karmic-mac (2)

At this stage the Ubuntu 9.10 system installed on my Mac had not yet crashed! The current post was actually started and posted from that very Mac…Things that are working properly are ethernet and wireless connections (obviously!), suspend functions, basic functions like pdflatex and R, Skype, USB connections, screensaver, multiple screens, DVD and camera handling. Things not working are brightness and keyboard backlight control from the keyboard. Things I have not yet tested are sound and driver add-ons. But then I copied the sound and video instructions from the Kamic documentation for MacBook Pro 5.3, including the fateful

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support

and then rebooted. This (or maybe the sound related command

sudo aptitude reinstall linux-headers-`uname -r` linux-image-`uname -r`

that was alluded to on a forum) created a nvidia error

NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module

and an almost empty xorg.conf file… I tried to reinstall the xorg.conf using various sources and the repair live cd, to no avail. So I eventually went back to reinstall Ubuntu 9.10 for the third time in three days… It is working again but I have not tried to reinstall the sound following the instructions on the documentation. I have reinstalled Skype, it seems to work, even the webcam is working but not the sound! I also installed the pommed package that should control brightness and the backlit keyboard. It does not work as

sudo pommed -f

returns

E: Unknown Apple machine: MacBookPro5,3

and changing values in /etc/pommed.conf does not have any impact… I would like to see those major points solved without any further manipulation from the user, we are talking the sound system of a Mac, not a third generation obscure software..! I am thus quite disappointed with the continuing inability of Linux distributions to keep track of on-going hardwares…