those to happen if you cannot do it yourself. This is not news.

Re: Warning: 2016 MacBook Pro is not compatible with Linux

#70

Post by maggit » Thu, Nov 10, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #44

Macbooks were never good choices to run Linux on, and it's naive to think it would've gotten any easier. Apple's version of EFI is slightly different than the standard. The laptops are filled with custom hardware that you won't find anywhere else. It took Dell months of effort by a dedicated team [1] to get all the features of a subset of Dell XPS13 laptops working under Linux. I'm actually considering buying one as…

I've been running Linux on my MacBook Pro for quite a while (years?), and while there are a couple of hicups due to Apple weirdness, they are minor.

I would definitely call my MacBook Pro a good (and workable) Linux machine.