Upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.  Here's my hardware.  At the same time, I decided to downgrade to the 32 bit version.  The main reason for this, as lame as it is, is that there isn't a 64 bit Java browser plugin out there that works right.  This is an old story with me; I've switched back and forth between 64 and 32 bit Ubuntu several times on my other machines that have 64 bit processors.

Notes

• The install went really easily, as expected.  There's still an option for Macintosh keyboard in the setup menus.  I guess you're still supposed to install the package pommed, but it's hard to see, for the moment, what it's doing.  As a matter of fact, I don't think it's working properly because I'm supposed to get an audio signal when increasing or decreasing the audio volume using the function keys and I'm not.  I'll have to look into this more later...  *Edited* it does seem like pommed makes the optical disk eject button work.
• One cool thing:  It seems that there's now a restricted driver for the Broadcom wireless; no more ndswrapper!
• There's a package called mouseemu that needs to be uninstalled.  It was build for imacs and ibooks but it doen't work properly with the new macbooks.  Among other things, it makes it so that the capslock light doen't come on and F12 and F11 don't work properly.  I just used the synaptic file manager to remove this package.
• I ran into some touchpad problems right off the bat.  It didn't have mac-like behaviour and the fix that I used under Hardy doesn't work.  In any case, don't use the touchpad fix that's mentioned under the Gutsy tutorial.  You must use a .fdi configuration instead of modifying the xorg.conf file.  The driver and config file found here make the touchpad work very nicely; about like it does under Leopard.  The .fdi file recommended works just fine but I like the two-finger scroll, two-finger tap, etc. that I'd got used to.

After some experimentation, here's the .fdi file I pieced together (called /etc/hal/fdi/policy/appletouch.fdi)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
      <match key="info.product" contains="appletouch">
        <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">1</merge>

        <merge key="input.x11_options.TopEdge" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.LeftEdge" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.RightEdge" type="string">1100</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomEdge" type="string">800</merge>

    <merge key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>

        <merge key="input.x11_options.FingerLow" type="string">15</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.FingerHigh" type="string">25</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">3</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">2</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger1" type="string">1</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger2" type="string">3</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.ClickFinger3" type="string">2</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizEdgeScroll" type="string">0</merge>

        <merge key="input.x11_options.MinSpeed" type="string">0.5</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxSpeed" type="string">3.0</merge>
        <merge key="input.x11_options.AccelFactor" type="string">0.15</merge>
      </match>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

Now I have one and two finger tap, two finger scroll, right edge scroll, plus one and two finger click.  Overall, it works better than my old setup.  I haven't played with it a lot yet, but my initial feeling is that it works just like it does under MacOS Leopard.