1 Determine your hardware revision¹

1. OS X
   

   click in OS X on the Apple on the top left, then “About this Mac” – “More Info…”, see the generation in the “Model Identifier” row; or …

2. ubuntu
   

   sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
   

2 Install rEFIt and Partition Your Mac’s Hard Drive(Dual-Boot: Mac OSX and Ubuntu)

1. First, install the rEFIt boot manager
   

   http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s1_install.html To confirm that the app is working, reboot your system: if you see a startup menu like the one below, you’re good. It may take a couple of reboots to appear, but it worked on the first try for me.

   
2. Partition Your Mac’s Hard Drive
   
   1. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.)
      
   2. Select your hard drive from the list on the left, and click the Partition tab on the right.
      
   3. You’ll see the current partition layout. Click the right corner of the current partition and shrink it to the size you want. The display will show you the minimum size, so don’t worry about going too far. Alternatively, just select the current partition and type in the final size
      
   4. Click apply. Disk Utility will shrink the current partition for you and free up space for your Ubuntu install.
      

3 Install Ubuntu

4 Let rEFIt Fix Your Partition Tables

5 configuration

1. Screen(Not)
   

   The resolution is right recognised, the LED-backlit works properly.

   NOTE: In order to be able to adjust the brightness you will have to install the apple-gmux package and boot with acpi_backlight=vendor kernel parameter which you can set e.g. in the /etc/default/grub file in GRUB_CMDLINELINUX line. Details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/AppleGmuxBacklight

2. Colors
   

   import these profiles as .icc files in System Settings - Color by selecting the appropriate screen icon, clicking “add profile” and navigating to the .icc files (located in OS X under /Users/username/Library/ColorSync/Profiles or /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays if the settings were saved for all users). After this, choosing the radio button under the new OS X profile should yield a nice color profile.

3. HFS+
   

   HFS is mounted as Read-Only. By turning journaling off in OS X, the HFS+ file system will be read/write under Linux.

   This is the recommended solution if you need read/write access to your OS X partition.

   It’s also possible to mount HFS+ journaling-enabled volumes using the “-o force,rw” option though this is extremely risky.

   Leaving the HFS’s journaling turned on you’re able to access it as root.

4. Touchpad
   

   Works fine out-of-the-box. You can disable the mouse-click with the trackpad tap and the horizontal scrolling in Preferences.

   Unity supports multitouch with this funcs:

   1 finger
       move = move the cursor;
       click = "your-favourite-hand"-click; 
   2 fingers
       move = vertical/horizontal scrolling;
       click = "2nd-button"-click; 
   3 fingers
       move = move the window and shows resizing options; 
   4 fingers
       move = show/hide the launcher (horizontal-scroll, enable auto-hide the launcher first);
       single-tap = show the dash.
   

   To get multitouch with just two finger scrolling and drag-and-drop follow these instructions:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support && sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
   

   1. Palm Recognition
      

      By default palm recognition is not turned off, so you might have trouble moving the cursor or clicking something by brushing the trackpad with your palm while typing. To turn palm recognition on, open up a terminal and copy your default conf file:

      sudo cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/my-synaptics.conf
      

      Now edit the new conf file:

      gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/my-synaptics.conf
      

      and add the following line just before the EndSection marker of your input class:

      Option "PalmDetect" "on"
      

   2. Fine-tuning the touchpad
      

      You can play with other options offered by Synaptic input drivers that are explained here and in this blog post.

5. TODO External Monitor
   

   External monitors connected via HDMI work out of the box.

   If your external display’s native resolution is not recognised when connected via a VGA port (only a lower resolution, such as 800x600 is offered, for example), then you need to issue a couple of xrandr commands in a terminal to force add the desired resolution. The source of information for this fix comes from here.

   To check that xrandr is installed issue:

   $ sudo apt-get install xrandr
   

   You have to create a modeline using the gtf or cvt utility. For example, if you want to add a mode with resolution 1920x1080, you can enter the following command (The output is shown following):

   $ cvt 1920 1080
   # 1920x1080 59.96 Hz (CVT 2.07M9) hsync: 67.16 kHz; pclk: 173.00 MHz
   Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
   

   Then copy the information after the word “Modeline” into the xrandr command (which would in my example state):

   xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
   

   Now get the code of your external monitor by issuing xrandr. For me the external screen is branded DP1.

   Now add this mode to the available ones for your external screen:

   xrandr --addmode DP1 1920x1080_60.00
   

   And select it:

   xrandr --output DP1 --mode 1920x1080_60.00
   

   If everything goes well, the resolution should be ok now and you’ll have the desired option in the normal display preferences. This will have to be repeated every time. The easiest way to automate the task, add the 3 xrandr commands to the ~/.xprofile file.

   $ gedit ~/.xprofile
   

   The file should look something like:

   xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
   xrandr --addmode DP1 1920x1080_60.00
   xrandr --output DP1 --mode 1920x1080_60.00
   

   Afterwards, you have to add executable access to the file:

   $ chmod +x ~/.xprofile
   

   Note: if you make a mistake in the .xprofile file, you might have trouble reverting back to normal settings - in this case you can always use ctrl+alt+F1 to open the shell interface and issue mv ~/.xprofile ~/.xprofile-old; sudo reboot to get the previous settings back.

6. Sound
   

   Works out-of the box, but some volume corrections are necessary.

   You can install gnome-alsamixer for a nice GUI to set up your sound:

   sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer
   

7. Wireless(more ²)
   

   There is no official support yet in Ubuntu 11.10, but you can get it working with the following repository:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mpodroid/mactel
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer
   

   Then install the linux-backports-modules-cw-3.2-oneiric-generic or, if you have the pae kernel installed, the linux-backports-modules-cw-3.2-oneiric-generic-pae package. While this tutorial deals with Oneiric, the same instructions for the wireless work for Precise, with the above installation of ”linux-backports-modules-cw-3.2-oneiric-generic” replaced with ”linux-backports-modules-cw-3.3-precise-generic” .

   Edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add the line:

   blacklist ndiswrapper
   

   Create or edit the file /etc/pm/config.d/modules and make sure the wireless modules (b43 and bcma) are blacklisted:

   SUSPEND_MODULES="b43 bcma"
   

   Reboot and the wireless should work.

8. Graphics
   

   System info says

   Graphics: unknown.  
   Driver: unknown,  
   Experience: Standard.
   

   it means that it cannot acquire the information because glxinfo is not installed on the system.

   Install it by clicking here: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/mesa-utils/ Install via the software center

   Or by typing:

   sudo apt-get install mesa-utils
   

6 Install Software

1. lightum³
   

   Lightum is a daemon to control the keyboard brightness and screen backlight on MacBook based laptops.

   If you are running Ubuntu, you can install it by adding lightum-mba ppa to your system:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:poliva/lightum-mba
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install lightum
   

   Otherwise, you can build it from source.

2. lightum-indicator⁴
   

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:poliva/lightum-mba
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install lightum-indicator
   

3. ubuntu-tweak
   

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak
   

4. gnome
   

   ubuntu 12.04 中安装 gnome 桌面的命令为：

   sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
   也可以用：
   sudo apt-get install gnome-panel
   

   安装好 gnome 桌面后注销重新登录，在用户名右边有一个图标，可以选择使用进入的桌面，我选择了 gnome classic，然后就可以重返经典的 gnome 桌面了。在删除 unity 桌面之前，要把 ubuntu 默认的登录界面也改为 gnome，命令如下：

   sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -s gnome-classic
   

   这是设置登录界面为 gnome classic 的，如果你喜欢 gnome3，则用：

   sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -s gnome-shell
   

   接下来就可以卸载 unity 了。

   sudo apt-get -y -–auto-remove purge unity
   sudo apt-get -y -–auto-remove purge unity-commonp
   sudo apt-get -y -–auto-remove purge unity-lens*
   sudo apt-get -y -–auto-remove purge unity-services
   sudo apt-get -y –-auto-remove purge unity-asset-pool
   

5. other