Ubuntu on Mac?

[iUserz]

Anybody have experiences with this and care to share? (how it was done, was it easy, etc) I've got a Macbook being shipped to me at the moment and I was originally planning on putting on Windows as the dual boot, but what about Ubuntu? (I've used it before on my PC and it could come in handy seeing as I'm a CS student)

 

[timswim78]

I ran Ubuntu just fine on a Mac Mini. However, I like SUSE much better.

 

[brepublican]

Anybody have experiences with this and care to share?

Works beautifully. In fact, you dont even need an Intel Mac since Ubuntu distribute both for PPC and x86

However, I've had no experience with running the x86 installation on an Intel Mac, but I dont see why it shouldn't work. Good luck!

EDIT: You might wanna just pop in the ROM and run it from there first (as opposed to doing an install. This option is available)

 

[grahamperrin]

Initial tinkering with Ubuntu to satisfy a person who will switch from OS X

This is not the most recent topic about Ubuntu, but the opening post is closest to what I'd like to discuss, so here goes …

I am very open-minded about Linux and have given it a try several times, most recently a couple of months ago. I went with Linux Mint and Ubuntu as the most consumer-friendly branches of Linux.

What I dislike about Linux is the constant tinkering, both to solve problems and to modify the UI to your needs. Whenever something doesn’t work, the solution isn’t often easy to find. Example: getting Netflix to work. I spent hours trying to get it to work on both systems and the eventual performance was just not very good (e.g. screen tearing). When tweaking the UI, I thought that Linux Mint was almost as terrible as Windows with its virtually countless menus and settings panes as well as hidden options at some places. To me, it’s just a mess. Ubuntu on the other hand has more of an OS X approach, but it is just too rigid in terms of UI, requiring messing with Terminal or downloading additional plugins and themes (some of them out of date, requiring yet additional tweaking). I felt dissatisfied with both after a couple of days, because the end result was not completely to my liking and I couldn’t be bothered anymore to tinker further.

OS X just has that straightforwardness. Finder, Dock and Mission Control are my absolute favourites; powerful and simple. All settings are either in system settings or in application-specific settings. There is nothing else to do. Making a clean install of OS X is not a pain, it’s so trivial because most of it works right from the start and doesn’t require tinkering. OS X also has a finishing touch everywhere, the smooth scrolling, the subtle animations. It brings the OS to life and doesn’t appear as static as Linux still does. Linux ist just not meant for me, but I still think it is an absolutely great system, if you are willing to put the time into it.

To KALLT, or to anyone else with similar viewpoints of both operating systems:

• please, can you steer me to maybe two good summary lists of the tinkering involved?

I guess: one summary of tinkering that's necessary, or close to necessary, for Ubuntu to please someone who enjoys Mavericks and will switch from OS X.

Plus one summary of tinkering that might be desirable (but not absolutely necessary).

If it helps to tailor the steering:

• I'm confident with Terminal and so on
• I currently use a 2009 MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory (the maximum) and an upgraded internal drive (hybrid – SSHD)
• I plan to obtain a new Apple notebook, probably another MacBook Pro with the maximum amount of memory, before Yosemite is released
• I'm already familiar with Ubuntu out-of-the-box (OOTB)
• I plan to use both ZFS on Linux and encryption for my home directory; I'm more than familiar with ZFS on OS X (ZEVO) so I don't expect to need help with this point.

Thanks

(There's no rush for this. I expect my abandonment of OS X to be gradual.)

 

[grahamperrin]

Mac-like appearances for Linux

… To KALLT, or to anyone else with similar viewpoints of both operating systems:

• please, can you steer me to maybe two good summary lists of the tinkering involved?

I guess: one summary of tinkering that's necessary, or close to necessary, for Ubuntu to please someone who enjoys Mavericks and will switch from OS X.

Plus one summary of tinkering that might be desirable (but not absolutely necessary). …

Yesterday, without searching, I stumbled across this:

• Transform Ubuntu into OS X (Leopard).

From there, today I found more projects of interest:

• Mac4Lin – Aqua UI for GTK
• Macbuntu
• macbuntu-iso (2013-04-24) – a remaster of Ubuntu, Macbuntu "theme" is installed.

Any other suggestions? In the meantime I'll try the .iso

 

[grahamperrin]

An OS X-like theme

Zukimac GNOME-Look.org – referred from Download Zukimac - a Flawless Mac Theme for Ubuntu

 

[macenied]

You could keep OS X as your main OS, install Oracle VirtualBox ( free ) and run Ubuntu as guest OS inside VirtualBox. This would allow you to evaluate Ubuntu without giving up OS X.

 

[macenied]

P.S. From a user perspective - just don't expect that Ubuntu is integrated as seamless as OS X or even Windows on your MacBook. E.g. some configuration tasks can be done with the GUI, some must be done in Terminal using the command line interface. But as a CS student, I expect you know this and can handle it already.

@grahamperrin:

I think Linux is not a very good Desktop Operating System and "endless" tinkering would be needed to come close to OS X. However, if you need an OS for SW development and / or Systems Engineering you will appreciate Linux. Businesses I know use it as a Server OS. Apple investigated years to build OS X on top of BSD Unix, hard to catch up for the voluntary open source community.

 

[hrsetrdr]

You could keep OS X as your main OS, install Oracle VirtualBox ( free ) and run Ubuntu as guest OS inside VirtualBox. This would allow you to evaluate Ubuntu without giving up OS X.

This is a good idea. However, if you chose to do a dual-boot then you'd want to check out rEFInd, which is a boot manager forked from the original rEFIt project.