I have recently acquired a brand new MacBook (2.2 GHz, 1Gb RAM). The first thing I did with it was to resize the OSX partition using Boot Camp to make space for Linux. Now my MacBook dualboots Leopard and Ubuntu.

Before deciding on Ubuntu 7.10, I have tried Mandriva 2008, Fedora 8, OpenSuse 10.3, and DreamLinux 2.0. Not one of those distros made all the MacBook components work out-of-the-box. Since I am not a Linux expert, I rely hugely on the help freely given by members of Linux communities worldwide. I decided to use Ubuntu because it seems that it has the most detailed tutorial on how to dualboot OSX and Linux as well as the most number of threads discussing how to configure the various parts of my MacBook. My heartfelt thanks go out to the people responsible for this page, and this one, and of course this one too. These pages have helped me configure the audio, WiFi, video, and other components that didn’t work out-of-the-box.

Everything now seems to work as expected. Cheese, Kopete, and Skype can detect the built-in camera without any problem. Compiz Fusion, AWN, screenlets and other eyecandies work without any hitch. The eject button and other special keys work as well. The only thing that I still need to configure is the touchpad – right click by tapping two fingers and the two finger scroll do not work yet. But this is not a problem at all since I can right click and scroll using the mouse.

Running Linux on a MacBook feels like having the best of both worlds. And by two worlds I mean the world of Apple hardware and the world of Free and Open Source software. Below is a screenshot of my 3D desktop.