Installing Ubuntu 17.10 on a 2013 13" MacBook Air: Wifi

Today I am remembering why I decided to give Mac OS X a try back in 2002: I got tired of spending most of my time configuring linux drivers. I thought the situation might have improved in the interim, and it probably has. Unfortunately, the universe of extant hardware is huge, and it's hard to fill all of the holes. Anyway, today I'm trying to replace macOS with Ubuntu 17.10 on my 2013 13" MacBook Air. Most of the installation has gone smoothly, with the main exception being Wifi. After more than an hour of flailing I found this, and it appears to have worked:

BCM43142 WiFi driver in Ubuntu. | How to install BCM43142 WiFi Driver in Linux

I had to copy a lot of packages from the Ubuntu installer thumb drive, not just the two mentioned in the article. The reason was that the Ubuntu installer didn't install gcc 7 or its supporting packages. Here are the packages that I needed to copy from the installer thumb drive. All files were located under .../pool/main:

• bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• dkms_2.3-3ubuntu3_all.deb
• gcc_7.2.0-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
• gcc-7_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libasan4_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libatomic1_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libc6-dev_2.26-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
• libc-dev-bin_2.26-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
• libcilkrts5_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libgcc-7-dev_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libitm1_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• liblsan0_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libmpx2_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libquadmath0_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libtsan0_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• libubsan0_7.2.0-8ubuntu3_amd64.deb
• linux-libc-dev_4.13.0-16.19_amd64.deb
• make_4.1-9.1_amd64.deb

Squeeze play?

The Mac App Store (MAS) requires participating developers to pay Apple $99/year plus 30% of gross sales price; only apps which are approved by Apple may be sold via MAS.

Xcode4 was released today on MAS, for $4.99. It used to be included on the OS X distribution DVDs, as a no-extra-cost optional installation.

The beta distributions of OS X Lion is available only through the MAS. As far as I know it does not include Xcode.

Developers are not forced to sell their applications through the MAS. In fact, some types of software, those which require administrator privileges for installation, must be sold outside the MAS.

Still, Apple seems to be edging down a path at the terminus of which developers must pay an annual fee to sell software for use on OS X, and must have that software approved by Apple before it can be offered for sale.

I sincerely hope this isn't what they have in mind.

Thank goodness for Linux.

[CentOS-virt] CentOS 5.1 guide for VMware Fusion

I just installed CentOS 5.2 for x86_64 under VMware Fusion 2.0.2. Most things worked without tweaking, but the mouse cursor was always offset from the host system mouse, even when VMware was running full-screen.

This post took care of the problem. If I'm reading correctly, the problem was in X11 configuration, and the fix was to use the vmmouse driver with the "CorePointer" option.

Thanks, Bradley Sepos!

Ubuntu 8.10 and Intel i845 chipsets

Today I tried to install Ubuntu 8.10 on an old Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop. Most of the process went well, but when I tried to login the screen went black.

Okay, sometimes it went to the default amber Ubuntu background color. No matter: I never got any windows or menus. Since I was unfamiliar with Ubuntu's key bindings, the only way out was to cycle power.

It turns out that compiz, which provides the default Ubuntu 8.10 window manager, does not like the old i845 graphics chipset.

Google eventually turned up a way to disable compiz. Here's what worked for me.

Summary

Login using a Failsafe Terminal session, remove compiz and compiz-core, then logout and log back in using an Xclient script session.

Details

1. Boot as usual.
2. Before logging in, click the Options link at the bottom left of the display.
3. Click Select Session...
4. Click the Failsafe Terminal radio button.
5. Click the Change Session button.
6. A dialog will pop up, explaining that this is the Failsafe xterm session. Click OK.
7. An xterm will open. At its prompt, type
   sudo apt-get remove compiz compiz-core
8. Enter your password, etc. and confirm the package removal.
9. When the removal completes, type
   metacity --replace &
   (I'm not sure this is necessary.)
10. Exit the shell.
11. When the login screen re-appears, click Options.
12. Click Select Session...
13. Click the Run Xclient script radio button.
14. Click Change Session.
15. Login again.

TODO

When I get more free time I need to repeat the entire installation process, this time collecting detailed information on the failure. Given enough info, I bet the Ubuntu and/or Compiz teams would be able to fix this problem.