Installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in a Macbook Pro 8,1

Insert the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit installation CD, reboot and hold the 'alt' key.
From the boot choice menu, select the CD icon that says "Windows".
Choose live CD to try it out. Wireless won't work yet.
Double-click the installer and get started. Will take about 30 minutes. I chose to erase completely MacOSX, not having any use for it.
Once installed, reboot, remove the CD, and boot into Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Notice that while booting a grey screen appears for about 30 seconds.
To enable the wireless install the b43 driver, by doing:
1. $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mpodroid/mactel
2. $ sudo apt-get update
3. $ sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer
...and then edit the file '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf' and add the line, at the end: blacklist ndiswrapper

...and then edit (create if not there) the file '/etc/pm/config.d/modules', and add the line: SUSPEND_MODULES="b43 bcma"

In the installer, I chose to have my entire home directory encrypted. If you do so, nobody can read your personal files without your password. Be sure to store the passphrase securely somewhere. If you lose the piece of paper with the passphrase and still have access to your laptop, use "$ ecryptfs-unwrap-passhrase" to print it (will ask for the 'passphrase' but it means your password).

There are a number of modifications you may want to do:

To make F1, F2 ... keys work directly (for example to select tools in Inkscape), do the following: "echo 2 | sudo tee /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode". The default is level 1, which makes F1, F2 ... keys operate the LCD brightness, sound, etc. and one must push fn+F1 to obtain an F1 in the application. To make it permanent, edit "/etc/rc.local" and add this line: "echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode". Explanations are in the AppleKeyboard community documentation page.
To prevent the cursor from blinking in the gnome-terminal, do "sudo apt-get install gconf-editor", and launch gconf-editor and edit /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default" to set the cursor_blink_mode to "off".
Install skype from the Ubuntu Software Center, and then:
1. $ sudo apt-get install sni-qt:i386
... which will enable skype to appear in the dock and in the alt+tab application switching overlay screen.
If you find yourself with an application like skype not showing its windows but running, use "$ wmctrl -a skype" to bring all its windows to the front. All the above is necessary because skype runs in 32-bit mode in a 64-bit OS, and uses qt rather than gnome.
In the System Settings, go to Appearance and drag the slider to the left to make the dock icons far smaller. in the "Behavior" tab, set it to auto-hide. That frees your screen. The dock will only show when you move your mouse towards the left edge fast, not when the mouse is merely within a distance of the left edge. This is smart, enabling usage of the left area of the screen in applications like Inkscape, that has the toolbar there. For the dock to actually show when the mouse is near it (it fails too much for me), go to the CompizConfig Settings Manager, Ubuntu Unity Plugin, Experimental tab, and set the "Launcher reveal preassure" down to 1 from the default of 20.
If you are a user of the vim text editor and want to make the caps lock key be an additional escape key, go to System Settings, Keyboard Layout, and the bottom right click on "Options", then chose the "Caps Lock key behavior" leaf and change it there. While there, you may want to modify the behavior of other modifier keys like control, alt, etc.
To take screenshots you may want to set key bindings that exist in the macbook pro keyboard. Go to System Settings, then Keyboard, then choose the "Shortcuts" tab, and in Screenshots, set the "Take a screenshot" to shift+super-$ (a.k.a. apple+shift+4).
To enable java applets in Firefox, when you already have java installed somewhere in your system, add a symbolic link to the libnpjp2.so library of your jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/. For chromium (ubuntu's version of google chrome) you will need to add the symbolic link under /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins/.
To type in languages other than English, the best is to enable similar tilde and additional characters available in MacOSX when using the alt key. Given that the alt key is heavily used in the Linux Gnome desktop to manipulate menus, I set the right alt key to be the 3rd level accessor modifier key at System Settings, Keyboard Layout, "Options" button, "Key to choose 3rd level", "Right Alt". Then, in the Keyboard Layout, push the "+" button at lower left and add the "English (Macintosh)" keyboard layout, and push the up arrow "^" to make it be the top (and default) layout. Now you can push right alt + e and then e to get an é, the right alt + u and then u to get an umlaut ü, the right alt + c to get a ç, the right alt + n and then n to get a tilde over the n for Spanish ñ, etc. For further characters such as those used in Croatian, add as well the keyboard layout named "US, international with dead keys", which enables you to type the z with a hat (ž), etc.
To restore normal, sane scroll bars, create the file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars and then add to it: export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 and then logout and login.
Windows maximize when dragged if they touch the top of the screen. To disable this behavior, open the Compiz Settings Manager (install it from the Software Center if necessary, or type ccsm in a terminal and then copy-paste the apt-get install command reported when the ccsm is missing). Then go to "Window Management" and click on the "Grid" (not on the checkbox, but on the text itself; it's a button with hidden edges). Activate the "Edges" tab, open the "Resize Actions", and then set the "Top Edge" to "None". From now on, windows won't maximize when they touch the top of the desktop, but if you continue dragging upward, a growing orange rectangle will suggest that, if you let go of the mouse, it will maximize the window. Far better than the default.
Thunderbird corrupts attachments for my mail account, which uses an old server from a company in Redmond against all good judgment. To prevent this, go to "Edit - Preferences", select the "Advanced" tab, click on "Config Editor" and set the mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks to FALSE by double-clicking it. See these explanations.
Bluetooth may occasionally not work; happened to me a couple of times, always after a linux kernel update. How to fix it: create the file /etc/modprobe.d/options and write in it a single line containing "options b43 btcoex=0". What this does: disables the "protection" mode in the b43 wireless card driver, enabling it to coexist with the bluetooth functionality. Then reboot; merely modprobe'ing the driver in and out will not do it, neither modprobe'ing with the btcoex=0 as option.
After a recent update Google Chrome version 21, webgl stopped working. The way to solve the issue for this laptop is to edit the Unity Google Chrome launcher at /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop by adding the option "--ignore-gpu-blacklist" to the three "Exec" entries in that .desktop file, so that an "Exec" entry reads like "Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --ignore-gpu-blacklist %U". Note one entry lacks the "%U" and has an "--incognito" option instead.
To disable moving a window when pressing alt and the left mouse button, open the dconf-editor, go to org - gnome - desktop - wm - preferences, set the property "mouse-button-modifier" to an empty string, and logout and then login. Note, that after changing it and not having logout+login yet, the left mouse click will move a window, and alt+click will do a normal click. This procedure is explained in the ubuntu guide (used to be an option in more user-accessible settings). There are many other options under the org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences, such as changing the action triggered by double-click on the window frame from the default (maximize) to what it used to be (shade/unshade the window); assign names to workspaces, autoraise, and others.
The brightness adjustments provided by the keyboard brightness keys of the macbook pro are too coarse: the backlight has only steps from 0 to 15. Strangely enough, Ubuntu 12.04 provides two systems for increasing and decreasing the brightness of the LCD backlight. Both exist as directories under the "/sys/class/backlight/" folder. The first one, the "acpi_video0" is coarse, with a 0-15 range, and I suspect it is this coarse system that the keyboard brightness keys control. The second one, the "intel_backlight", offers a far finer-grained range from 0 to 4882. If you wonder about the values, read the file with "cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness" which prints the current backlight brightness value. The file "max_brightness" holds the maximum value. By writing to the "brightness" file, the screen backlight brightness can be altered to any desired intensity level. For example, when in a conference room you may want to make the LCD screen brightness dimmer than the lowest level the keys allow (i.e. "1", which corresponds to "325" in the intel_backlight/brightness); to do so, do the following, as root: "echo 100 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness". Subsequent activation of the keyboard brightness keys will reset the LCD backlight brightness back to the nearest rounded 0-15 levels (notice that 15 * 325 is not 4882, but almost).
To enable alt+tab to switch between all windows of the current desktop, rather than between applications (which I find not useful), do the following: in the ccsm (compiz settings manager), in the Unity plugin, switcher tab, disable all key bindings one by one by clicking on the key binding button and uncheking the checkbox in the popup menu, and then also disable the "Bias tab settng" (it's a checkbox). Then type "static" at top left to search for the static application switcher, which is the alt+tab behavior for switching between windows of the same workspace, and enable it. (From askubuntu.)
An external mouse may have back and forward buttons on the side that can be pressed unintentionally. The web browser and other programs use the input from these buttons, creating havoc in my workflow. To disable the back and forward buttons of any external mouse (buttons 8 and 9, as revealed by the Xorg input event inspector program "xev"), write "pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 0" in a file .Xmodmap in your home directory). Then either run "xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap" or restart.

UPDATING to Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr:

Upon completing the upgrade, internet seems not to work: the DNS setup for resolving internet addresses (e.g. google.com) to IPs (e.g. 123.456.789.10) is screwed up. You have to run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure resolvconf" to restore the /etc/resolv.conf file as a symlink, and then remove the /etc/resolv.conf.d/tail and re-add it as a symlink to /dev/null.
Wireless fails to reconnect when resuming from suspend (in other words, waking up from sleep): open a terminal and type "sudo killall wpa_supplicant" and it will reconnect instantly. The wpa_supplicant restarts automatically upon killing it, restoring whatever is wrong with it. It's an authentication error of sorts. The easy solution is to create your own resume script under /etc/pm/sleep.d/, named e.g. "99_fix_wifi", containing essentially "killall wpa_supplicant" but wrapped like it says in the above link, under the answer by Joonas Harjum\auml;aki.
Dropbox daemon fails to start. Do:
- cd /var/lib/dropbox
- sudo rm -rf .dropbox-list
- dropbox start -i
Will ask to enter your password and then re-download the appropriate binaries, and the issue will be fixed.
Sleep and resume works only if you disable wake up from sleep, by issuing a command like: "echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup" as root. To make it permanent, run 'echo "disabled" > "/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:14.0/power/wakeup' as root. See this bug .

UPDATING to Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus:

Everything just works, had to do nothing at all beyond running the updater.