[Discuss] GNU/Linux Distro for Mac?

[Richard McCluskey]

Well, I may be late to the party but .....
to the OP :

I run Ubuntu 13.04 on my MacBook Air Retina (manufactured Aug2012) as my
daily indispensable work horse machine at work. I have no issues with it at
all. None. And I use it about 12 -14 hours a day, 6 days a week, often just
closing the lid at night and re-opening it the next day.
There _were_ issues with Ubuntu 12.04 and hanging a large second monitor
via the thunderbolt port and then connecting and disconnecting it at
random, but those issues went away with the upgrade to 13.04
With regard to the FAN and CPU cooling, backlighting the keyboard etc,
there are specific Apple/Mac PPA's that have packages to manage this. (
http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ppa/raring)

For Dual booting, (my wife prefers Mac) Before the Linux install I
installed ReFIT, a boot manager for Mac that works perfectly for Linux.

This page here should give you everything that need to make it work, and it
is the page that I used to make it all work.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation

As for the desktop part of the argument, if the user is used to a Mac type
environment, may I suggest that once the default desktop is installed, you
install Cairo-dock. When you do this, and then log out and choose the
Cairo-Dock (CD) login option, then the <opinion>horrible unity
bar</opinion> will be gone, and a very Mac like Dock will be available at
the bottom of the screen.

My Current desktop setup uses the following packages : Cairo-dock, Compiz,
Emerald Window Manager.

This Linux-ificated Mac is the single most stable laptop I have had in the
last 10 years. Battery life is about 85 - 90% of what I would get directly
from the Mac, and is significantly better that every other Laptop I have
run linux under for the last 13 years of life as a linux desktop user (Yes,
I manually configured gnome 1 circa 1999). I have run variously RedHat,
Centos, Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu on all my laptops, from Toshiba, to Sony,
to HP, to Dell.

Here is a snapshot of my desktop as it looks right now on the MacBook Air :
https://plus.google.com/107622051891403315611/posts

HTH

Richard



On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Will Rico <willrico at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a colleague at work who uses a Macbook Pro Retina at home.  Since we
> use GNU/Linux for our office PC's (Ubuntu and Mint currently) he has become
> a fan and would like to give GNU/Linux a whirl on his Mac.  Is there a
> distribution that is particularly suitable for Macs?
>
> Will
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
Richard McCluskey
richard at GrokDrop.com**