Macbook Pro 13.3" (5,5) Fedora 12 notes

[Jon Masters]

On Thu, 2010-04-08 at 13:13 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 09:12 -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
> > Folks,
> > 
> > In case this helps anyone else setting up a Macbook Pro 13.3 model 5,5.
> <snip>
> > 2). The new install has no networking because the 432b reversion part is
> > unsupported by the b43 Open Source driver (they are working on it).
> 
> Look for the n-phy patches at:
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.bcm54xx.devel
> 
> I'm hoping for a proper upstream driver as well.

I will take a look, thanks for that.

> > Then alsamixer will show all of the channel options, which you should
> > set to 100% volume for now.
> 
> alsamixer -c 0
> would have done the same thing.

It would? Doesn't the ALSA plugin always end up hiding things PA doesn't
think you need? I'm happy if that does work, and will re-install that
package since PA is otherwise more or less working for me on this box.

> >  The GNOME volume controls will now work. Add
> > "alsa-plugins-pulseaudio" to and exclude line /etc/yum.conf to prevent
> > it ever getting installed again.
> 
> When you could have file a bug instead, against ALSA, so that the unmute
> code can be fixed for your sound card.

Yes, I will do that. I think I want to make a general point without
meaning to cause offense because I think my motivation was unclear:

Filing bugs is great and worthwhile and I should do that. It's a great
thing to ask people on this list to do. But sharing an experience on a
mailing list with installing some system I know others are having
problems with (as witnessed by the threads I found that went nowhere,
e.g. on the user list over the weekend) may help someone else. They
might go searching through BZ and spend time figuring out everything,
and they might wait 6 months for multitouch support to work just so, or
they might just give up and use OSX (or another distro).

If I had had this information in a thread I would have saved hours of
time to get something useable today that I can then also boot into
F13/rawhide to fix. So anyway, I will file bugs for each issue.

> <snip>
> > 6). The backlit keyboard and controls aren't showing up or working. I
> > can live without these until I get chance to figure that out.
> 
> Only pommed knows how to handle that right now, and it's not in Fedora
> (and shouldn't be). Instead the support for light sensors and keyboard
> backlight should be added to upower.
> 
> It's on my very long TODO list.

Again, this mail wasn't meant as a criticism. It was intended for Google
to index so that someone else who is hitting their head against a wall
trying to get an F12 system that works today on that hardware can do so.
I'm all about not having hacky kludges in the longer term, but I am
personally willing to make a hacky kludge if it works today. For
example, if my mouse doesn't support drag and drop I am inclined to get
so frustrated with it that I won't run Fedora on the laptop at all - or
throw the laptop out of the window, which was the other option :)

> > 7). The webcam isn't working out of the box and nor is bluetooth. There
> > are instructions online covering these.
> 
> Why isn't bluetooth working out of the box? It certainly works fine on
> my Macbook Air (1,1).

I will do so digging as time permits. It does see the device but I am
unable to communicate (pair) with any of my other devices.

> File bugs, file bugs, file bugs:
> http://www.hadess.net/2008/06/how-not-to-do-laptop-support-page.html

Yes.

Jon.