Mint 14 Macbook Air issues

[tombaugh]

Hi all,

I just installed Mint 14 Mate on my mid-2011 Macbook Air. Earlier attempts to install Linux on this Macbook failed, but with Nadia was absolutely painless (no lengthy how-to guides required, just plugged in the USB stick and it installed). However, there are a few issues which I have not been able to solve:

(1) During boot I have to hold the alt key in order to be able to select Mint. Otherwise I just get a gray screen.
(2) Keyboard backlight is not working.
(3) The mouse pointer stops moving when I touch (without pressing) the touchpad buttons. I used to rest a finger on the left button when I was still using VMWare, but this makes the touchpad unresponsive now.
(4) I really need to disable the loud and embarrassing Macbook startup chime. One solution is to always use suspend instead of shutdown, but I guess this will seriously affect my battery life.

Any help or suggestions on these remaining points are very welcome.

Thanks!

[tombaugh]

The first two issues have been solved:

(1) I started internet recovery and did "bless --device /dev/disk0s1 --setBoot --legacy".
(2) I built and installed lightum.

Thanks

[tombaugh]

Concerning (4), apparently issuing "/usr/sbin/nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80" should do the trick, but in my case (tried it from internet recovery) it has had no effect.

[ThurnerRupert]

on ubuntu it says:
... my goal was just to wipe the default OS and install a Linux distro (Ubuntu 12.04, "Precise Pangolin") natively. Before doing this, however, you may want to boot OS X just to mute the audio, otherwise you'll be stuck with the Apple "bong" sound when turning the machine on. This sound and its volume level are apparently encoded in the MacBook's firmware, and I'm not aware that it's possible to mute it without doing so from OS X.

source:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039799

[tombaugh]

Unfortunately I didn't think of that before installing Mint. However, I got it fixed now by doing "/usr/sbin/nvram SystemAudioVolume=%00", the boing is still there but it's hardly audible.

I did two more fixes:

- replaced lightum with a home made daemon because it didn't behave the way I wanted (for example, full keyboard brightness when dark, and choppy brightness changes)
- switched to the wl wireless driver because my network connection was dropping out once in a while

Now only (3) remains, but I hardly use the trackpad. So far I'm really happy with my system, thank you Mint!

[ipevery]

Just upgraded my new MBA 5.2 to Mint xfce14. Everything works and same experience as the OP, I need to compile lightum to run properly on MBA. Another show stopper is the external VGA connected via the thunderbolt/min display port. The external comes up correct but the resolution is set to the lowest, even though my monitor is capable to do higher resolution. This is due to EDID issue and a bunch of errors were reported. Workaround is to set the mode manually using xrandr --output DP1 --mode 1360x768. I must say my experience with MBA on linux has been a very pleasant one

[Rutilus]

Unable to Locate Package Lightum for Backlit Keyboard on MacBook Air

Although a Linux Mint fan, I resorted to Ubuntu on my MacBook Air so as to get a backlit keyboard, the latter being so desirable. So far I've not developed a liking for Ubuntu with Unity. So I was excited to read in this thread about installing Linux Mint 14 followed by Lightum, a MacBook automatic light sensor daemon. (I installed Linux Mint 14 from linuxmint-14.1-mate-dvd-nocodecs-64bit.)

You run these three command lines in a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:poliva/lightum-mba
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lightum


The first line produced "OK."
The second line produced error and warning messages:

Code: Select all

Err http://ppa.launchpad.net quantal/main Sources  404  Not Found
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net quantal/main amd64 Packages  404  Not Found
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net quantal/main i386 Packages  404  Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/poliva/lightum-mba/ubuntu/dists/quantal/main/source/Sources  404  Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/poliva/lightum-mba/ubuntu/dists/quantal/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/poliva/lightum-mba/ubuntu/dists/quantal/main/binary-i386/Packages  404  Not Found
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.


The third line produced an error message:

Code: Select all

E: Unable to locate package lightum


Can anyone let me know what to do to locate Lightum? Is there an alternative?

Your help will be appreciated.

[Rutilus]

Update: I just tried again and got the same results so the issue is less likely to be a temporary server fault or the like.

By the way, I tried to install Lightum immediately after making a full disk install of Linux Mint 14. I still haven't done anything with the laptop apart from try to install Lightum.