Linux on my Macbook Pro

supanatral

supanatral

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If you've been reading my some of my posts lately then you'll know that my mac has been freezing on me constantly. It's got to the point where sometimes when I flip the screen down to put it to sleep, it freezes so that when I put my notebook into my laptop case, it will keep on heating up but won't turn on the fans.

My last resort before I sell my notebook and get a PC is to install linux on my mac and forget about Mac OSX. My only issue is that I don't know which one to download. Should I download the 64 bit version because it's an intel board or should I download the PowerPC version because its a mac?

Also, what distrobution should I download? Thanks for your help
 
The PowerPC versions are for PowerPC only, your Mac doesn't have a PPC processor, but an intel one, and a 64 bit one at that. Basically, both 32 and 64 bit intel versions should generally work.
 
Thanks Fryke.

So from what you just said, the 64 bit version will work on my intel core 2 duo notebook. I guess where the confusion lyes is because both the 32 and 64 bit versions are built for PC's and not Macs. Granted-macs now have the same hardware in them as PC's now but what is the difference between me booting up my computer with a Microsoft Windows CD and booting up with a Linux CD? If I didn't want to dual boot my computer between windows and Mac OSX, do I still need to use boot camp or can I just put the Windows CD into my computer?
 
Ubuntu 7.04 now supports EFI bootstrap partitions, so they should be able to install without any extra software (like BootCamp) necessary, just as was the case when you could create OpenFirmware bootstrap partitions for the PowerPC Macs that ran Linux. I haven't tried this as I don't have an Intel Mac handy to do this on so don't quote me on it, but I think this is actually the case (logically speaking, of course).

As for whether to use the 32-bit or 64-bit version, if you plan on using stuff like Adobe Flash Player for Linux, you might as well install the 32-bit version since there is no 64-bit version of Flash. If you don't care about it, then I guess you can install the 64-bit version without any problems. The repositories in Ubuntu 64-bit should contain an equivalent amount of apps that you would find in the 32-bit repos, with a few exceptions like Flash which I mentioned.

If you do download Ubuntu, I recommend downloading the Alternate Installation Disc and not the regular Live CD. Too many people have had problems with the Live CD and it doesn't have the number of options that the Alternate Installation does.
 
So, when I try to install ubuntu on my macbook pro tomorrow, what do i have to do?

Is it like a PC where I can just boot off the cd and go from there?
 
I would imagine that you should be able to just boot from it by holding the C key when you hear the Macintosh startup chime. I can't tell you for sure what the experience will be like on the Intel Macs since I haven't installed Ubuntu 7.04 yet on any of them, but if it already has built-in support for EFI it should work without the need for Boot Camp.

About the only reason to use Boot Camp is to create the necessary partition space for you to install Ubuntu. But I imagine you could just wipe it clean and install Ubuntu 7.04 as your sole operating system. Give it a try, but be sure to backup your files before you proceed.
 
Thanks for the help Nixgeek. I'm going to install ubuntu tomorrow when I get my macbook back from apple.

Just wondering if anyone has a list of Linux Distro's that support EFI?
 
So far, it seems that Ubuntu is the only one to my knowledge. While searching, I did notice that grub2 is supposed to support EFI and that Fedora Core is supposed to support it eventually.
 
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