Update (May 2010)  ¶

6 months later, I’ve:

• updated Mac OS X from Leopard to Snow Leopard,

• upgraded Kubuntu from Karmic Koala (9.10) to Lucid Lynx (10.04),

• changed my HDD to a SSD (a 160 Go Intel X25-M Postville  ).

Still, my machine crash hard. Here is the kind of kernel crashes I have on Kubuntu with this machine:

I now suspect problems with the MacBook Pro’s SATA controller. After all, my machine always freeze on high I/O load (disk backups, video transcoding, etc.). Wait. I remember of Apple pushing a new SATA firmware one year ago. Let me google this…

Bingo! This is a firmware issue ! I knew it! So I just followed these instructions this afternoon to downgrade my firmware to EFI 1.6.

I can now check that it really set SATA bandwidth back to 1.5 Gbps:

$ cat /var/log/dmesg | grep Gbps
[    0.800530] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: AHCI 0001.0200 32 slots 6 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x3 impl IDE mode
[    1.330097] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[    1.330112] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[    2.280096] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[    2.290110] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

But the firmware downgrade didn’t solved my problems at all. It’s really time to trash this MacBook Pro. Anyone to suggest a good laptop that works fine on Kubuntu?

Update (June 2010)  ¶

For the record, here is what my MacBook looked like at boot in the end of June 2010, two days after the end of the 1-year warranty:

At Paris’ Genius Bar, I was told that my motherboard was dead, which cost 400€ to replace. And that’s how I finally decided to sell my MacBook Pro and get rid of all my Apple gear and proprietary software.