So after a lot of teeth gnashing over the past few weeks about what to do with my macbook since I’ve basically abandoned OS X for Linux1, I realized that I could probably just install Ubuntu on this hardware and be done with it.

So really pretty much as soon as I had the thought I began backing things up and starting the install process. While my backup wasn’t perfect (forgot the applications folder, which is pretty replaceable; and dropping in ~/Library and /Library is pretty ineffective, so there’s some work there) the whole process was pretty quick. I assume that part of this is that I’m getting better at getting “my” Ubuntu installation rolled up, and I could copy over my config files over the network which make it even quicker.

There were a couple of things that are somewhat less than ideal. First hibernation doesn’t work right, but that’s ok, I don’t expect that I’d use that very much anyway. Secondly right clicking is a pain that I’ve not yet managed to resolve, and while the touchpad works it’s too sensitive, and I haven’t figured how to crank that down. I’ve managed to get right click emulated with three finger taps, which is functional if not ideal. I’ve also discovered how to turn off the touch pad with a shell command. Because the Awesome Window Manager requires the mouse very minimally this actually works well and makes me a bit more efficient.

After not using the Macbook for several weeks and coming back to it, I’ve realized a few things. First the screen looks really good. The think pad has a digitizer and a significantly lower pixel density, and the monitors for my desktop both have lower pixel density and don’t have the glossy screen.2 The second thing is that the build quality on the Macbook is noticeably inferior to the Thickpad. There are little case squeaks and flexes that I dismissed initially,

Jack asked about external monitors (for projectors) and I don’t have anything to report on that front. I still have OS X installed and usable if it’s a pressing need, but I don’t even have the video converter for the new macbooks so I’m not terribly worried. There are probably other things that I’ve also not had occasion to

  1. While I intended to just get the linux box for the desktop and keep the macbook, I quickly came to the realization that switching between modalities wasn’t terribly effective for the way that I worked, and after spending a week on the road using just my MacBook, I felt as if OS X was more distracting than it was useful. No matter how much I adored TextMate. ↩︎

  2. I hated the glossy screen at first because of the way that it collects finger prints and dirt, but by gum it looks really pretty. The desktops, by contrast are huge, which is nice, but sometimes when I’m writing something more focused, all the extra space can be distracting. ↩︎