[gentoo-user] MacBook Air (A1237) and Gentoo Linux

[gentoo-user] MacBook Air (A1237) and Gentoo Linux

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

I recently got access to an older MacBook Air (from 2008 or so). The
model number is A1237, it brings a Core2Duo CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB hdd ...

So I got motivated and installed refind as a help to boot from
live-media (USB-stick as there is no cdrom) ... in turn resized the
hfs-partition and transplanted some gentoo-installation in there.

I am pretty much satisfied with my efforts so far:

refind lets me chose GRUB2 ... ok, I somehow managed to configure it in
a way so that it does not find its grub.cfg yet. Call it a security
feature ;-) -> I have to manually tell it where to read that file every
time booting ... I will figure out.

After that I can boot gentoo and in turn also Gnome-3.8 ... fine.

Does anyone of you gentoo-users also run gentoo on such a hardware?

my todos are (for now):

* I only got the harddisk detected via IDE/PATA (so it is hda and not
sda now). It should be accessible via AHCI as well, but that didn't work
yet (and I expect some more performance via AHCI).

* Sound via pulseaudio: not there yet ... no errors, devices displayed
correctly, but no sound.

* suspend to ram in gnome: got to check that

* right clicks with touchpad


... yes, sure, it's not the most powerful hardware anymore but it might
be some inbetween-device for me: better to write and surf than my
tablets ... but lighter and easier to carry than my thinkpad.

And it's fun to run gentoo on it ;-)

Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] MacBook Air (A1237) and Gentoo Linux

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 23.10.2013 10:09, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:

> Does anyone of you gentoo-users also run gentoo on such a hardware?

Anyone?

> my todos are (for now):
>
> * I only got the harddisk detected via IDE/PATA (so it is hda and not
> sda now). It should be accessible via AHCI as well, but that didn't work
> yet (and I expect some more performance via AHCI).

This still gives me some headaches, seems I currently run the hdd via 
ancient IDE-modules (ide_generic). Compiled several new kernels without 
success so far ... additionally complex by usage of EFI, labels in fstab 
and you name it.

OK, 3.11.5 isn't old anyway. Although I'd like to slim down my config 
somehow (and optimize it, think NCQ).

> * Sound via pulseaudio: not there yet ... no errors, devices displayed
> correctly, but no sound.

not solved yet, wasn't and isn't first priority.

> * suspend to ram in gnome: got to check that

Disabled stuff in /etc/systemd/logind.conf.
Macbook suspends when I press powerbutton but not at lid-close.
hdd seems to start up immediately again ...

> * right clicks with touchpad

solved with a small shell-script.


pommed works nice here after a small patching, controls keyboard 
backlight and stuff. cool.

So far the system is nice to use but a bit raw ...

Greets, regards, Stefan