Macbook wheezing on certain display brightnesses

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1

Hi together,

I finally switched my old Macbook (7,1, Mid 2010) over from macOS to Fedora Workstation 32 Gnome. Now when using it with brightnesses between 10% and 25% it makes some wheezing (“pfeifen” in German) noices. At other brightnesses also, but in most cases to quiet to be heard. I don’t know, whether it’s the digital-to-analog-converter (or pulse-width modulation) or anything else. I could live with it, but fear, it is damaging my Macbook. I had it also once in Windows 10 (Bootcamp).

Does anybody have an idea? I am a Linux beginner and a Fedora newbie. So please explain in details. :slight_smile: Thanks in advance.

2

Very noble to repurpose an aging laptop.

I know nothing about Macs, but I was fascinated by the problem. I did a web search for the 3 words: macbook dim noise

I did not dare add “fedora” to the search. But it seems that those 3 words capture some experiences people have had with Apple screens (which might be irrespective of Fedora).

3

As often you need the right words and the right search engine. Thanks for pushing me into the right direction. Weird High pitched noise on MB Unibody / Laptop Issues / Arch Linux Forums is describing my problem quiet well. I have the same MacBook and also no noise in OS X, only in Fedora.

I also tried to install the Nvidia driver. I had no whining during boot (usually it whines as soon as the Fedora-hourglass is rotating). But as soon as the Nvidia driver failed loading and the nouveau driver was activated the whining also started. So imo the problem is the nouveau driver.

Btw: I cannot use Nvidia driver because support for my graphics card (Geforce 320M) was dropped last year. I would need to install an older version of the driver need to stuck with old kernel, so I would prefer nouveau.