Hi Ankur, 2009 (I think) MacbookPro here - a bit older than you wanted, but hey. On Tue, 20 Mar 2012, Ankur Sethi wrote:

Hi,

I'm in the market for a high-end development + gaming machine (dual boot). I've been a Mac user for the last 4 years and I'm used to their hardware, so I'm naturally considering a MacBook Pro as one of my options. My old white MacBook from 2008 runs Arch very well, but can the newer unibody MacBook Pros run it? More specifically, I'm looking at the 2.4GHz model (MD322LL/A) on this page:

http://www.apple.com/in/macbookpro/specs.html

Here are some things I'm particulary worried about:

1. Does suspend/resume work?

I haven't gotten it to, but then, I haven't put much effort in. I'm given to understand it's possible, especially since it worked back in my ubuntu days.

2. Does WiFi work? Does it work even after you suspend/resume?

WiFi works, with the broadcom driver from AUR (broadcom-wl or dkms-broadcom-wl). No comments on suspend/resume.

3. Can I boot the Arch installer from USB? This is a big one, since the optical drives in MacBooks _always_ fail after a few months of use.

I believe so. (Well, it worked with FreeBSD...) My optical drive hasn't failed yet, though :)

4. Does multi-touch work? If not, is the trackpad at least usable without multi-touch support?

Yes. syntaptics is better than mtrack, IMO, but you may want to try both.

5. Does that AMD card play well with Linux? If not, is there a way to tell the machine to ignore the discrete GPU and always use Intel HD Graphics?

Unknown - I have nvidia video, and it works really well with nouveau.

6. Does the keyboard backlight work? What about the ambient light sensors? Audio? Webcam?

keyboard backlight works. No idea about ambient light sensors - I don't /want/ them to work. Audio and webcam both functional.

I know there are many guides for installing Arch on a Mac, and I've read a lot of them, but none of them go on to mention how pleasant (or unpleasant!) their long-term experience with Linux on Mac has been. Is it worth all the trouble?

Yes.

Is it usable for doing actual work?

Yup. Just don't do kernel upgrades late sunday night when only wireless is available to you (see comment below).

Do things randomly stop working if you upgrade your firmware?

No. Kernel upgrades sometimes cause problems with wireless, and you have to wait for a patch to make it to AUR.

Do the Apple Store employees try to wipe your Linux partition when you take your machine in for repairs?

No personal experience - I've heard no, that the apple store employees are very cooperative with linux folk. -- Scott Lawrence Linux jagadai 3.2.9-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 1 09:31:13 CET 2012 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 01:13:31AM +0530, Ankur Sethi wrote:

Hi,

I'm in the market for a high-end development + gaming machine (dual boot). I've been a Mac user for the last 4 years and I'm used to their hardware, so I'm naturally considering a MacBook Pro as one of my options.

Hello. I'm dual-booting arch/OSX on a macbook pro 7.1 from mid 2010. Not sure how much my experiences with hardware/issues apply to the newer ones, but in the interest of putting information out there, here goes:

1. Does suspend/resume work? Yep. s2ram -fpm 2. Does WiFi work? Does it work even after you suspend/resume? Occasionally have random DHCP timeouts when trying to connect, but otherwise fine with both broadcom-wl and b43. 3. Can I boot the Arch installer from USB? This is a big one, since the optical drives in MacBooks _always_ fail after a few months of use. I've never had problems with the optical drive. I've had issues booting from USB; there are workarounds, but I've only tried them for ubuntu, not arch. 4. Does multi-touch work? If not, is the trackpad at least usable without multi-touch support? It's fine. 5. Does that AMD card play well with Linux? If not, is there a way to tell the machine to ignore the discrete GPU and always use Intel HD Graphics? Mine has a NVIDIA card, which works great with the proprietary drivers. 6. Does the keyboard backlight work? What about the ambient light sensors? Audio? Webcam? Keyboard backlight is fine; no clue about ambient light sensors. Webcam is fine. Audio is fine, but I had to install pulseaudio to make the mic work properly.

I know there are many guides for installing Arch on a Mac, and I've read a lot of them, but none of them go on to mention how pleasant (or unpleasant!) their long-term experience with Linux on Mac has been. Is it worth all the trouble? I'm very happy with my setup. Is it usable for doing actual work? Yes. Do things randomly stop working if you upgrade your firmware? No. Do the Apple Store employees try to wipe your Linux partition when you take your machine in for repairs? Not in my (limited) experience.