Ubuntu studio

[Jay Vaughan]

> I got myself a raspberry pi, installed Satellite CCRMA on an SD card, booted from it, connected via ssh and started up PD on the Raspberry. It felt very n00b in a very good way.

Cool!

> Alas installing ubuntu studio on my macbook seems not so easy. I got myself an image of Ubuntu studio, burned that to DVD, booted the macbook from that, but after the initial screen (start ubuntu from CD/Install Ubuntu, etc) there is only a black screen (for about 30 minutes...) and no progress.

Did you also install the reFIT boot manager, so that you can access the Ubuntu boot partition from the boot-selector at startup?  Without this stage, you won’t be able to boot any other Operating system:

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

(There’s another variant: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ - I use reFIT, though, so can’t vouch for it..)

Once you’ve done this, it should be a matter of selecting which OS you want to boot when you turn on your Macbook .. for me this works very smoothly, and I have a completely configured Ubuntu Studio 14.04 OS on my MBP too .. it works great, and is an absolute wonder to have Ardour up on the Retina display.  Note, though, that there were some issues I had to work through - for example getting video working properly, due to the integrated/discrete video accelerators.  I can help you with that once you get the boot selecting thing working, though .. 

> well -- it's a bumpy ride, but I'm learning a lot of things and it's fun (because this is not a productive system (duh, evidently not very productive, right now, anyway)…;)

Glad to see you’re staying positive about the experience.  When you get it settled, it’ll be productive - but you do have to put a bit of energy into it to get through some of the road bumps that have been put in your way (intentionally, by Apple).

> so if anyone has any help to offer I'd be glad -- many of my search terms ("install ubuntu studio on macbook pro dual boot") are so broad that I get all sorts of results but nothing that really gets me anywhere…


What model of Macbook are you using - please tell me the system type id, as reported by System Information.app - for example mine is a Macbook Pro 10,1.  From there, this guide should be all you need (its what I used):

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages

.. with a little help from:

http://www.physik.uni-freiburg.de/~helger/retina.html

And yeah - here for you if you need it.  I think UbuntuStudio on a MacbookPro is a great thing to have working in front of you!

j.