Skip to main content

Linux: CrunchBang Linux 10 on a MacBook Pro

I tried CrunchBang Linux 10 on a MacBook Pro. Previously, I had a lot of trouble dual booting with OS X, so I did the same thing I did for Ubuntu--I told it to use the entire disk. This turned out to be a big mistake.

I put GRUB on the MBR since I wasn't dual booting. I also set up an encrypted LVM. The system wouldn't boot. I just got a flashing folder with a "?" icon. I think this is a known problem with Debian right now.

I also wanted to try MEPIS. It's based on Debian as well. It even has a utility that you run from within OS X that sets stuff up for dual booting. Unfortunately, since I wiped OS X, that wasn't available.

I was doing all this on my company's spare Macbook Pro (while my Macbook Pro was in the shop). Unfortunately, the DVD for my Macbook Pro wouldn't boot on the other Macbook Pro (which was just a few months newer). Hence, I couldn't reinstall OS X.

My solution was to install Ubuntu. I gave it the whole disk, and everything worked out okay. I was a little bummed since I wanted to try a new distro (either CrunchBang or MEPIS), but it's hard to argue with a working system ;)
Labels:

Comments

Tropical Swim said…
I had exactly the same experience as yours, save for a few small details: I inherited a MacBook 2.1 (you know, the earlier white MacBook from 2007).
It ran OSX 10.4, obsolete OS, that sucks mainly, so I dual-booted for a while, but couldn't keep on loosing half of my 80GB hdd space, so I wiped & installed...
Tried Debian, no luck... Tried Mint Debian ed, no luck... tried Mint 10, worked fine, but bad sound...
Installed Ubuntu 10.04 64bit, worked perfect, have it since November 10... It is now my main computer... Everything works, webcam, & so on...
I tweaked Gnome on a single toolbar, with the Mint Menu, have to say it looks a bit like winxp, but it saves a lot of real estate...
I use an external bluetooth mouse, so I am not so bothered by the "no right-click" issue (2 finger tap works fine on the trackpad)
As much as I wanted to have a Debian Stable or CentOS MacBook, I have to stick with Ubuntu LTS... Won't upgrade until next LTS(if this laptop survives, tat is !!!)
10:04 AM
jjinux said…
Interesting. Thanks for the comment :)
1:14 PM
Unknown said…
That's weird. Crunchbang is based on Ubuntu.

Just curious, did you try XUbuntu or KUbuntu?
5:12 PM
jjinux said…
The newest CrunchBang is based on Debian, not Ubuntu. Sorry, I didn't try Xubuntu or Kubuntu, but I assume they would work.
5:13 PM
Anonymous said…
Did you install bootCamp, and rEFit? And then shrink the OS X parition to 1G? You're supposed to.

The procedure is listed here.
http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook#ProsandconsofaMacBookforLinuxusers
1:38 PM
jjinux said…
> Did you install bootCamp, and rEFit? And then shrink the OS X parition to 1G? You're supposed to.

Ubuntu used to have a bug where it wouldn't behave properly if you tried to use a hybrid MBR and GPT partition. Since I didn't need to dual boot, I completely wiped the disk and used an MBR. That works really well in Ubuntu but not at all in Debian. Oh well. Thanks for the link.
2:34 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drawing Sierpinski's Triangle in Minecraft Using Python

In his keynote at PyCon, Eben Upton, the Executive Director of the Rasberry Pi Foundation, mentioned that not only has Minecraft been ported to the Rasberry Pi, but you can even control it with Python. Since four of my kids are avid Minecraft fans, I figured this might be a good time to teach them to program using Python. So I started yesterday with the goal of programming something cool for Minecraft and then showing it off at the San Francisco Python Meetup in the evening.

The first problem that I faced was that I didn't have a Rasberry Pi. You can't hack Minecraft by just installing the Minecraft client. Speaking of which, I didn't have the Minecraft client installed either ;) My kids always play it on their Nexus 7s. I found an open source Minecraft server called Bukkit that "provides the means to extend the popular Minecraft multiplayer server." Then I found a plugin called RaspberryJuice that implements a subset of the Minecraft Pi modding API for Bukkit s…
4 comments
Read more

Apple: iPad and Emacs

Someone asked my boss's buddy Art Medlar if he was going to buy an iPad. He said, "I figure as soon as it runs Emacs, that will be the sign to buy." I think he was just trying to be funny, but his statement is actually fairly profound.

It's well known that submitting iPhone and iPad applications for sale on Apple's store is a huge pain--even if they're free and open source. Apple is acting as a gatekeeper for what is and isn't allowed on your device. I heard that Apple would never allow a scripting language to be installed on your iPad because it would allow end users to run code that they hadn't verified. (I don't have a reference for this, but if you do, please post it below.) Emacs is mostly written in Emacs Lisp. Per Apple's policy, I don't think it'll ever be possible to run Emacs on the iPad.

Emacs was written by Richard Stallman, and it practically defines the Free Software movement (in a manner of speaking at least). Stal…
17 comments
Read more

JavaScript: Porting from react-css-modules to babel-plugin-react-css-modules (with Less)

I recently found a bug in react-css-modules that prevented me from upgrading react-mobx which prevented us from upgrading to React 16. Then, I found out that react-css-modules is "no longer actively maintained". Hence, whether I wanted to or not, I was kind of forced into moving from react-css-modules to babel-plugin-react-css-modules. Doing the port is mostly straightforward. Once I switched libraries, the rest of the port was basically:
Get ESLint to pass now that react-css-modules is no longer available.Get babel-plugin-react-css-modules working with Less.Get my Karma tests to at least build.Get the Karma tests to pass.Test things thoroughly.Fight off merge conflicts from the rest of engineering every 10 minutes ;) There were a few things that resulted in difficult code changes. That's what the rest of this blog post is about. I don't think you can fix all of these things ahead of time. Just read through them and keep them in mind as you follow the approach above.…
Post a Comment
Read more