Installing Ubuntu-Mate on Macbook Pro late 2010

[MacPilot]

Hi everyone,

I'm willing to install Ubuntu-Mate on my old Macbook Pro late 2010. I upgraded memory to 8Gb and changed the hard drive for a 500Gb SSD, runs well with Mac OS X but not being upgraded since several years ago.

From the documentation I've been reading with several Linux distro, it looks like I will face two main challenges, getting the WiFi to work and finding the right drivers for the old NVIDIA card.
The second problem looks the most important because as I have read, that NVIDIA card is no longer supported on the 6.x Linux kernel. It seems the included compatible driver is slow and faulty.

Please, let me know what's the best Ubuntu-Mate version to install and where I can get the right drivers for both the WiFi and the NVIDIA card.

Thanks in advance,

MacPilot

[charles-nix]

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting a question.

Without knowing exactly which Mac, and which WiFi Apple used, and which nVidia, it may be challenging for anyone to be much help.

The way I would proceed is load 22.04 LTS up on a USB stick, set your BIOS to allow USB boots (if needed), and boot up choose the "try" option instead of "install". Particularly the booting will be extremely slow compared to working from an installed system, but you can run a pretty complete setup from the 8Gb ramdisk that you will have, including trying out some different drivers and options. And none of it will be permanent. If you think WiFi may present a problem, just plan on having a wired ethernet to a regular DHCP server and you should be fine.

This allows you to test drive a fully-functional system before you commit to installing.

Charles Nix

[MacPilot]

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try that for sure.

Regarding the drivers, you know, Apple is quite reserved with the hardware they use. I did some Googling and found that it could have an NVIDIA MCP89 [GeForce 320M] as a graphic card and a Broadcom BCM4322 as WiFi but it could not.

It seems the usb stick has some tools on it to confirm that, therefore, the best way is following your advice.

Thanks again,
Best regards

MacPilot

[Bombilla]

Welcome @MacPilot to the community!

[charles-nix]

Am not sure if all the diagnostic software you might need is included in the default "Try Ubuntu-Mate"

To get all the information, I would start with

$ sudo lshw | less
$ sudo lspci -vvv | less

Each will give you a firehose of information about internals. If those are not installed, you can get them with:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install pciutils lshw

Getting the info to a printer may be harder. I don't know if the trial automatically sets up and finds printers. But you can probably just write down what you need to know.

There is a search function inside the "less" pager program. You type "/" followed by the text to search for and enter, and it will move to the text. Typing "h" gets you to less's help screen

[Basil_Cat]

Please, let me know what's the best Ubuntu-Mate version to install and where I can get the right drivers for both the WiFi and the NVIDIA card.

Ubuntu-mate 22.04.1: https://releases.ubuntu-mate.org/archived/22.04/ubuntu-mate-22.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso

Just make sure to remove linux-image-generic-hwe-22.04 after install. Choose to install the third-party drivers in the installation process.

Good luck! Have any problems ask me

[MacPilot]

Thank you, appreciated

[MacPilot]

Thank you, Charles I’ll try and post back

Regards,

[MacPilot]

Thank you, as well.
Really appreciated the willingness to support.
Regards

[MacPilot]

Hi everyone,

Follow-up on the topic.

The release that @Basil_Cat recommended (Ubuntu-mate 22.04.1) works with the MacBook Pro 2010 hardware, recognizes the WiFi and the graphic card.
In try-it mode I just needed to force the installation of the third-party WiFi driver. For the installation to the hard drive, it wasn't needed because I selected "install third-party drivers" and the it was automatically included. Important note, be careful with resizing and partitioning the Mac, you could lost data.
Once installed I did the automatic recommended upgrade.

Currently I'm investigating an issue that happens every time I login for the first time. Appears a pop-up informing of an internal error but gives no details.

Such case anyone could help, I run "tail -f /var/log/syslog" and got he following output

Blockquote
Nov 21 17:30:29 MacBookPro systemd[1]: Removed slice User Slice of UID 115.
Nov 21 17:30:29 MacBookPro systemd[1]: user-115.slice: Consumed 5.877s CPU time.
Nov 21 17:30:30 MacBookPro wnck-applet[2122]: Negative content width -1 (allocation 1, extents 1x1) while allocating gadget (node button, owner WnckButton)
Nov 21 17:30:30 MacBookPro wnck-applet[2122]: Negative content width -1 (allocation 1, extents 1x1) while allocating gadget (node button, owner WnckButton)
Nov 21 17:30:33 MacBookPro xdg-desktop-por[2316]: Realtime error: Could not map pid: Mapping pids is not supported.
Nov 21 17:30:41 MacBookPro systemd[1594]: snap.ubuntu-mate-welcome.ubuntu-mate-welcome-3eb29ece-2ca0-4fed-b75c-d18d7f1265df.scope: Consumed 4.634s CPU time.
Nov 21 17:30:49 MacBookPro ubuntu-report[1611]: level=error msg="data were not delivered successfully to metrics server, retrying in 60s"
Nov 21 17:30:52 MacBookPro systemd[1]: systemd-hostnamed.service: Deactivated successfully.
Nov 21 17:30:54 MacBookPro systemd[1]: systemd-timedated.service: Deactivated successfully.
Nov 21 17:30:58 MacBookPro systemd[1]: blueman-mechanism.service: Deactivated successfully.
Nov 21 17:31:49 MacBookPro ubuntu-report[1611]: level=error msg="data were not delivered successfully to metrics server, retrying in 120s"

Keep checking, despite the error, i play for a while and it seems to work but not sure yet.
Hope it helps,

Best regards,

MacPilot

[tkn]

Ah, the infamous wnck-applet crash.

No worries, wnck crashes on a lot of computers (not only on macs) depending on the client applets that run on it.
You can find some info on it here:

what is the wnck-applet?

I used to have wnck crashing regularly on my system but I found a workaround:

Ubuntu Mate vs Linux Mint Mate

Personally, until I can find the real memory leak, I just disable window preview thumbnails. I don't like them anyway, and I usually can't have them since I don't use a compositing window manager most of the time. (By the way, if anybody wants to disable them, right-click on the little "grip" to the side of the window list applet and choose Preferences in the menu that pops up. In the dialog that pops up, click Hide thumbnails on hover. Oh yeah, and then close that dialog!)

since I disabled (=unselected) 'Show thumbnails on hover' in windowlist preferences, wnck-applet doesn't crash anymore.
It is probably worth a try

[erik242]

I have that same machine. I loaded 22.04 and everything has worked well. It’s a great machine. I still have the spinning rust at this time and the 4 gigs, but looking to upgrade. You can also replace the dvd drive with a SSD.

OWC Data Doubler - Replace Mac Optical Drive with an SSD

I actually have the mid-2010.

[Bombilla]

Welcome @erik242 to the community!

[erik242]

I also did use i3wm following these instructions

How to install i3wm + mate

Result: [Screenshot at 2023-07-25 05-45-02] i3 is a tiling window manager inspired by wmii that is primarily targeted at developers and advanced users(vim users). i3 User's Guide

Installation

Open your terminal. Install i3: sudo apt install i3 sudo apt remove dunst Change your window manager to i3: dconf write /org/mate/desktop/session/required-components/windowmanager "'i3'" Prevent desktop with icons to cover your windows: dconf write /org/mate/desktop/background…

And then do this in the commandline because I don’t have time to mess around with configuratio right now

picom &

But yes the nouveau drivers aren’t the best.

[tkn]

@erik242

But yes the nouveau drivers aren’t the best.

Depends on what you define as "best".

1. They are much slower than nVidia drivers and do not support CUDA.
   so that part can indeed be considered "not the best"

2. OTOH they are of better quality and much more Linux API compliant. And they do support nVidia-GPUs that nVidia drivers don't support anymore. Also they get automatically updated with the kernel.
   (no messy DKMS troubles or kernel rollbacks to please the driver)
   So that part can be considered as "better than nVidia"

Depending on usecase: Take your pick.

[erik242]

Yes, I meant they can be a bit slower. They work.

[MacPilot]

Hi everyone!
Thanks for all the info.

Unfortunately the last upgrade killed my system, it no longer boots. Error reading somewhere and just getting a prompt for an emergency shell.
I did the upgrade with synaptic, not sure if this has included something not appropriate for the hardware.

Previous version worked well, the error with the wnck-applet disappeared and I was able to use the wifi drivers from a standard package.

It seems you need to be very cautious with the upgrades which is not good for a personal use laptop.

The only option I know is to reinstall from scratch. If there is any other option, I will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Macpilot

[erik242]

It is unusual and doesn't make any sense. I had a boot issue before on mine, but I restarted it & everything was A-OK.

Did the reinstall work?

[MacPilot]

Hi erik242,

fsck from the USB install drive did the magic and fixed the partition. I'm now working with the recovered install.

Let's hope it keeps stable, not clue what happened,
Thanks for the interest
Best