Macbook Pro 7,1 and Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail)

This page describes the specific aspects of the installation of Ubuntu 13.04 on a MacBookPro 7,1. Note that this is seriously broken. My advice: install 12.04 instead.

Basic Installation Instructions

Common things about installing and maintaining Ubuntu on Intel-based Macs: Intel CPU-based Macintosh Generic Installation Instructions.

Suspend & Hibernate

Works out of the box, except that bluetooth seems to break suspend sometimes.

Fan

It is recommended to use macfanctl.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install macfanctld

The config file is located at /etc/macfanctl.conf. The default configurations seems to work well.

Wireless

You have to install proprietary drivers to activate WiFi. According to this, it is better to install linux-firmware-nonfree than bcmwl-kernel-source.

Touchpad

Works on fresh install, but with limited capabilities. mtrack (xserver-xorg-input-mtrack) seems to be doing a better job than synaptics (xserver-xorg-input-synaptics). Here is a configuration that seems to give a similar behavior to OSX:

Section "InputClass"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Identifier      "Touchpads"
    Driver          "mtrack"
    Option          "Sensitivity" "0.66"
    Option          "IgnoreThumb" "true"
    Option          "ThumbRatio" "70"
    Option          "ThumbSize" "35"
    Option          "TapButton1" "1"
    Option          "TapButton2" "3"
    Option          "TapButton3" "2"
    Option          "TapButton4" "0"
    Option          "ClickFinger1" "1"
    Option          "ClickFinger2" "3"
    Option          "ClickFinger3" "2"
    Option          "ScrollUpButton" "4"
    Option          "ScrollDownButton" "5"
    Option          "ScrollLeftButton" "6"
    Option          "ScrollRightButton" "7" 
    Option          "SwipeUpButton" "0"
    Option          "SwipeDownButton" "0"
    Option          "SwipeLeftButton" "8"
    Option          "SwipeRightButton" "9"
    Option          "Swipe4UpButton" "0"
    Option          "Swipe4DownButton" "0"

Video/Graphic Card

Works on fresh install, though installing nvidia driver seems to be broken. See for instance this and that.

Keyboard functions

It is necessary to use pommed to enable Apple specific keys as volumes, media, brightness.

Bluetooth

Works fine out of the box, but apparently not with all devices. For instance, some keyboards are not recognized. Here is a workaround that seems to work, though you have to do it after each reboot.

Also, when you turn it off manually, apparently you can't turn it on again. But this seems to work.

Microphone

Broken.

Apple Remote Control

No experience.