Ubuntu on a Macbook

By | 2007/03/15

I am now the owner of an Apple Macbook and I have spent the course of the day getting Ubuntu installed on it (under Bootcamp).  I will have some tutorials ready by the weekend for any of you that have wanted to try or are tempted to get a Macbook.  So far I am still having trouble with one thing though, and if any of you current owners can offer me some tips I sure would appreciate it.

My problem so far is that wireless doesn’t work for me.  I have tried three sources for a driver over ndiswrapper and none of them seem to work yet.  Two of them will show driver present, hardware present and one of them gives me the best result with a kernel panic (yes, that is sarcasm).

Has anyone been able to get wireless working on a macbook, core 2 duo with the 168c:0024 PCI-ID?

Other than that things are coming along well.  Again, look for a tutorial on getting Ubuntu Feisty running on a MacBook via bootcamp within a few days… assuming I can get this wireless going.

19 thoughts on “Ubuntu on a Macbook

  1. Abbas Khan

    Good Luck, if you get it working, e-mail me the instructions, i haven’t been able to get my newly purchased black macbook (core2duo) working with wifi in either feisty or edgy. Some users report that a d-link driver is working, but it didn’t work for me.

  2. Ord

    Why would you buy a Macbook and try and run Linux on it when you know it’s not supported by that operating system?

    Ahah, you’re running Ubuntu under bootcamp, clear evidence of a shy switcher.

    I went the other way. Welcome to the world of a leased operating system with an iron-fisted EULA.

  3. mike

    i’d be interested in hearing if you have any success.
    I’ve used ubuntu on my macbook but also found that wireless wasn’t supported, so gave up pretty quickly.

  4. kyle

    wireless you can use a usb dongle, or ndiswrapper. there should be forums posting pointing you at the driver to use. worth mentioning that if you install the 802.11n upgrade in os x, that some people claim ndiswrapper fails. ymmv, guarantee void in tennessee, etc.

  5. tristil

    I have a first gen Macbook under Feisty, and wireless works perfectly for me. I don’t remember what I did, though :). Apparently, I’m running a restricted Atheros driver. Also, I remember that Network Manager was smarter about utilizing (or configuring) my wireless.

  6. Gen Zhang

    I’m on Fedora Core 6, with a Intel Mac Mini. As I understand it my 168c:001c is fairly close to what you have. The core issue is that windows NDIS drivers tend to use a lot of stack. By default FC6 has 4K stacks enabled in the kernel, I don’t know about Ubuntu. But even without 4K stacks, the default 8K stacks often aren’t sufficient, and the driver will die. There are patches available that will give a 16K stack.

  7. Movi

    The Wifi works well in my gen2 MacBook. Im runnin feisty and there’s a catch. The version on ndiswrapper in feisty is outdated – THAT’S why the windows drivers dont work. You need version 1.38 – which means manualling getting them from the site and compiling them. Except that, everything works out-of-the box (or almost like the iSight or microphone or the touchpad)

  8. Colin Watson

    No information about wireless, but if you find installer glitches, let me know; current builds of Feisty are intended to install cleanly on Intel Macs.

  9. Luke Hoersten

    I’ve got a MacBook gen 1 and the wireless works fine BUT it is a different wireless card than the gen 2. A friend has the gen 2 and he has not been able to get it working unfortunately.

    Also, just yesterday I tried to resize the Mac OS X partition with gparted after I’ve had Linux and Mac OS X playing nicely. It worked except I cannot boot Linux anymore (Mac OS X still works). Gparted now complains that the OS X partition’s magic journaling number is wrong or something like that. Any tips?

  10. Stoffe

    Joiiin the daaaark siiiiideee…. we have DRM, vendor lock-in, closed source and high prices. But we have oh so shiny buttons.

    — Darth Jobs

  11. Used Macbooks

    Well,I am really sorry to know that you could not work with it properly.I believe using the proper operating system would have solved the problem much more effectively.

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