You don't have to be a slave to OS X! Here's a guide to a sane dual-booting setup with Ubuntu 12.10 on your shiny MacBook Air. This is written and tested for a MacBook Air 5,2 (Mid 2012), but likely works the same with any modern Macbook.
http://www.maketecheasier.com/install-dual-boot-ubuntu-in-macbook-air/2012/08/27
But use this ISO, for 12.10, instead:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64+mac.iso
Once you hit Step 6 ("Post Install") stop reading and come back here. Don't do their post install steps -- they are outdated.
Oh hey, now you're in Linux. Your mouse is going to act a little funky until we have everything set up right. One thing you'll want to know:
- Right-click: Click the trackpad with two fingers.
- Middle-click: Click the trackpad with three fingers. Middle clicking is how some types of copy/pasting work in Linux.
On reboot, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade. This will break your wifi, but then go into: System->Software Sources->additional sources and disable the wifi module and things will work again after reboot.
Also, run this:
echo "brcmsmac" >> /etc/modules
Configure control / meta key positions - configure this to your liking:
Go into System -> Preferences -> Keyboard
Click on the "Layouts" tab and then click the "Layout Options" button.
Click on "Alt/Win key behavior"
Select "Control is mapped to Win keys (and the usual ctrl key).
Fix trackpad madness. Unfortunately, there's not a 100% perfect solution right now, but here's what I recommend for the time being:
So, things are kind of messed up in the multitouch trackpad world right now. The default driver that ships with Ubuntu is the synaptics driver, and it actually works really, really well -- it's smooth, setting up gestures using something like touchegg works great, etc. BUT! For some reason it doesn't support thumb detection, so it's incredibly cumbersome to use a mac with one of those big no-button trackpads (e.g. all current macs). This is because almost everyone rests their thumb on the trackpad as they mouse around.
Eventually someone will add thumb detection support into synaptics and the world will be perfect. But until then, here's what I recommend:
Compile and install the mtrack driver as follows:
git clone https://github.com/BlueDragonX/xf86-input-mtrack.git libtoolize aclocal autoconf automake --add-missing --copy ./configure --with-xorg-module-dir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules/ sudo make install
Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (create file) and add:
Section "InputClass"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Identifier "Touchpads"
Driver "mtrack"
Option "Sensitivity" "0.55"
Option "FingerHigh" "12"
Option "FingerLow" "1"
Option "IgnoreThumb" "true"
Option "IgnorePalm" "true"
Option "TapButton1" "0"
Option "TapButton2" "0"
Option "TapButton3" "0"
Option "TapButton4" "0"
Option "ButtonMoveEmulate" "false"
Option "ButtonIntegrated" "true"
Option "ClickTime" "25"
Option "BottomEdge" "30"
Option "SwipeLeftButton" "8"
Option "SwipeRightButton" "9"
Option "SwipeUpButton" "0"
Option "SwipeDownButton" "0"
Option "ScrollDistance" "75"
EndSection
This disables tap-to-click and sets up the bottom 30% of the clickpad to not register new touches. You may want to play with these settings.
Natural scrolling (if you're into that kind of thing). Create .Xmodmap in ~/ with the following:
pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 9 10 11 12
To make the web stop looking shitty:
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
Let's make fonts look more like they do on OS X:
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
Open gnome-tweak-tool and go into Fonts and turn off hinting. Set Antialiasing to Rgba. Some applicaitons use this thing called fontconfig to get some settings, rather than get their settings from Gnome. Let's kill the fontconfig settings so things will just default to Gnome's config -- this lets Firefox render fonts correctly:
sudo rm /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-*
Set up snazzy gestures:
(note: will come back to this - not working yet w/ the mtrack driver)
this is a great resource, thanks!