FolIowing the upgrade,  had some trouble getting Skylpe to work.  Installing it was no problem.  It's on the medibuntu repositories, but it wasn't playing nice with the audio.  I finally found the fix here and here.

• killall pulseaudio
• sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
• sudo apt-get install esound
• sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio

2.

I'm not sure how much of this will turn out to be necessary.  For me, all I had to do was insure that the "capture" block was checked but I'd been futzing with my audio settings for several hours before I stumbled on the solution.

A) The microphone capture is turn off by default to turn it on:

1. Double click the volume icon on the panel.
2. Now click Edit, Preferences.
3. You then need to make sure Microphone, Mic boost, and Capture are ticked.
4. Now there should be a Recording/Capture tab in volume control panel.
5. Go through each volume setting and make sure nothing is turned down or muted.
6. In the Switches/Options tab make sure you select the Microphone as the input source.

B) Edit /etc/esound/esd.conf to look like this:
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 1
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=

C) Restart alsa-utils:
# sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

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)

( behind cutCollapse )

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.

I had really gotten used to Linux being painless.  Thanks to Ubuntu, the last few times I've installed Linux on a PC, it was a piece of cake so putting Ubuntu on my Macbook was quite reminiscent of the good ol' days when Linux was a true blue PITA.  I had to do this by trial and error and a half-dozen failed installs.  I hope that if you take the same steps I took, you'll save yourself some time and possibly heartache, YMMV:

For the most part, I used the tutorial here:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook_Santa_Rosa

The hardware: Black macbook Santa Rosa 4.1, 2gb Ram core 2 duo 2.4ghz 250gb hard drive

The OS: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 "Hardy Heron" AMD 64 version http://www.ubuntu.com

Steps:

• I followed the instructions in the tutorial all the way down to the reboot part.
  


• If you only reboot, an error will occur when you try to boot up under Ubuntu to the tune of "No boot media...".  You must use the rEFIt partition tool to re-sync the partition tables.  After that, everything is just peachy.  You can boot under OSX or Ubuntu at will.  This one really got me and I wasted a lot of time figuring out the solution (which was brutally simple once you figure it out).  I'll also point out that you really can't (at least I don't think you can) have a swap partition.  Ubuntu simply won't boot.  I'll have to look into this more later.  It's a good thing I have lots of RAM.
  
  
• I attempted to install the patched kernel as described in the tutorial.  Obviously, the repositories should be:
  
  

  deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main 
  deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main

  
  The thing is, it seems like the problems that the kernel patch are supposed to fix are already fixed. Namely the touchpad.  It appears that no kernel update actually took place which tells me that the mactel folks either haven't made a patched kernel because it's already patched or hardy is just too new.
  
  
• Either way, I've skipped step 5 for the moment because the keyboard and touchpad, while not behaving exactly as they do under OSX, are actually working really well and haven't bothered me that I've noticed.  I may futz with this more later...
  
  
• The next thing I attacked was the wireless.  I use wifi a lot and I can't live without it (or barely).  I followed the instructions in the tutorial for Gutsy and it worked (as far as I can tell for the moment) perfectly.
  
  
• Next I jumped to the 'disable touchpad while typing' fix.  The Macbook touchpad is really large and it's nearly impossible to type without bumping it all the time.  Follow the instructions here:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271052
  
  
• Next, I looked at sound because, well, it wasn't working.  The fix in the tutorial worked fine.  I also had to fiddle with the audio controls and I don't remember exactly what I did or in what order... sorry.  I seem to remember having to check the 'speaker' switch in the Alsa mixer.
  
  
• On the function / media keys.  Some of them 'just worked', namely the eject, the three volume controls and the play / pause key.  The brightness keys didn't seem to work so I went ahead and installed the pommed package.  Remember, I'm using the 'hardy' repositories.  Pommed fixed the brightness keys.  The dashboard and other keys don't do anything for the moment.
  
  
• Suspend works fine.  Actually, this is the first time I've successfully gotten any Linux to suspend without harsh side-effects.  Need more time to be sure...
  
  
• So far, I can't get the i-sight to work.  I'll have to revisit this.
  
  
• If you boot up with your headphones plugged in, the speakers and headphones work at the same time - known bug.
  
  
• I can't get Compiz Fusion to work exactly the way I want.  I'll be disappointed if I can't get this figured out because Compiz is about the best thing to happen to Linux since the penguin.
  
  

Now I need a break, stay tuned!

x-posted to My own LJ

Observations:

I was really pleasantly surprised to see 'U.S. Macintosh' proposed at setup time for a keyboard map.