Installing Ubuntu Gnome 14.10 on Late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro 13"

instructions.md

Installing Ubuntu on a Mac

Desktop linux has been late to the show with high dpi support, but gnome seems to be leading the pack. I decided to try again. It's worked fairly well out of the box. Here are my steps if anyone wishes to repeat.

Booting into Ubuntu Live Image

• Download the iso from http://ubuntugnome.org/ubuntu-gnome-14-10-is-released/

• Insert usb stick, umount using diskutil and dd the image. (make sure to use the right devices when using dd, your setup may vary)

curl -O http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/14.10/release/ubuntu-gnome-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso
diskutil umount /dev/disk1s1
sudo dd if=ubuntu-gnome-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

• Resize the main OSX partition in Disk Utility app. I shrunk mine 50Gb on my 250Gb SSD. (don't create a new partition)
• Reboot the mac and hold down the option key to get the built-in menu.
• Boot from the usb efi image.

Installing Ubuntu to Harddrive

• Go through the normal install.
• When asked where to install, make sure to create a new partition for / in the free space. Also tell it to install the boot loader into the efi partition that osx uses for it's efi bootloaders.
• When install is done, it will hang trying to reboot. Hold down power till the red light goes out on the left side and boot again.

Booting into new Ubuntu Install

• The "option" bootloader couldn't see my new ubuntu so I installed refind.
• Once this was installed (open a terminal to the folder and run the install script), rebooting brought up a new menu that could boot both the ubuntu efi bootloader as well as boot the linux kernel directly.

Post-Install Setup

• The wifi driver was missing initially, but wired ethernet through my USB adapter worked great. Updated the system and rebooted

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo reboot

• After the reboot (it will probably hang again), it booted into the new kernel that fixed a lot of bugs. Also after a reboot the "additional drivers" app was able to install the broadcom drivers for Wifi.

• Gnome's High DPI worked mostly out of the box, but I upgraded to a new gnome using the ppa.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo reboot

• Now after this reboot, wifi was working great and gnome had better highdpi support.
• Firefox needs layout.css.devPixelsPerPx set to 2 in it's about:config to scale properly and works great after that.
• Sublime Text 3 works out of the box.

Notes

Volume keys work, brightness keys work (screen and keyboard backlight).

Wifi seems to break after suspend or hibernate, most hardware issues were fixed by upgrading to the new kernel. I still have OSX on my laptop since it's better supported.

Gnome Screen recorder works great! Just press control + alt + shift + R to start and stop. The webm videos will appear in the videos home folder.