thejavajar

The other night, I followed the directions posted here and successfully installed and configured Ubuntu 8.10 on my MacBook Pro. I wanted OS X and Ubuntu as options at startup but I could have just installed Ubuntu or made it a trifecta with OS X, Ubuntu and Windows as options at startup.

It is a pretty simple process: Use OS X’s BootCamp utilitiy to create a partition on your hard drive. I created a 30 GB partition which is plenty of space for now. Then, install rEFIt. Next, boot from the Ubuntu 8.10 disc. At startup, with rEFFIt, you can choose to boot OS X or from the Ubuntu CD. Once running on the Ubuntu LIVECD, use gparted to delete the partition that you just created. Finally, start the Ubuntu installer from the Desktop icon and select to install on the “largest continuous free space”. On the last screen of the installer, click the advanced button and choose to install grub to “/dev/sda3″.

I like Ubuntu running on my MacBook Pro. There a few things that I needed to setup that made running Ubuntu feel like OS X. A few things I first noticed and fixed with a few Google searches: 2 finger scrolling, right-click and closing the laptop lid for hibernate/sleep mode.

Tags: MacBook, OS X, rEFIt, Ubuntu

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 9:06 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.