[CentOS] MacBook Pro and CentOS-5

Mon Nov 15 17:29:00 UTC 2010
James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca>

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.

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James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
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