When I install this and open Driver Manager, the screen goes black, cooling start to spin loud and the only thing I can do is power off. I wanted to install this driver again to run nvidia-bug-report but when I did so, this time there was a black screen already - I’s able to log in “without seeing things” and ran nvidia-bug-report.sh although I don’t know if it’s of any use in that case. I had this issue also in Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon & KDE.
The kernel driver is still 304.137, so it doesn’t work. It might suffice to issue
sudo update-initramfs
and reboot. If not, purge and reinstall the driver.
The driver is now running fine, an Xserver is coming up.
Now you’re hitting the next problem, this is a dual gpu system but not the standard Optimus but a proprietary Apple errm…Applemus. I suspect the Xserver is running on the nvidia but the display is still switched to the intel.
I don’t know if the standard Prime works on Apple or if you have to use the apple_gmux driver to use vgaswitcheroo to switch graphics.
To test standard Prime, you’d need to install packages
nvidia-prime
ubuntu-drivers-common
then you should be able to use prime-select intel/nvidia to switch.
If that doesn’t work, use apple_gmux+vgaswitcheroo
[url]https://github.com/ah-/gmux[/url]
[url]https://github.com/ah-/gmux-scripts[/url]
For now I don’t know how to do that, so let’s say i want to use just nvidia, the issue is that when i run OpenGL app immediately the screen goes black, fans begin to spin loud, keyboard lightning is max and i can only power off. I checked with 4.4, 4.6, 4.8 & 4.10 kernel, Mint 18.3 & 17.3 (also with these kerns). I tried a bit with this gmux, there’s apple_gmux loaded on both Mints so i didn’t compile the external one, dual gfx through bumbleblee wasn’t working, i tried with switcheroo and using bumbleblee config from gmux-scripts, there’s no vgaswitcheroo in /sys/kernel/debug anyway…
Your best luck will be to abandon this futile idea. When you were buying a MacBook you perfectly knew what you were getting - a very special piece of x86 hardware which only works well with MacOS X.
Even though BootCamp exists, Windows on MacBooks is an absolute PITA. And I don’t even want to talk about MacBook keyboards. This is just a pure unusable abomination even when you’re working in MacOS X.
PgUp/PgDn/Home/End are missing and can only be used via Fn.
Delete is backspace with Fn.
Insert is missing.
Alts/Ctrls/Shifts all work in a very peculiar manner. No PrtScr/SysRq/Pause either.
Problem is, that every iteration of MacBookPro/Air with switchable nvidia graphics used a different, Apple-proprietary switching method. Some can be made to work on linux, some sometimes, others not without booting to OSX. So whether a solution exists or not depends on the exact model.