I eventually decided to buy a newer laptop and ended up pick the latest from apple since looked nice.
Installing
Setting it up is sort of easy with just a couple of caveats
Boot from sysrescuecd
That’s my simplest way to get stuff done, fetched the latest 4.0 beta, installed the minimum needed to replace the kernel with one not sporting the dir entry bug and rebooted. The sysrescuecd standard configuration works decently, you might want to also fetch broadcom-sta to get wireless working.
Disable NCQ
The SSD seems to have problems with the ncq support at least on linux 3.12.2, I patched my 3.12.3 to blacklist APPLE* drives directly,
# echo 1> /sys/block/sda/device/queue_depth
Bootloader
I use refind, it magically finds the kernel and passes the correct root=/dev/foo option, so a no brainer.
X11
I was curious thus installed bumblebee and apparently it works out of box, you need to use mtrack to get decent touchpad support and you are pretty much done.
HiDPI
You might want to set your dpi to at least 110 if you are using GTK applications (not sure if QT has a scaling option, Elementary does and so E17)
Audio
Seems working just fine.
What does not work yet
Webcam
It seems sdio-connected.
b43
The opensource driver does not work, the closed source one works fine.
Pommed
In my github you can find a tentative and not so complete patch, out of box pommed refuses to work and with the patch at least the backlight and keyboard light sort of work.
Hi there, I’d also got a Macbookpro 2013 recently, just loading a latest ubuntu iso from usb and figured out the open source wireless driver b43 working, it’s just lacking some firmware, after got the firmware from the url in kernel msgs, it’s working perfect!
it’s using default kernel 3.11.0, b43 driver should also works in Gentoo
ubuntu-studio@ubuntu-studio:~$ dmesg |grep b43
[ 22.458435] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)
[ 22.458903] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 9, Type 7 (HT), Revision 1
[ 22.466549] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode29_mimo.fw” not found
[ 22.466562] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43-open/ucode29_mimo.fw” not found
[ 22.466568] b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the correct firmware for this driver version. Please carefully read all instructions on this website.
[ 103.564000] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)
[ 103.564385] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 9, Type 7 (HT), Revision 1
[ 103.750382] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
[ 166.413516] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)
[ 166.413900] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 9, Type 7 (HT), Revision 1
[ 166.575884] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
[ 9589.201694] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
ubuntu-studio@ubuntu-studio:~$ find /lib/firmware/b43/
/lib/firmware/b43/
/lib/firmware/b43/ht0bsinitvals29.fw
/lib/firmware/b43/ht0initvals29.fw
/lib/firmware/b43/ucode29_mimo.fw
What I have here is a
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
And doesn’t seem supported at all by the 3.12.3
Hello,
Did you test the SD card reader at all? I’ve read reports that it doesn’t work correctly… Someone even claims that it bricked his SD card :-/
Do you have a UHS-I SDXC card that you could test it with?
Thanks,
uriah
Hadn’t tested yet.
I got a new retina MBP last week, still cannot get the vgaswitcheroo to work, as matter of fact, I cannot even see the Intel video card in the output of lspci. Can you share you kernel config file? Does bumblebee turn off the NVidia card for you automatically?
bumblebee does not work at all, hadn’t checked yet how to enable properly the intel gpu
It turned out I need to patch the grub to get the iGPU to work properly. (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2013-12/msg00442.html) I can turn off the dGPU and use iGPU only with vgaswitheroo after using GfxCardStates in OSX. Now it only consume 9W when idle, comparing to the 13W I got before is a big improvement. The drawback is there is noway to connect an external monitor. I heard it is hardwired to the dGPU so there is probably nothing we can do about it.