251–260 of 285 posts
A more accurate description is that Linux isn't compatible with the new Macbook Pro. It's not Apple's job to make their laptop compatible with Linux.
It is not [insert place]'s job to respect [insert other place] ideals of liberty. It is not comedians' job to respect other's religious beliefs. It is not democracy's job to please everyone. What was your point again?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but SPI is really just referring to the physical layer protocol while the layers above can vary considerably and be proprietary. The only thing that's constant is that it is a synchronous serial protocol. It's not like USB which defines device classes and the higher-level layers of the stack, or PS/2 where e.g. all PS/2 keyboards or mice are expected to have an identical basic set of functionality and behaviour…
> I think many people are used to the idea that even if the OS does not provide drivers for specific devices, basic functionality like keyboard, mouse, and video (even if it's something like a VGA 640x480 16 colours mode) should still be present --- partly to enable "bootstrapping" into more functionality by installing and troubleshooting the drivers. Then I think people need to step back and appreciate that this "ba…
PS/2 has not been implemented with a real 8042 for a very long time. Standard laptop ECs which are cheap and widely available have optimised dedicated hardware to handle the protocol. Speed is not a problem either, because this doesn't need to be a physical PS/2 interface with a separate keyboard on the end of it --- in the designs I've seen, the EC scans the key matrix itself and just provides a PS/2 software interface. It really doesn't matter what the physical interface on a laptop is, since the software interface is what's important here; Apple could've used something similar to PS/2 but increased the clock rate to whatever they needed, and it'd still look the same and be compatible to existing software.
USB is not a good idea from a power perspective since it is a polled bus and there's plenty of additional unneeded complexity throughout the whole stack, but PS/2 is interrupt-driven and extremely low-power.
In fact, it is a synchronous serial protocol just like SPI, so what appears to have happened with these MacBooks is that Apple basically reinvented PS/2 in their own "Think Different" way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't see any other compelling reasons for coming up with a completely different interface for such basic and existing devices. I don't know enough about the implementation to speak to why they made this choice, but for what it's worth, SPI is a standard[1] - and a quite old one. I suspect, were we to follow this down the rabbit hole, that we'd find it's related to power management. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
that's a good guess. I would agree. SPI is not connection-oriented and "comes up and goes down" (to the extent that it goes up and comes down at all) very fast with very little active memory needed to support the communication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port#Legacy_port_status_a...
The PS/2 interface saves power due to its interrupt-driven nature compared to USB which requires periodic polling, so it is a popular interface for laptops' internal keyboards and pointing devices
The major difference is that PS/2 is a de-facto standard up to the application layer/software interface, while the MacBook SPI protocol is unique to Apple.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's a good guess. I would agree. SPI is not connection-oriented and "comes up and goes down" (to the extent that it goes up and comes down at all) very fast with very little active memory needed to support the communication.
Neither is PS/2, which also being a synchronous serial interface with very low overhead, does share many characteristics with SPI at the physical layer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port#Legacy_port_status_a... The PS/2 interface saves power due to its interrupt-driven nature compared to USB which requires periodic polling, so it is a popular interface for laptops' internal keyboards and pointing devices The ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think many people are used to the idea that even if the OS does not provide drivers for specific devices, basic functionality like keyboard, mouse, and video (even if it's something like a VGA 640x480 16 colours mode) should still be present --- partly to enable "bootstrapping" into more functionality by installing and troubleshooting the drivers. Then I think people need to step back and appreciate that this "ba…
Could this be mitigated with custom ASICs? Or a new power switch and some extra power controllers (e.g. a soft switch to turn off the fallback 8042 and start using the faster more sensible SPI interface)? Perhaps, but someone has to pay for it. PS/2 has not been implemented with a real 8042 for a very long time. Standard laptop ECs which are cheap and widely available have optimised dedicated hardware to handle the p…
Ugh. Almost everybody uses SPI for touchpads these days, although they frequently also provide a PS/2 compatibility mode. Apple don't care about working with stock operating systems other than their own (the Bootcamp installer injects additional drivers for Windows), so they decided not to bother.
I assume the author means you won't be able to boot the machine using Linux until modifications are made to the OS. Linux probably runs just fine inside a Docker container.
That container is not running on macos. Its inside an alpine vm.
Anyone here run linux on their macbook succesfully? I tried but couldnt get hardware rendering to work with cinnamon (2015 15" pro). I'm open to any window manager that does hidpi well though. Vmware fusion actually works pretty damn well but I hate having the extra layer and hearing the fans all the time.
I had this exact same problem with an Asus and a Lenovo while running Cinnamon. Try a different GUI and I think you'll be satisfied. Cinnamon is nice, but it still uses far more resources than most other popular Linux GUIs and doesn't run well on certain systems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you recommend a good Linux-compatible laptop. I saw that Dell no longer sells Linux pre-installed on its XPS machines. What are some good alternatives?
I'm very happy with my System76. (I have an galago ultrapro - they don't make them anymore but still provide support). They used to have pretty bad reviews, but most if not all the people/colleagues I've asked are now happy about their purchase. YMMV. If I were to buy a laptop to run Ubuntu on today I'd go for their Lemur. Disclaimer: I work for Canonical. EDIT: Dell seems to sell their XPS 13 with Ubuntu still? Not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very happy with my System76. (I have an galago ultrapro - they don't make them anymore but still provide support). They used to have pretty bad reviews, but most if not all the people/colleagues I've asked are now happy about their purchase. YMMV. If I were to buy a laptop to run Ubuntu on today I'd go for their Lemur. Disclaimer: I work for Canonical. EDIT: Dell seems to sell their XPS 13 with Ubuntu still? Not…
Ah, I see the first mention of Ubuntu was far down the page, long after all the machine specs which only show Windows. Thanks for pointing that out. I wonder what the community feels about these XPS linux boxes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you able to have a functioning linux installation with a razer blade, without doing too much sorcery? For example, this is the case for plenty of Dells that I have tried. I have never used a razer blade, but I have been through the forums and it seems that having linux work properly is not that straightforward.
I have a 2015 Razer Blade Pro and it worked very well under Ubuntu 16.04. The touchpad, touch screen, wifi, etc. all worked well, at least on newer Linux kernels (the trackpad had issues on older kernels). I did some 3D graphics work, and the Nvidia drivers were much better than other drivers I've used on Linux. There wasn't really any "sorcery" involved from my experience; I just installed from the official iso. I f…