On Mon, November 15, 2010 11:44, Les Mikesell wrote:
Can't help directly with the hardware questions, but (a) if you are still within your Applecare coverage, take the thing in and get anything that doesn't work fixed before touching the OS, and (b) you might try Virtualbox with Centos as a guest (or VMware if you don't mind paying for it). I've generally found the vendor- supplied native video, sleep, and wireless tools work best on laptops and virtual machines work well enough for the client-type things I do under Centos.
Well, I have done the Apple support thing and Apple's official position is that I have an interference problem. The fact that I have six other laptops plus two X-Boxes, all with wireless connections, in the same household and none of which exhibit the problems that I have with the Macbook, is quite beside the point insofar as the Apple Genii are concerned.
This to me is utter BS, since I can see in the log files that that the wireless driver is arbitrarily disconnecting the link due to "lack of activity" and then choking when trying to reconnect. There are a host of other odd little symptoms that also lead me to believe that it is the Apple drivers that are at the root of the problem. For one thing, a frequent occurrence is that I get a 'browser is offline' (in both Safari and Firefox) when opening a new tab, but the existing tabs in the same browser instance can visit new pages on existing connections!!?? How that works is beyond me but it happens, often.
And it is the wireless NIC that I most need fixed. Right now I have to shut down the Airport and restart it to clear the problems. In itself this is no big deal, but I am just so tried of having to do this with such an expensive piece of kit.
If CentOS does not support the wireless in the Macbook then I am stuck with the sucker until I get up enough gumption to buy a Toshiba. Which is what I should have done when I allowed myself to be talked into the HP to begin with.