Hello everyone,
In case anyone else is looking and thinking about installing opensuse on his mba, I thought I'd write a short summary of my experiences. So what happened? I downloaded a .iso, copied it to a usb memory and installed.
During the install, the trackpad did not work, so I had to install opensuse using only the keyboard. Once everything was up and running, the wireless didn't work, _but_ at least the trackpad worked as soon as I logged in. After this, I downloaded all updates and made sure to install the broadcom wl driver, and all of a sudden, the wireless started to work.
What is still not working?
1. When doing suspend (to memory) the backlight gets messed up. At first I thought the screen was dead, but in fact, once you fiddle around with the screen brightness settings and set them to maximum brightness, suspend works. Anything less than maximum, and the screen will be black after wake up. There is one way to "fix" this without having to reboot, and that is to hibernate the computer. Once you wake up the computer, screen brightness works again.
2. I have some strange bugs when I browse through firefox. Occasionally I get a lot of small black spots, so I guess this is some kind of graphics driver bug that might be solved with some future updates. It doesn't always happen, and you can just reload the pages or scroll past the area to fix it, but it is still a bit annoying.
Overall I am very impressed that it was so easy to install opensuse on the macbook. Only two things didn't work for me, the wireless, which was possible to fix, and the suspend. The graphics work, except that small bug, but it does not stop me from using the computer in any way. Also, I don't have to use refit or refind, but can boot straight to opensuse from the apple boot loader, which is also a nice advantage!
So you did a great job, development team, in case you see this!
Best regards,
Nath
In case anyone else is looking and thinking about installing opensuse on his mba, I thought I'd write a short summary of my experiences. So what happened? I downloaded a .iso, copied it to a usb memory and installed.
During the install, the trackpad did not work, so I had to install opensuse using only the keyboard. Once everything was up and running, the wireless didn't work, _but_ at least the trackpad worked as soon as I logged in. After this, I downloaded all updates and made sure to install the broadcom wl driver, and all of a sudden, the wireless started to work.
What is still not working?
1. When doing suspend (to memory) the backlight gets messed up. At first I thought the screen was dead, but in fact, once you fiddle around with the screen brightness settings and set them to maximum brightness, suspend works. Anything less than maximum, and the screen will be black after wake up. There is one way to "fix" this without having to reboot, and that is to hibernate the computer. Once you wake up the computer, screen brightness works again.
2. I have some strange bugs when I browse through firefox. Occasionally I get a lot of small black spots, so I guess this is some kind of graphics driver bug that might be solved with some future updates. It doesn't always happen, and you can just reload the pages or scroll past the area to fix it, but it is still a bit annoying.
Overall I am very impressed that it was so easy to install opensuse on the macbook. Only two things didn't work for me, the wireless, which was possible to fix, and the suspend. The graphics work, except that small bug, but it does not stop me from using the computer in any way. Also, I don't have to use refit or refind, but can boot straight to opensuse from the apple boot loader, which is also a nice advantage!
So you did a great job, development team, in case you see this!
Best regards,
Nath