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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
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Hi, I cannot find info on MBP 2018 and Linux compatibility. Is it because there are so many issues that there is no success or it just works so nobody mentions about it?
 
Run it in a VM? Not sure how good Linux compatibility is, but I'd imagine it will be slow due to the new T2 chip and it controlling I/O among other things.
 
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Because nobody runs Linux on it. Not to mention that there are no drivers. And that it doesn’t make much sense to begin with.
 
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Because nobody runs Linux on it. Not to mention that there are no drivers. And that it doesn’t make much sense to begin with.

No drivers for what components? I recall that there is a github site about making 2016 MBP running linux. Since the hardware have changed, probably it may not be fully applicable on the MBP 2018.

Have been using trip boot on three different MBPs for over 10 years without problems. Haven't tried post 2015 machines. Is the main problem due to that security chip?
 
Hi, I cannot find info on MBP 2018 and Linux compatibility
You'll need to visit the site of your distro and determine compatibility. Its not apple's job to ensure linux compatibility. People by and large do not run linux on much of anything, its an outlier operating system, i.e., niche market (for desktops) so there's little reason for apple to deal with linux.

I've a handful of distros, and found for the MBP, its better to run them in a VM, I don't have to deal with driver issues.
 
No drivers for what components?=

I am just speculating here, but I quite sure that you won't find drivers for the WiFi/Bluetooth chips, simply because they are Apple's own design starting from 2018.
 
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You'll need to visit the site of your distro and determine compatibility. Its not apple's job to ensure linux compatibility. People by and large do not run linux on much of anything, its an outlier operating system, i.e., niche market (for desktops) so there's little reason for apple to deal with linux.

I've a handful of distros, and found for the MBP, its better to run them in a VM, I don't have to deal with driver issues.

Is running Ubuntu Linux as virtual machine reasonably fast these days? I ran Windows under VMware 10 years ago. It was not bad.
 
Is running Ubuntu Linux as virtual machine reasonably fast these days? I ran Windows under VMware 10 years ago. It was not bad.
I've been happy with it, though I was waiting for Fusion 11 to come out before upgrading, so my VMs haven't been built out. My needs are simple in some respects.
 
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VirtualBox has served me fine for cross platform testing of my apps.

Performance is OK, but I would not use an OS running inside a virtual machine as my main OS. That's why I still love to boot into Windows partition to test apps. It's just different experience when your OS runs on bare metal.
 
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I've been happy with it, though I was waiting for Fusion 11 to come out before upgrading, so my VMs haven't been built out. My needs are simple in some respects.

So if I can stand the butterfly keyboard and speed of Ubuntu vm, I can go for MBP2018. Otherwise just get a Windows laptop? The step is to buy a MBP and test.
 
So if I can stand the butterfly keyboard and speed of Ubuntu vm, I can go for MBP2018. Otherwise just get a Windows laptop? The step is to buy a MBP and test.
Its up to you, Apple gives you a 14 day return policy, is its your best interest to see if it fits your needs.
 
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Is running Ubuntu Linux as virtual machine reasonably fast these days? I ran Windows under VMware 10 years ago. It was not bad.

Bear in mind that Apple will only ever officially support Boot Camp (with Windows) on these machines. You can choose whether to boot Windows or macOS as the host, but would need to virtualize Linux. That being said, Linux performs quite well in VMs and the virtualization technology is only getting better!
 
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Does the fan get noisy when running virtualized Linux on MBP2018?
 
Does the fan get noisy when running virtualized Linux on MBP2018?
It depends entirely on what you do, naturally.
The base operating system is pretty lightweight, so it's usually quiet, but if you give the VM all your cores and do something that utilizes all available power then of course it will get hot.
 
Bear in mind that Apple will only ever officially support Boot Camp (with Windows) on these machines.
I can't say they even support bootcamp/windows, other then delayed driver updates.

Does the fan get noisy when running virtualized Linux on MBP2018?
I don't but it depends on what you're doing, if VM is pegging the CPU at 100% its going to get warm
 
It depends entirely on what you do, naturally.
The base operating system is pretty lightweight, so it's usually quiet, but if you give the VM all your cores and do something that utilizes all available power then of course it will get hot.

Under Ubuntu, it will be mainly for Python coding, development of ML programs and perhaps some Matlab analysis.

If doing the above tasks on an Ubuntu virtual machine, will MBP2018 15" with GPU performs better than the 13" version?
 
MBP2018 15" with GPU performs better than the 13" version?
I'm confused (its early and I've only had one coffee), but why would a GPU impact coding and Matlab processes? You want computational power and in a VM you can throw as many cores as you can spare to help with that.
 
I'm confused (its early and I've only had one coffee), but why would a GPU impact coding and Matlab processes? You want computational power and in a VM you can throw as many cores as you can spare to help with that.

I think running Matlab under a VM is possible but I read that even I could run Ubuntu as a VM on the Mac, GPU is not recognized. Moreover, since Apple dropped Nvidia and Nvidia GPU is needed for CUDA computations, google dropped tensorflow GPU (a framework for doing machine learning work) verion for the Mac. The best that the MBP2018 can do is to act as a x terminal to log in a Linux PC machine.

Apple really screwed up my workflow with their 2016-2018 design. Butterfly keyboard, removal of Nvidia GPU and many issues in installing Ubuntu natively.
 
I could run Ubuntu as a VM on the Mac, GPU is not recognized
How so, I just installed Ubuntu in VMware and it looks fine by me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2018-10-06_07-03-30.png
 
I can't say they even support bootcamp/windows, other then delayed driver updates.

Sadly, the only support they really need to provide at this point is EFI and the Boot Camp control panel and some basic proprietary drivers for their keyboard and trackpad. Everything else is directly sourced from the component vendors like Intel. It makes it even more ridiculous that they ship old copies of drivers on brand new Boot Camp releases.

Apple really screwed up my workflow with their 2016-2018 design. Butterfly keyboard, removal of Nvidia GPU and many issues in installing Ubuntu natively.

In all due respect, Apple has never "officially" supported installing Ubuntu on Macs, and therefore their curveball they threw at you was not by intention. That being said, if you are unhappy with the MacBook, I highly recommend Lenovo ThinkPads!
 
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