OpenSUSEOnMacBookProSantaRosa

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This documents the insights I got when installing openSUSE 10.3 on a MacBook Pro 15.4", Santa Rosa, Model No. A1260, bought April 2008. To be more specific 

 til@atrium:~> cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name
 MacBookPro4,1

Its hardware specs differ from earlier MacBook Pro machines. See lspci for the list of PCI peripherals.

Up to now, I have the following bits of information to share:

  • audio is supported by the snd_hda_intel module in recent versions of ALSA (works in 1.0.16). See [1]. You will need the module option model=mbp3 (can be set in yast).
  • WLAN is provided by a Broadcom BCM4328 for which no real linux driver exists as of yet. So the ndiswrapper route must be taken. Several HOWTOs refer to drivers from Dell. Those didn't work for me. But the solution is not distant: Insert the Mac OS X Install Disc 1, then 
 unrar '/media/WindowsSupport/boot camp/drivers/broadcom/broadcomxpinstaller.exe'
 ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
 modprobe ndiswrapper
 ifconfig -a

The last command should list an unconfigured device wlan0. Run yast to set up the device, set the driver module to ndiswrapper. A warning: The driver seems to quite unstable. I have to do frequently: 

 rcnetwork stop
 modprobe -r ndiswrapper
 modprobe ndiswrapper
 rcnetwork start
  • Special Mac keys: Those are taken care of by the usbhid module. The logic for specific hardware models is primarily set up in /usr/src/linux/drivers/hid/usbhid/hid-quirks.c. This patch [2] goes into the right direction but doesn't include the information for the specific keyboard used in this MacBook yet. I have adapted a preliminary working version which I want to publish soon here.
  • Bluetooth is strange: Initially it doesn't work: hcitool scan reports a timeout. After doing hciconfig hci0 reset, scanning seems to work, but not very stably. Sometimes devices are seen, sometimes not. But I actually managed to transfer some payload via OBEX push.
  • mouse button emulation: The stock kernel doesn't have either CONFIG_MACINTOSH_DRIVERS or MAC_EMUMOUSEBTN set. Thus the F11/F12 mouse button emulation is not available. Looking for a workaround.
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