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When I installed Ubuntu on my workplace's aluminum iMac (2012), I realized it was far from working. Things that were broken included:

  • graphics
  • sound (through the headphone jack)
  • input (the Apple Magic Trackpad)
  • wifi
  • TTYs
  • brightness controls

It was shocking. Isn't Ubuntu supposed to "just work"? With a lot of hunting around and a lot of experimentation, I managed to get some of it working by installing proprietary drivers through a PPA, using an alternative Bluetooth manager, blacklisting wifi drivers, editing my ALSA configs, and so on. I really think that this process would be a barrier to entry for owners of similar hardware that would like to try Ubuntu. How can I contribute to the way Ubuntu works out-of-the-box on this machine? Basically I'd like to write some script, and contribute it to Ubuntu, that detects if a user is on an iMac 2012, and if so, runs a series of tasks that gets it working correctly. Where do I start for that? Are there machine-specific setup scripts somewhere that run on installation?

Jonathan
  • 7,450

1 Answers1

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Technically, it works but with a very low performance. Some tweaks are usually needed.

You can contribute to the Mactel community in the official Ubuntu wiki, most of their documents are outdated and need people like you to improve them.

The matter of post-installation, there is a great answer to solve your doubts

From the Ubuntu documentation:

If you want to program brand-new features specifically for Ubuntu or redesign and develop current ones, there are several ways to get you started:

Look through the list of Ubuntu specifications on Launchpad. Pick one that interests you, and hopefully there should be enough information to begin with an implementation.

Write and package brand new software for Ubuntu. Contact the MOTUs to get new software into the Ubuntu Universe so that people can try it out and give you feedback. In time it may become part of the Ubuntu Main portfolio of applications that are available to all Ubuntu users by default.

Community
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n00b
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  • Yes, but how can I contribute these post-installation tweaks back to Ubuntu, so that new Ubuntu users in the future won't have to read guides and tweak things themselves? Where is the best place to put this post-install script so that it's likely to be accepted by the Ubuntu package maintainers? – Jonathan Aug 28 '14 at 19:00
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributeToUbuntu#Writing_Code – n00b Aug 28 '14 at 19:03
  • thanks, but that link only has general guidelines for how to contribute to Ubuntu, but in order to do that, I'd still have to find out how Ubuntu handles hardware detection and driver modification on install, and how to modify those scripts to do the things that makes my hardware work. – Jonathan Aug 28 '14 at 19:14