Fedora 15 on Macbook Pro 8,1 (aka 2011, 13")

This is a follow up to my "Fedora 14 on Macbook Air".

First of all, I could not get Fedora 15 installed using the Live CD (32 or 64 bit). Given that I only tried the XFCE spin, as I no longer use GNOME3.

With that said, using the DVD image worked just fine. Here are the steps (recycled from my previous post):

Step 1 - Partition Drive:

On Mac OS X, use Bootcamp (under Applications -> Utilities) to re-partition the drive non-destructively. Once you select how much you want for your 'Windows' partition, tell Bootcamp you will install Windows later.

I used just a 20 Gb partition for Fedora.

Step 2 - rEFIt:

Download and install rEFIt on Mac OS X. This will allow your mac to give you a menu driven boot OS option once Fedora is installed.

Note: If you are running Mac OS X Lion (10.7.x) after you install rEFIt you may have issues booting the system. If you do, just take your Mac OS X dvd install, and use the Start Up disk utility and pick your 'Macintosh HD' as the start up disk.


Step 3 - Booting / Installing Fedora:

Reboot your Mac and hold the 'c' key to tell the computer to boot from the CD.

On your GRUB screen, hit enter to start installation.

Make sure GRUB gets installed on whatever device your /boot is mounting. Mine is /dev/sda4

Note: It seems if you run the Fedora 15 installer with network cable hooked up (and connected to the internet) it will automatically install Fedora 15 with the latest packages automatically, which was kind of cool.

Step 4 - Fixing rEFIt OS Loading:

Once you install Fedora, and reboot your Mac, rEFIt will give you the Linux option for booting, but once you choose it will fail.

Reboot again, and once you get to the rEFIt screen, pick the rEFIt shell, and run:

gptsync

That will fix it.

Step 5 - Install RPMfusion repos:

Install free and nonfree rpmfusion repos. See instructions.

Step 6 - Install ndiswrapper

yum install ndiswrapper

then you can follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro8-1/Natty#Wireless

Sound, Video, Screen Brightness + Sound shortcuts work out of the box.

I haven't tried to set up the touchpad yet, but basic function does work out of the box as well. I will be trying these settings shortly:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro8-1/Natty#Touchpad

I don't think there is anything specifically related to 'multitouch' in fedora yet, if there is feel free to leave a comment, but for now, using just the synaptics driver, you can play around with the options described in this document.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

Note: On Fedora the touchpad configuration is managed by /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Adding:

Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2"
Option "TapButton3" "3"

is pretty much all I need.

Update 1:

Modifying fan speed: If your MBP is getting too hot you can update your fan speed. The min speed is set to 2000rpm by default, I run mine around 3000.

Add it to your /etc/rc.local

echo 3000 > /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768/fan1_min

Update 2:

As requested, here's a screenshot: