[Ubuntu Oregon] MacBook Air Ubuntu support?

[Nathan Williams]

On 07/20/2012 09:10 AM, Scott Garman wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just got some budget funds from work that I need to spend this
> quarter, and I'd like to get an ultrabook. Thing is, I'm not finding
> any ultrabooks that meet my needs (13", high resolution screen, 8 GB
> RAM, comfortable keyboard) and am beginning to contemplate buying a
> MacBook Air and running Linux natively on it (i.e, wipe OS X
> completely from it).
>
> I've found this help.ubuntu.com page which suggests that 12.04 works
> well on last year's MB Air:
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookAir4-2
>
> However, I'm not finding any information about this year's Intel Ivy
> Bridge version of the laptop.
>
> Can anyone point me to reliable information or personal experience
> with this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Scott
>
>

Hi Scott,

The ultrabook you describe is a pretty close thing to the Dell Sputnik
[1] project (minor RAM upgrade and you're there). Though the official
offering from Dell isn't until later, you can download the customized
Ubuntu image for it now if you were to pick up one of the Dell 13" XPS
ultrabooks. They had one of these on display at OSCON, and it looked
really nice.

For more info on the MBP support, you can check out the wiki on MacBook
Pros [2], and searching on askubuntu.com. It seems that knowing the
exact version (8,1...) makes a difference. Phoronix has a review [3] of
the Ivy Bridge under Linux, which I understand to be pretty well supported.

Sadly, it doesn't look like anyone's contributed a hardware profile for
the macbook pro to Ubuntu Friendly [4] yet. :( If you end up getting
one, you should try to be the first!

hth,

Nathan W

[1] http://dell.com/sputnik
[2] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro
[3]
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_corei7_3770k&num=1
[4] http://friendly.ubuntu.com/