hello everyone

I'm a sort of an intermediate linux user, as I've been using it for a couple of years, without having specific technical knowledge on operating systems, hardware, and so on.
I bought a macbook unibody in november. A 5,1 Macbook. So, I was planning to dual boot it with a linux distro (my first choices would be debian, ubuntu, fedora or sidux, as my experience is based on these systems, but I'm open to experiment some new other distro). My plans were crushed by the fact that I know many linux distros to overheat macbooks, and by partial hardware support. My information is secondhand, so, I don't really know whether this is true or false. What I wanted to know is if there's a quite fitting distro for macbooks.

Thank you very much

Give Ubuntu a try. It usually is a Livecd, meaning you can boot it from the cd drive and the complete OS runs from memory. This way you should be able to test drive it. If you like it, you can install it to the hard drive.

ubuntu's live cd doesn't work properly. I suppose that many hardware issues would be solved by a proper installation, adding some mac specific repositories to apt-get. But I really can't know this as I don't dare to install something I don't know it would work.

I do not know which MAC you are using , but the system profiler of the
MAC gives you all the spec of you're MAC
Wich that knowledge you can search de hardware support of the linux distros
If you're MAC do not in the GUI a system profiler try in the terminal the command system_profiler, this command works with the Darwin kernel

This link may help.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook5-1/Jaunty

I found this thread while googling around with the same question... I purchased a 17" macbook pro about a week ago with the intention of dual booting OSX and Ubuntu (9.04).

The Ubuntu install was very easy and Ubuntu seems to work very well... except for the temperature issue. In short time, the computer gets EXTREMELY HOT to the touch, particularly on the left side.

Quite disheartening, I was really looking forward to using it on the mad sexiness that is this laptop. I have no problems putting up with little linux quirks in light of all the other awesomeness it provides, but thermal sketchiness on a brand new $2500 machine doesn't sit well with me.

^^^I'll check out the above link and see if that helps...

If you use a MAC anyhow mine the command system_profiler gives you the hardware spec of you're MAC
So if like to dual boot it is easy to find out in the hardware database of the distro of you're choice if you're hardware is totally supported or not.
My personal opinion fore what it is worth keep you're MAC and linux box separate

Just did the stuff at the link above... it seems that what's happening now is the fans sit at 2,000rpm independent of load. At idle it seems sufficient to keep things cool-ish, but after a couple minutes of compiling something the temps on the exterior of the laptop are crazy.

I've run compile jobs in OSX that have taken tens of minutes and never had the case go beyond 'kinda warmish'... hrmmm.

Not sure if you're still following this thread, but the issue appears to be gone with 9.10: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook5-1/Karmic

(I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 on a Macbook 1,1, which thankfully does not have the issues you all are describing.)

1 members found this post helpful.

I am. Thank you!