Ubuntu on Macbook Pro
As I have mentioned before ([Magician Chrome makes RAM disappear][1]), I had been facing several issues with Mac OSX. I use vim extensively, and so I had installed MacVim (1)after great difficulty on my Macbook Pro, but recently while trying out a new plugin I found there was something amiss between MacVim & Python on my system and as a result I was unable to use the plugin. In my attempt at trying to repair MacVim, I ended up uninstalling it.
As I tried to reinstall MacVim using HomeBrew, I quickly realized, and rediscovered it’s very tight integration with XCode, something that I had comfortably forgotten after I installed it for the first time, after which I had conveniently gone ahead and removed XCode from my system because well, I simply do not like it. Coming back to the problem of installing MacVim, since now XCode was missing, I tried several workarounds only to install XCode in the end, which I might add is a staggering 4GB download :/.
As I downloaded and installed XCode, I restarted my system only to find that my Mac OSX had gone for a toss. As I tried to login into my system, it simply redirected from the login page to a blank white page and then back to the login page after a small delay without any error message! The credentials I was using were of course right, I knew that, but I wasn’t able to figure out what was wrong. I tried to get into the recovery options that Mac OSX comes with and even after trying to recover OSX it just did not work. This was the last straw, I had simply had it with OSX, it was time to end this futile waste of time.
I went ahead and installed Ubuntu on my Macbook Pro. Ubuntu has quite good documentation for installation on the Macbook Pro. Although I knew there may be a lot more issues standing in my path that I am yet to face, I buckled up and went ahead with the installation following the documentation. To my surprise, installing Ubuntu was a breeze, most features of Macbook were infact working out of box!
I have been working with Ubuntu for over 5 years, but never did I feel this much respect for the Ubuntu community as I do now. Everything except for the wireless just worked out of the box. Even fixing the wireless required me to just add a repository to APT and install the proprietary drivers and the wireless was fixed! Couldn’t be any simpler. Installing OSX on a Macbook Pro seemed more difficult than installing Ubuntu.
However once I updated ubuntu, which meant installing a lot of packages, I found that ubuntu too, like OSX, had crashed. It wasn’t able to boot :/. On a closer look I came to the realization that all of my pasts troubles were infact because of a bad hard disk, which was now virtually useless. I am very surprised though, that I had to go through so much of effort with both Mac OSX and Ubuntu, only to figure out in the end that it was just a case of a bad hard disk, it is surprising how such advanced Operating Systems are not able to diagnose such a problem and report it sooner.
I went ahead and bought a new SSD, replaced it in my Macbook Pro myself (2)That was fun! , and faced yet another decision to make, should I install OSX like everyone suggested, or should I install Ubuntu again, something that I have always been more comfortable with and have come to appreciate quite a lot in recent years, especially since I was successfully able to install it on the Macbook without much issues.
My open source enthusiast mind shouted out loud, I had to install Ubuntu, OSX, however shiny & nice it may be, it is still not as easily customizable as Ubuntu. So I went ahead and installed Ubuntu again, like I had previously. Today it has been over 4 months since I have been using my Macbook Pro running Ubuntu and I am yet to face any issue at all. In fact I couldn’t be happier :).