Linux on MBP

[Beerbaron]

OK, now you're just trolling...

I'm not out to troll anyone. I just wanted to know if it was possible for Linux to be installed on a MBP. As I have never had a Mac before I thought I would ask in here first. People obviously are going to have their own opinions on the best OS. Mine isn't OSX which might be to some peoples surprise in this sub forum.

He's not putting XP on it?

XP was a good OS after SP1. ME was far worse.

 

[Rainmaker]

I installed Mint 16 (and for a while, Mint Debian Edition) on a 2011 MBP before I got my 2012 model. It installed flawlessly and worked just fine, with the correct drivers and keymap etc all set up out of the box without any intervention. The Debian version required an ethernet connection to download the restricted wifi drivers, but other than that it was plain sailing.

As someone said above, the battery life isn't quite as long as on OS X but Linux makes for a much faster and more responsive system than OS X on the same machine. Seeing as it's a work machine though, you DO have permission to install Linux on there, don't you?....

 

[Fallen god]

When was the last time you used OS X? Flash started using GPU acceleration back in 2010.

Ahh, turns out the source I read was a bug on Lion that was fixed, I have investigated it some more and although some of it runs on the GPU it still use a lot of CPU power.

This is the chrome task manager, take note I have 2 core so I'm assuming this is taking up a whole core and more, also note how small the usage is on the GPU process, my reading has lead me to be anything hardware accelerated is running on that process. With this 1 video running my entire machine slows down, right now it is not to bad but when I'm at work and I have other applications open it is impossible to stream something at 1080p.

 

[MagicBoy]

I don't use Chrome.

Here's the same clip in Safari on my MBP, full screen using the integrated graphics only :

 

[randal]

Stick with OSX, when you learn to use it properly it's as good as if not better than a Linux distro.

For example, to make accessing your remote machines easier use AppleKey+space and type terminal and press enter.

 

[Fallen god]

@MagicBoy thanks for that, it could be a chrome issue, could you just double check that it isn't using HTML5, HTML5 is awesome for me but flash is just meh, this is my usage on Safari with a Flash video. Easiest way to check is to just right click, also is that at 1080p? Since your task manager doesn't show the Flash player task, I believe most HTML5 videos are limited to 720p and they are not as good as 1080p on a 1440p monitor, not bad but meh.

Safari is a lot better then Chrome, I closed all safari tabs apart form the youtube video has it doesn't have a built in task manager.

I have no idea what Safari networking is but it seems to be pretty high, I doubt downloading a video would use so much CPU. Anyways I think I might switch to using Safari for videos.

Just tested the same video using Windows 7 and chrome with flash and the difference is huge, here is a screenshot of the task manager.

Spoiler

Stick with OSX

I think you should at least give it a go, setting up a dev environment close to Unix is not bad, iTerm2 is really nice, with ZSH. You can use Vagrant + Virtual box to have a headless VM off your choice. And all your code editors + more are on OSX. Something about OSX rub me the wrong way but the overall package is really nice.

 

[MagicBoy]

I forgot to check that, it was in HTML5 mode before.

Turned if off ... and there's not much difference :

Both 1080p source, displaying full screen at 1680x1050. MBP is cool to the touch, on integrated graphics and idling the fans at 2000rpm.

EDIT : 100% equals one hyperthreaded core.
800% is full flow :

 

[Rainmaker]

Stick with OSX, when you learn to use it properly it's as good as if not better than a Linux distro.

For example, to make accessing your remote machines easier use AppleKey+space and type terminal and press enter.

You can do that on any Linux distro with less 'weight' in the system. I run a MBP (Mavericks), Linux and Windows 8.1 so I'm not biased either way. OS X is OK but it's nothing special and does frustrate me in how slow it can be and how badly it manages memory compared to Linux.

 

[Fallen god]

I forgot to check that, it was in HTML5 mode before.

Turned if off ... and there's not much difference :

Both 1080p source, displaying full screen at 1680x1050. MBP is cool to the touch, on integrated graphics and idling the fans at 2000rpm.

EDIT : 100% equals one hyperthreaded core.
800% is full flow :

I had a feeling it was counting threads, still your usage seems much smaller then mine and I'm not exactly sure why, even on safari the difference is huge. I might have to re install Mavericks.

Running those same flash videos my laptop got very hot, 90c~, and I normally have to ramp the CPU fan speed up to compensate.

 

[randal]

You can do that on any Linux distro with less 'weight' in the system. I run a MBP (Mavericks), Linux and Windows 8.1 so I'm not biased either way. OS X is OK but it's nothing special and does frustrate me in how slow it can be and how badly it manages memory compared to Linux.

It was a starter for ten, wasn't sure how au fait he was with OSX.

Agreed, OS agnostic here too. Horses for courses, 8.1 on the gaming machine, OSX for the work horse, Ubuntu for the media PC and just about everything on the ESX test box.