In this post I am going to briefly outline the process I went through installing a Linux distro to run as the only OS on my MacBook Pro. I will cover my process of experimenting with various distros and why I finally settled on Manjaro, and what hitches I ran into on the way and how I solved them.

• Ubuntu Shows Only 1 Core For Mac

Background I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro that was quickly becoming fairly useless. I was running OS X Lion on it but it was sluggish and would heat up after running for only a short time. Because I have another MacBook that I use for business and some dev work, I was contemplating giving this older MacBook away and replacing it with a smaller laptop, netbook or even Chromebook for regular internet use. When I booted it up to clean out my files it prompted me to update the OS to Yosemite. I decided to go ahead and do this wondering what impact it would have on the system stability.

Alas, the update failed and I was left with endless kernel panic messages and the Mac would no longer boot to a usable state. This was the nail on the coffin for me as I no longer have the original CDs that came with this MacBook. Being as I like playing around with tech and I had nothing left to lose I decided to try installing a completely different OS on this MacBook to see what would happen. I tried several Linux distros including OpenSuse, Debian, Linux Mint, and Fedora. I even tried FreeBSD. In each case though I ran into various issues with system stability and hardware support, the most troublesome being wireless support and trackpad support.

I did not try Ubuntu because I already have a machine running Ubuntu, and I wanted something different. Manjaro Linux Finally I came across, which is based on Arch Linux. I decided to try out the KDE version, downloaded the ISO, burned it to a disc and then popped it into my MacBook Pro. Holding down the alt/option button allowed me to boot into a screen offering me various boot media. Ironically, the Manjaro disc shows up as “Windows” so I went ahead and selected that. It booted up into the Live Disc which ran beautifully and had a splash screen offering various options. I decided to go ahead and run the install.

I had three installers to choose from – “Thus”, Calamares, or CLI. I first ran the install using Calamares, but when it was done I couldn’t boot into my new install because of the EFI boot section still on the drive from OS X. I tried to install/repair Grub using instructions from the Manjaro forums but wasn’t having much success. So I decided to run the install again from the disc but this time to try “Thus”. “Thus” is a native Manjaro installer that at the time of this writing is still in beta.

It worked beautifully for me and made creating partitions and selecting where to mount each from a breeze, and it also installed Grub2 without too many hiccups. As a disclaimer I should say that I probably didn’t pay too much attention to how I set up my partitions when using Calamares and this may be why I ran into boot problems. But it felt very clean and intuitive using Thus. Next time I will run an install using Calamares again and see if I can get it right. I never got to experiment with the CLI install so that would be interesting to try too.

Once I completed the install I rebooted the MacBook Pro, making sure to eject the disc from the drive first, and it booted into Manjaro with no dramas!! My wifi was detected instantly and everything just seemed to work right out of the box. The trackpad works beautifully and mimics OS X functionality perfectly.

The only difference I have detected so far is that I can’t use the double finger swipe to display the desktop, and also on the keyboard I have to use the control key where I would ordinarily use the command key on OS X, for example to copy, paste, print, etc. Manjaro also detected and installed the drivers for my Brother printer (wireless) over wifi and printed a test page successfully without me having to do anything else.

I am yet to connect to my external display and my iogear KVM switch, interested to see how that works. Post Install Tasks Updating Manjaro As soon as I started navigating around the desktop the Octopi utility let me know that I had 399 updates that needed installing. This ended up being a bit of a headache. I first tried using Octopi but it was hanging on fetching the packages.

I then decided to use the terminal to run the updates, which I could initiate from within Octopi. The packages downloaded without a problem but would not install or run because they kept reporting issues with the PGP keys. I did a bit of google searching and found that the issue was likely that the PGP keys on my install were corrupted or out of date, but as always there is a solution, which I found on the on the Manjaro wiki. I recommend you read the full article but here are the steps as I followed them: 1. Remove old (and possibly broken) keys by entering this command: sudo rm -r /etc/pacman.d/gnupg 2. Reinstall keyrings including the latest keys: sudo pacman -Sy gnupg archlinux-keyring manjaro-keyring 3. Initialize the pacman keyring: sudo pacman-key –init 4.

Load the signature keys: sudo pacman-key –populate archlinux manjaro 5. Refresh and update the signature keys: sudo pacman-key –refresh-keys 6. Clear out the software packages downloaded during the aborted installation (optional): sudo pacman -Sc I didn’t run step 6 because I wanted to see if these packages would now install, and I didn’t want to wait for them to download again.

I then tried running the update process again and it all worked smoothly with no errors. Installing Google Chrome Manjaro comes with Firefox already installed, but I happen to like Google Chrome as well, so I wanted to install that. It was easy following the steps in. In summary, first I ran this command to install yaourt or check that yaourt was installed: sudo pacman -S yaourt And then I ran this command to install Google Chrome, making sure to select “1” for the stable version when prompted. Yaourt google-chrome After that I just followed the prompts. Once installed, it showed up on the Application Launcher under Internet.

Other Thoughts Aside from functionality and the fact that it installed so effortlessly on the MacBook Pro I really like the look and feel of this distro. Manjaro Linux is sleek, clean, and fast and it boots up in seconds. Because I have never used Arch Linux or any distros based on Arch before it’s a learning experience for me, but I am loving it. I am actually writing this post using my “feels new” MacBook Pro that’s now got a new lease on life, thanks to Manjaro Linux.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have used Manjaro and what you think of it, or if you have any questions about Manjaro on the MacBook. I have an early 2011 MBP, its a 15″ with a 2gh i7 and 4gb of RAM. I had just erased my disk with recovery mode on the laptop in preparation to reinstall with Apple’s built in tool in the recovery mode, but I keep getting an error saying something along the lines of “This item is temporarily unavailable”. So without an operating system to boot into I decided to install linux, I chose Manjaro XFCE 64-bit from the download page linked in your article because it is more lightweight than the KDE version. After the ISO was downloaded I “burned” it onto a flash drive with Rufus (I’ve done all of this on my PC).

Once the ISO was burned to the flash drive I plugged it into the computer and booted holding the option key. I selected the drive (marked ISO) and booted to it. Then I was given the error mentioned in my previous comment. The MBP was previously running Yosemite 10.10 if that has any effect on it. Hi mary, Does your macbook overheat?

Are the fans spinning fast, or do you hear loud noise from them? I also have a mid 2010 macbook pro, and I’m thinking on the possibility of giving it a new life with manjaro When I tested ubuntu on it the fans where like crazy and heated a lot Also, do you get both graphic cards working or did you choose just one of them? Thanks for your article. PD: I read that on this macbook pro I cannot upgrade to 16Gb officially, but that if I switch to linux then I can use them.

There is a major bug in VirtualBox 4.2.6. It's preventing me from selecting more than 1 CPU for the guest OS. The Acceleration tab is grayed out and I can't move the slider. My computer has an Intel Core i5 3570K processor. This is a quad core processor that supports Intel's VT-x virtualization. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-H77-D3SH with firmware version F8C. Unlike previous firmware versions this is a 100% UEFI compliant firmware from AMI and fully supports everything UEFI has to offer including Windows 8 secure boot (which is enabled).

I have virtualization enabled in the motherboard's firmware. I'm trying to install Ubuntu Linux 12.10 so I can compile my own AOSP Android OS for my Nexus 4 phone. My host operating system is 64-bit Windows 8. It was installed in EFI mode, not legacy BIOS mode. Why can't VirtualBox see that VT-x is enabled on my computer? Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software can see this. The only reason I'm not using Hyper-V is because there are no guest drivers for Linux.

How do I get VirtualBox to let me select more than 1 CPU? Posts: 1 Joined: 26. Feb 2013, 11:12. OK, I'm new to Virtual Box and this forum, but I have the same problem enabling the 2nd CPU. I've enabled APIC, but need help with disabling Hyper-V. I installed Hyper-V before finding out that my E5200 CPU doesn't support SLAT (Secondary Level Address Translation).

I haven't been able to locate where to disable Hyper-V. I don't see it in the Settings for Virtual Box and I don't see it in the Windows 8 Programs and Features applet of Windows 8. Doing a search for Hyper-V in Virtual Box's help gave no results, and searching for uninstall or disable in Hyper-V returned no results either. Could some kind soul please tell me what I need to do to disable this Hyper-V beast? TIA I have to say that after my experience with Hyper-V, VirtualBox was a snap to install and get working AND it supports USB which Hyper-V doesn't. How MS can claim it's a replacement for XP Mode mystifies me, but then so does Windows 8! VirtualBox just downloads, installs, installs Windows XP guest and simply works without all the hassle you have with Hyper-V.

It does peg the meter at 100% CPU a good bit of the time right now, but once I get that 2nd CPU enabled, I doubt if that'll be a problem. I'm aware that the E5200 (2.5 GHz, dual processor) isn't the swiftest, but it's what I have on my test machine, and I believe I can get another year or two of use with it before I have to upgrade to something like an I5 and new mobo. TIA Posts: 5 Joined: 2. Mar 2013, 18:55.

Update - I went to the 'Turn Windows Features on and off' section of Programs and Features and voila, I was able to uncheck the boxes for Hyper-V there. That removed Hyper-V from the Start menu.

Then I rebooted and tried VirtualBox again, but it still won't let me set up the 2nd CPU, i.e. I can't drag that slider in the Settings - System - Processor to enable the 2nd CPU.

I'm probably missing something simple, but this newbie to VirtualBox can't figure out what I'm missing. I have a lot of PC experience (since 1989), but I'm up against this newbie stumbling block. Could some kind soul tell me what I'm missing? TIA Posts: 5 Joined: 2. Mar 2013, 18:55. Thanks for the reply.

I tried issuing the Vboxmanage from the command prompt in the host (Windows 8 ) and the guest (Windows XP SP3), but neither recognized it. Again I'm probably stumbling around missing the obvious in a newbie fog, but it's not at all apparent to me where and how to issue this command. I can't find any other place to try to enter this command. I clicked on your link and saw a lot of detail about how to issue commands once you get into this thing, but I need help in figuring out how to get into it. Sorry if I'm missing the obvious.

Yes it would, but be warned that changing an already installed Windows OS to SMP you must enable IO/APIC and this will require that you also update the Windows guest to multiprocessor which most of the time fails. There is a script/program that you can find in another topic here called HALu that helps. Usually multiple CPUs aren't what you need for speed in a Virtual environment anyway, but you do need hardware virtualization and page tables help a lot as well for best performance. Site Moderator Posts: 34372 Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55 Primary OS: Linux other VBox Version: OSE self-compiled Guest OSses:.NIX. Thanks again perryg. When you have to use software to simulate a hardware feature, it does eat up CPU cycles.

Whenever you change mobos (which I'd need to do), you have to reinstall Windows too, so it would involve a lot of work to update a current computer, especially my test machine because I have 6 versions of Windows on it, not counting VirtualBox. At least I've got enough hardware to get it installed and working with an XP guest and get a bit of an education in the process. Now I know just enough about Hyper-V and VirtualBox to be dangerous! Posts: 5 Joined: 2. Mar 2013, 18:55. quote='Perryg'Not going to work. The processor does not support hardware virtualization needed for 64 bit guests & also needed for SMP on 32 bit guests.

I don't believe that your response is accurate (particularly the reference to the processor - E5200). I've encountered the very same issue.

My processor is a Xeon Quad-Core. I've created and installed 64bit MS OSes using Hyper-V (Win2K3/Win2K8 and Win2K12) on this machine without any problems.

On my other physical machine (using a Duo-Core Celeron) I've been able to install Win2k3 with 2 CPUs using VirtualBox. It's just on the box with the Xeon processor that I'm having problems assinging more than 1 CPU within a VirtualBox VM. On this server I'm running WinK8 ENT 64bit Posts: 2 Joined: 12. Mar 2013, 18:22. Wpgwpg wrote:Well I guess that's the answer. It's not the answer I wanted, but at least now I know why I can't enable the other core. SMP I take it means Symmetric MultiProcessing.

I guess my old E5200 chip is showing its age. I take it that if I installed VirtualBox on something with an I3, I5, or I7 processor, that would allow for multiple CPU support, right?. Please see my post below. I'm having the exact problem with a system fitted with a Xeon Quad-Core processor. Posts: 2 Joined: 12.

Ubuntu Shows Only 1 Core For Mac

Mar 2013, 18:22.