Dual boot Ubuntu 14.04 on a MacBook Pro so after a few hours of Google searching and too many headaches with a broken GPT, I've turned here.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro (9,2) that I want to dualboot OS X 10.9 and Ubuntu 14.04 on. I've read through all the guides, whether they say to use a Hybrid MBR or create several unnecessary partitions or just use rEFIt/rEFInd, and I'm not sure the majority of the steps involved are necessary. From what I understand, Ubuntu/GRUB2 has supported EFI booting for a long time, and the OS X EFI by default allows for booting from any EFI-enabled partition it finds (as can be seen by burning any Linux live USB with the correct bootx64.efi file). My question is, why is it that every guide available says to use things like rEFInd or an unnecessary partitioning scheme? It seems like all I'd need to do is leave some space for Ubuntu, install it with its own efi boot partition (a normal thing regardless of the computer one is installing it on) and just load it like any other OS. 

Feel free to call me out on being a moron, or to confirm my theory. Thanks!
Ubuntu has instructions for most macbook pro's.  Depending on which version of the macbook pro you have you may not need rEFInd:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro