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Liberating Macbook Pro

I’ve always wanted to install Ubuntu on my Mac. So I decided to give myself little christmas present and finally get it done. Here’s my experiences with running Linux on Intel Mac.

Ubuntu 7.10 64bit running on Core 2 duo Macbook Pro

Target machine is 2.16ghz Core2Duo Macbook Pro with Radeon X1600 and 1 GB of RAM. Anyone ever used ATI products with Linux may guess ATI’s crappy drivers were again worst headache. Other than small inconveniences with Compiz/OpenGl games and sleep mode not working, everything works like a charm. According to Ubuntu wiki sleep should work with custom kernel but I decided to skip it. Ubuntu boots pretty fast so it’s not that big deal especially with machine that’s most of the time just a portable workstation. Installation with all configuration trial & errors took about three hours.

Why, oh why?
Just because I can. Believe me, I heard question “Why on earth you want to run Linux on mbp?! Why don’t you just use OS X? It’s purrfect!” more than once. Yes, OS X is nice and I do like it, it’s hands down better than Microsoft’s operating systems and has some extremely nice unique features. I just happen to like Linux more for the tasks I do (No doubt Photoshop junkies disagree with me). OpenOffice runs way faster on Linux than NeoOffice runs on OS X. SSH/Sftp mounts are must for me (though MacFuse works decently nowadays!), Apache/PHP /MySQL and friends just work better, Java works better (try running Apache FOP with OS X, not only when running from terminal, it bounces Java icon in Dock, and doesn’t work at all when executed from PHP scripts. Maybe there’s some workaround. Maybe not). And GNOME with Compiz Fusion is just faster environment to work in (Finder sucks. It really does).

Preparing rEFIt
First step is preparing the bootloader: rEFIt. Installing rEFIt is easy.

Choosing distribution
My choice of Linux is Ubuntu. It’s by far the easiest and most stress-free Linux I’ve used. Predictable releases, guaranteed predictable support roadmap, commercial support available, apt-get, new software, what there’s not to like? Of course every distribution and operating system has its quirks and problems, so does Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu has also the best documentation available (Just my opinion) for workarounds and how-tos which makes it way more tolerable than others.

32bit or 64bit?
Core2Duo is 64bit dual-core processor so I decided to go for 64bit release of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). First of all I’d like to clear some usual rumors about 64bit Linux in desktop usage. True, some software may not work with 64bit installation but most of it does. One common claim is that Flash does not work. This is false. And you don’t even need to install 32bit version of Firefox (you heard me right). There’s easy installation script for nspluginwrapper available too.

Installation and notes
Ubuntu wiki has an awesome guide for installing Ubuntu on Macbook Pro. If you’re going to install Ubuntu on Mac, that should be your bible. Installation itself is pretty straightforward but there’s couple important things to note while installing.

• Create only one partition, no swap partition!
• Remember to install grub on hd(0,2) instead of default hd(0) (Or 3 if you have Windows installed too). (Advanced- button on the last installation screen).

There’s multiple ways to get space for your Linux installation. I resized my OS X partition with live cd’s GParted tool (System > Administration > Partition Editor). Other than that, there’s nothing special about the installation.

Configuration
There’s a few things to fix after installation. Out of the box many things won’t work - the good news is that everything is pretty easy to fix. Ubuntu wiki guide has easy copy-paste solutions for wireless, touchpad and webcam so I won’t repeat them here. However I noticed one small problem with sound, I didn’t get any sound from internal speakers even I followed instructions from the wiki. To get the sound from internal speakers double click volume icon in top panel (open volume preferences), select switches tab and check the ‘Line In as Output’ checkbox.

3D acceleration and resolution work out of the box after enabling propietary ATI driver from the restricted drivers manager. There’s a few things to note though. I for one love Compiz and can’t anymore imagine using Linux without it. It’s not just for eyecandy, it’s for usability. Compiz doesn’t work with Gutsy’s default ATI drivers because lack of AIXGL support, but the easy workaround is to apt-get install xserver-xgl, Compiz works perfectly with XGL installed (brave ones can try to install newer ATI drivers. I ended up banging my head to the wall because 1440×900 resolution didn’t work anymore with new drivers. release notes mentioned 1680×1050 not to work but apparently there’s some other mystic resolutions too that won’t work).

There’s little annoying feature with XGL though - OpenArena and other OpenGL games won’t work. Or, they will but all textures are corrupted. As a workaround I created Enable/Disable XGL killswitch. Not really an elegant solution, but works for me (download: xgl-bubblegumtar.gz extract and make shortcut to command ‘gksu /path/to/xgl-switch’).

Touchpad can be pretty annoying by default. Ubuntu’s Macbook Pro wiki has fixed xorg.conf entry - however remember to modify Option “HorizTwoFingerScroll” “0″ because horizontal scrolling is really over-sensitive and annoying. Vertical scrolling works fine.

Software
Here’s quick list of software I mostly use and their OS X counterparts:

Firefox (Safari), Evolution (Mail), Nautilus (Finder), GEdit (Textmate), Gnome-terminal (Terminal), Gimp (Photoshop Elements), OpenOffice (NeoOffice), F-Spot (iPhoto), VLC Media Player (QuickTime), Pidgin (AdiumX), Rhythmbox (iTunes), gnome-calc (Calculator).

Yes, I also have iPod Nano (2nd gen). And yes, it works with Rhythmbox out of box. Also my digital camera worked out of box and F-Spot + Gimp are more than enough for me.

Also don’t forget to install ubuntu-restricted-extras package to get Java and codecs. Installing powertop package helps also optimizing the battery usage.

Compiz and search for the perfect desktop
I’m sure everyone loves eyecandy. Gnome with Compiz is very elegant. I run mostly default Compiz-setup with couple additions:

• Expo-plugin (Virtual desktop switcher like Spaces) with hotcorner in left-top
• Scale-plugin (Explose-clone) with hotcorner in right-bottom
• Shift-plugin (alt-tab replacement, works with apple-tab) in ‘Cover’ mode

I use Slickness gtk+metacity themes and default Human icons from Ubuntu. Others may say it’s plain ugly, others may say it looks like Vista (I still haven’t seen Vista in real life even it’s been out for over a year. A successful year, huh?) but I like it. Here’s the screenshot galore (Fullscreen shot):

My Gnome desktop

Scale the expose-clone for Compiz in action

Firefox the web-browser

Expo, Spaces-alike virtual desktop switcher

Shift-switcher in Cover mode (alt-tab replacement)

Conclusion
Ubuntu works nicely on Macbook Pro and it’s easily the best-looking laptop to run Linux out there. It needs some configuring and work to get running, but I’d say it’s worth it.