Ubuntu Jaunty – MacBook 4.1

So I just install Ubuntu Jaunty on my MacBook 4.1 and here’s my experience of having it for just a day and what I’ve stuck in my wiki.

Wireless Drivers

On the Apple MacBook 4.1 there is a bit of a nasty bug where the wireless drivers (which are restricted drivers) are enabled out of the box but dont work. Simple fix though, deactivate the drivers, then restart your computer and enable the drivers. Finally one more restart and your off. Annoying I know but it works and isn’t that bad considering some of the things I’ve had to do in the past to get wireless going trust me.

General

Enable Third Party Repo’s in Synaptic Package Manager, update and select all updates, apply

Personal Programs

My must have programs are as follows

Zim

Was recommended this little wiki by Jack over at http://www.ubooboo.net and it is a great little program for storing your personal little how-tos. At the moment he is saying there is a bug in the repo version of zim, so go to the zim website and go to install > Ubuntu deb here > Then at the bottom of the page youll see a file with extension .deb.

Download and install that – its easy a pie promise

Emesene

I’ve slowly been changed to this from pidgin, mostly because it seems to be a little more aesthetically pleasing that pidgin. I installed this and deleted pidign but I think is largely down to preferences so give it ago and make your own mind up.

Songbird

This is a music player made by Mozilla (The nice folks who give your firefox and thunderbird). This is the most polished of music players I’ve tried out on linux and would say I prefer it over amarok. Again personal preference, just give it a go and see what you like.

You can install songbird through a .deb file over at http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird or for the more hardcode of you who may want a more update version and compile it for yourself checkout http://getsongbird.com

Gnome-Do

This little app acts like mac os x’s spotlight feature but better. You can set up gnome do to search your app’s, your files, and add in any number of plug-ins for skype, twitter, music etc.

To install just go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager > Settings > Repository > Third Party Software (Tab) > Add

Add in the following 2 lines (One at a time):

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Then close synaptic and open a terminal and type the following:

$ gpg –no-default-keyring –keyring /tmp/gnome-do.keyring –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv A5D19FDCAA6ABB440CD3464628A8205077558DD0

$ gpg –no-default-keyring –keyring /tmp/gnome-do.keyring –export –armor  A5D19FDCAA6ABB440CD3464628A8205077558DD0 | sudo apt-key add -

$ rm /tmp/gnome-do.keyring

Now to install go to Synaptic Package Manager, search for Gnome-Do and install away

Out of the Box

Now the surprising thing with Jaunty isn’t only the massive speed increase for me but was dual screens. They worked out of the box, without need to install anything else. Now I’ve only tried this at home on one monitor but still to get it working without hassle in my book is amazing!

The reason I’m so fanatic about it is the main reason I keep a mac os x version on my computer is because if I ever do a presentation on a projector or anything, I can never rely on dual screens working under Ubuntu. This is obviously a step forward.

Also another little MacBook joy, dual finger scrolling works with no tinkering. I admit the right click of tapping with 2 fingers still doesnt work out of the box but it’s a good leap forward.

Also a little thank you to the Ubuntu team for taking the time to re-organise the menu bar – it looks alot neater now, the little things do make a difference.

Feel free to let me know if I’m missing any joys of Ubuntu programs or anything. There will probably be more updates as I go along with this.

UPDATE

I had to install Jaunty again after having a problem with my old Jaunty install so a more full guide to my experience is now here – http://www.gauntface.co.uk/blog/2009/08/11/ubuntu-jaunty-on-macbook-4-1/