I do not currently run Linux on my Macbook Pro, more due to lack of time to really troubleshoot one distro I am interested in myself than anything else.  To be honest I am not sure anything wouldn't work, but haven't run it myself yet to be able to answer that sorry.

I currently run Jack, Ardour, and a few other Linux programs on the Mac side of things though.  I run Linux exclusively on my workstation(When it is working, blasted motherboard died right after I paid to upgrade processors, memory, etc.).

I would imagine(Random guess) the reason none of those programs midi works is due to they probably all use Alsa midi, which obviously doesn't work on Mac.  But that is something else I haven't looked into.  Then again I could be completely off as well;)

       Seablade