After a long, and quite disheartening, series of hardware problems with my HP laptop I decided to try out a Mac (late 2009 Intel based 19.5 inch). In the months since January past I have discovered this to be no significant improvement and I have grown tired of the persistent wireless connectivity problems and am totally put off by the upgrade to OSX-10.6.4 which killed HD graphics using Open-Gl. Since July, trying to use HD on my Mac now blackens half the screen and then locks the system.
I am contemplating wiping the system and installing CentOS-5.5 instead. Before my frustration leads me to run straight on into a wall, what can I expect to NOT work on the Macbook if I do this? I do need wireless, albeit I really cannot say that I have it now. I also dearly would like to get back HD graphics as well.
Regards,
On 11/15/2010 10:18 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
After a long, and quite disheartening, series of hardware problems with my HP laptop I decided to try out a Mac (late 2009 Intel based 19.5 inch). In the months since January past I have discovered this to be no significant improvement and I have grown tired of the persistent wireless connectivity problems and am totally put off by the upgrade to OSX-10.6.4 which killed HD graphics using Open-Gl. Since July, trying to use HD on my Mac now blackens half the screen and then locks the system.
I am contemplating wiping the system and installing CentOS-5.5 instead. Before my frustration leads me to run straight on into a wall, what can I expect to NOT work on the Macbook if I do this? I do need wireless, albeit I really cannot say that I have it now. I also dearly would like to get back HD graphics as well.
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.
Being a mac system admin and support specialist and CentOS guy. I can say you can always try using an external hard drive to boot the Mac off of and install CentOS on that drive to play around and test out all the drivers for video card, wireless, etc...
I don't boot into CentOS but have it running in Parallels and it runs great.
I also do recommend to get your Mac repaired too, just be sure to clone your hard drive off to an external drive before sending it into the shop. Apple is known to completely erase hard drives with no warning.
-Jeff
On Nov 15, 2010, at 8:44 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 11/15/2010 10:18 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
After a long, and quite disheartening, series of hardware problems with my HP laptop I decided to try out a Mac (late 2009 Intel based 19.5 inch). In the months since January past I have discovered this to be no significant improvement and I have grown tired of the persistent wireless connectivity problems and am totally put off by the upgrade to OSX-10.6.4 which killed HD graphics using Open-Gl. Since July, trying to use HD on my Mac now blackens half the screen and then locks the system.
I am contemplating wiping the system and installing CentOS-5.5 instead. Before my frustration leads me to run straight on into a wall, what can I expect to NOT work on the Macbook if I do this? I do need wireless, albeit I really cannot say that I have it now. I also dearly would like to get back HD graphics as well.
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.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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.
This is off list topic, but I have seen weirdness in airport cards on macs especially when connecting to Apple's Airport. A cheap fix is to buy a 2nd wireless access point and make sure to use that in bridged mode so it is not acting as a router and wire that to your airport base station.
I like said before trying using an external hard drive to install CentOS onto and try your wireless card and other hardware drivers. This is a free solution except for the cost of the hard drive.
-Jeff
On Nov 15, 2010, at 9:29 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
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.
-- *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel *** James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB@Harte-Lyne.ca Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 Canada L8E 3C3
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 15/11/2010 17:35, Jeff Chambers wrote:
This is off list topic, but I have seen weirdness in airport cards on macs especially when connecting to Apple's Airport. A cheap fix is to buy a 2nd wireless access point and make sure to use that in bridged mode so it is not acting as a router and wire that to your airport base station.
I like said before trying using an external hard drive to install CentOS onto and try your wireless card and other hardware drivers. This is a free solution except for the cost of the hard drive.
Or save yourself money and try a live CD. I'm assuming that any missing drivers can be temporarily installed like on Ubuntu.
You could also try Fedora, which is considerably more modern as a client OS than Cent 5 these days. Obviously it will be quite similar to future releases of CentOS. I wouldn't really want to run RHEL on my laptop as a client OS.
Understandable if you want to stick with CentOS 5 for certain reasons.
-Iain
On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Kevin Thorpe kevin@pibenchmark.com wrote:
On 15/11/2010 17:35, Jeff Chambers wrote:
This is off list topic, but I have seen weirdness in airport cards on macs especially when connecting to Apple's Airport. A cheap fix is to buy a 2nd wireless access point and make sure to use that in bridged mode so it is not acting as a router and wire that to your airport base station.
I like said before trying using an external hard drive to install CentOS onto and try your wireless card and other hardware drivers. This is a free solution except for the cost of the hard drive.
Or save yourself money and try a live CD. I'm assuming that any missing drivers can be temporarily installed like on Ubuntu.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 11/15/2010 11:29 AM, James B. Byrne 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.
That actually seems pretty unlikely, since a bazillion other people use the same drivers... Or at least it is a quirk of your setup that triggers the issue. Do you have wireless phones in the same frequency range nearby? I do, and see disconnects that I think are related in my d-link router logs but haven't seen any problems with connections being re-established from anything including my son's macbook. Have you used wireless in any other locations, and if so, do you always see the same 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.
That doesn't make much sense but you are probably trying to reuse a socket that has received a reset - browsers open several sockets simultaneously and the others might not have been busy during the network disconnect.
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.
Do you mean disable the wireless NIC and re-enable (which sort-of makes sense) or doing something to the router? If you really have to restart the router, that's probably the source of the problem.
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.
Hardware is all pretty much the same - it either works or it doesn't.
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Iain Morris -
James B. Byrne -
Jeff Chambers -
Kevin Thorpe -
Les Mikesell