I used 64bit-desktop-natty and 64bit-desktop-oneiric (the one specifically built for mac). Both were the live cds which I booted from using a borrowed superdrive ($79...are you kidding me?!). I have the MacBookAir4,2.
I installed both natty and oneiric (separately of course) by basically following the mactel guide in the ubuntu community docs. It was a piece of cake. Here are my steps (from memory so could be wrong).
Code:
1) boot mac osx and install all/any updates
2) install refit, reboot, choose mac os x
3) start "disk utilities" and repartition mac osx to 32gb and the remaining to msdos (fat) [i hate so you may want to go 50/50 or something]
4) shutdown
5) power on and select resync from refit hit y then choose power down
6) power on, load macosx and plug-in superdrive. insert natty or oneiric-alpha-2
7) reboot and select "boot from legacy cdrom" (there was also a bootx64.efi but i ignored it)
8) when screen turns purple hit space bar
9) select language
10) hit F6 then escape and after the "--" type " nomodeset" and hit enter (I couldn't understand the pop-up menu--better to just type it myself.)
11) load gparted and repartition the empty space; i did:
(leftover...something like 70gb) ext4 /home
12288 ext4 /
6144 swap
12) "install ubuntu"
13) choose "other configuration" and map as above (also did reformat). Also *Important*: set boot drive to the "/" partition (for me this was sda4)
15) proceed with install
16) reboot select resync from refit and hit y. power down from refit.
17) power on, choose ubuntu, type 'e' add "nomodeset" and hit F10
18) once in ubuntu edit /etc/default/grub to have nomodeset and then invoke update-grub
All set!
When all done I booted into mac osx and did the bless thing, ie
Code:
bless --device /dev/disk0s4 --setBoot --legacy
but it didn't seem to make any difference. Note: your partition might be different, to find out: During several points while trying to figure this out things seemed to hang--when that does I typed ctrl-shift-power to shut off.
If you use refit and a superdrive I *really* don't see how you could brick your machine. Anyway, it should still be under warranty right?
Finally regarding phoronix--this article is accurate but has nothing to do with bricking the machine. High quality video will simply not work (as the article indicates). You will be stuck at a fuzzy (stretched) 1024x768 until the intel video driver is fixed (this includes xorg-edgers as of this writing).
OOPS: Guess I didn't read far enough in! Well that *is* scary but luckily no such issues on the MBA4,2 and of course phoronix was working with the mac mini.
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