Ubuntu 9.10 on iMac 27 (Core 2 Duo)
Posted by admin in Devices Jan 8th, 2010 | 8 responses
Just yesterday got Ubuntu 9.10 installed on a iMac 27 incher. Here is small guide to the installation.
Step 1: You need to partition your hard drive. Use the pre-installed Boot Camp Assistant program (Applications->Utilities->Boot Camp Assistant) for this.
You probably will need to divide the drive in half because the other option of 32GB (I think) will not be enough.
Step 2: Install rEFIT. This will give you a boot menu at startup where you can choose between Ubuntu and Mac OS X. Below is a screen shot of what you will see at start up (note: This is after Ubuntu installation).
Step 3: Assuming you have burned the Ubuntu installation disk already, load it in and restart. I recommend you shut down and then turn it back on. Sometimes when I restart it didnt seem to work. When the computer is booting up, hold down the “C” key. This will make your iMac boot from the the CD. If things go right you will be see the Ubuntu start page.
Step 4: At this point resist your temptation to install or try Ubuntu from the live CD. Because it will not work. The ATI card in the iMac cannot be supported by the generic driver, so if you go ahead and choose the first or second options, you will be greeted with a flashing screen and a Ubuntu@Ubuntu (or something like that) prompt. No one is stopping you if you want to see that gorgeous 27″ screen flashing but you will have to do a hard shutdown and come back here again. To get things rolling you need to go through with the installation in “safe graphics mode“. At this screen press F4 and you will get this screen.
Select “safe graphics mode” and press enter. You will go back to the main menu. Now go ahead and choose to install (or try Ubuntu without installation).
Step 5: From this point onwards it is pretty straight forward. You should be a little careful when partitioning. The Mac OS is a partition of the type “hfs+“. So make sure you don’t delete that. There will be a “fat” partition. That is where you will install Ubuntu. So delete that partition and add the partitions and swap. It should be pretty standard from here. You should know that Ubuntu cannot ‘restart’ on the iMac. Atleast it did not work for me so far. Everytime you restart from Ubuntu, it will go to a “restarting now…” screen and hang there. You will have to hard shut down. Cannot do anything about it in the first time when you restart after the installation but after that, make sure you shut down instead of restarting.
Post-Installation
Assuming everything went alright, you will get the rEFIT screen. Choose the right choice and you will see a GRUB menu.
Choose the first option and you should be on your way in to Ubuntu. Note that you cannot go in to Mac OS from this GRUB menu. You need to choose from the rEFIT menu. You will get an error if you select the that last option here. On the first time when you are starting up Ubuntu you might see artifacts on the screen. Do not worry about them. Once you are inside, update and upgrade your Ubuntu. Then you Ubuntu will automatically prompt you that there are proprietary drivers (for ATI graphics) and ask you to activate them. Do it. And restart (I mean shut down and turn back on). In the rare case you didn’t get the automatic notice for activating the driver, you can do it at System->Administration->Hardware drivers. After the restart you will see everything is fine. Well, almost.
Things that work
Screen resolution: The iMac has a gorgeous screen and you probably want to use all of that resolution. The screen will be working in the full resolution right out of the installation. No tweaking needed. And as you can see, you also have a plethora of resolutions to choose from (I did not try those though).
Ethernet/Wifi: Works out of installation. No problems.
Compiz: This is my favorite part about Ubuntu (well… Linux). It works without a hitch, as you can see below.
Things that do not work
Sound: Does not work for me so far (I did not try to fix it because I hardly need sound in this) but seems people have it to work with a new ALSA patch.
Magic Mouse: Apple’s magic mouse is a pretty nice piece of hardware. But you cannot get it full functionality in Ubuntu. Ubuntu only detecs two buttons (left & right buttons). Touch scrolling does not work. I tried BTNX and even it did not detect any button other than the left and right buttons. I use my old mouse with me. Much better than the magic mouse. No amount of magic can replace the lack of middle click for me.
Display brightness: As far as I can say there is no way to change the brightness from inside Ubuntu. And that 27 incher can really tire your eyes if you work constantly with a bright screen. What you can do is log in to Mac OS and reduce the brightness.
P.S: There might be a way to change brightness through the ATI Catalyst center. I could not try this yet. Will update soon.
That is about it so far. Everything (that I need) works fine. There could be some other stuff but I really did not come across any so far. You can replace Apple’s keyboard and mouse with normal once. I did. Apple’s keyboard is one of worst keyboards I have used. It feels very… bony. And the feeling when you press keys is very… smooth. Gets sleepy. Other than that, Ubuntu on iMac is pretty nice. I will later do a benchmark and post back.
8 Responses to “Ubuntu 9.10 on iMac 27 (Core 2 Duo)”
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Thank you very much for posting this! I wasn’t aware of there even being a safe graphics mode. Now I can take some time and give Ubuntu a proper spin on my Mac! Thanks again!
[...] Below I post some pics. For a detailed installation guide refer to my earlier post on the iMac here. But note that MacBook Pro installation is less troublesome, because you do NOT need to go to the [...]
Thanks for the info. Everything running smoothly now. I managed the partitions with the idisk, and started with the ubuntu 9.10 bootable CD, with the refit already installed (and two restarts required to see it working).
However, after updating the system, the last kernel doesn’t work (it hangs), I think it is the -20, so I start with the -14 without any problem.
This is absolutly sexy! … n dodgy!!!
Fuck for Linux on an Apple!
I patched some existing code for display brightness control. The original code worked for the previous generation and with the minor (port number) adjustments I made it works for the late 2009 models.
/*
* Apple Macbook Pro LCD backlight control
*
* Copyright (C) 2006 Nicolas Boichat
* Copyright (C) 2006 Felipe Alfaro Solana
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
*
*/
#include
#include
#include
void init()
{
if (ioperm(0×52e, 0×52f, 1) > 4;
return t;
}
int calculate_new_value(const char *arg)
{
int val, new = atoi(arg);
if (arg[0] == ‘+’ || arg[0] == ‘-’)
val = new + get_current_value();
else
val = new;
if (val > 15)
val = 15;
else if (val 2)
{
printf(”Usage:\n”);
printf(”%s : read current value\n”, argv[0]);
printf(”%s value : write value [0-15]\n”, argv[0]);
exit(1);
}
init();
if (argc < 2)
{
printf("Current value : %d\n", get_current_value());
exit(0);
}
if (argc == 2)
{
int value = calculate_new_value(argv[1]);
outb(0×04 | (value << 4), 0×52f);
outb(0xBF, 0×52e);
printf("new value: %d\n", value);
}
return 0;
}
Awesome post.
Using Ubuntu 10.04 the above procedure doesn’t work. It comes unstuck at the 5th image of the instructions where you press F4.
Instead of four options to choose from I only had three, “Safe graphics mode” is missing!
I exchanged the Ubuntu 10.4 CD for version 9.04 and the procedure went flawlessly.
Note: Download and burn ubuntu-9.1-descktop-i386.iso