Ubuntu 10.4 LTS (Lucid Lynx) 32bit on Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop
Date May 2010
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Hardware Components
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Status under Linux
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Notes
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| Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2GHz | Works | No special procedure required during installation. |
| 15" Display | Works | Excellent rendition. No special procedure required during installation |
| Touchpad | Works | No special procedure required during installation. All normal options available |
| Keyboard (UK) | Works | No special procedure required during installation. Detected automatically at install. |
| On-board Video and Sound, Streaming, Codecs etc. | BBC iPlayer, DVDs sound etc work after loading required codecs etc | Unlike Mint, Ubuntu needs you to load the Restricted Extras package or else rummage around to find the correct versions of Flash etc. Rhythmbox needed the mp3 codec from the "Ugly" repository - gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (see below) |
| 2GB factory installed memory(system maximum) | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive(replacement) | Works | Reported as healthy. |
| Intel Wireless-n 4965AGN Card | Works on WPA out of the box | No special procedure required during installation. Remove annoying Avahi daemon. |
| Integrated 10/100 Network Card | Not tested. | No special procedure required during installation |
| Onboard Sound Card | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| NTFS File system (Windows 7) | Reads and writes NTFS files. OOO reads and writes .docx and .xlsx etc. | No special procedure required during installation, however drive needs mounting to access, or new line in fstab. |
| Dell 5510 3G (HSDPA) wireless Expresscard (aka Novatel Merlin XU870) | Works out of box!! | Detected automatically. |
| Huawei (Orange) E160E, Huawei E220 (Vodafone) 3G (HSDPA) dongles | All work out of box!! | Detected automatically when plugged-in. ZTE 3570-z used to connect but not able to replicate |
| USB memory stick 2GB | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Logitech Marble Mouse | Works | Via Belkin 4-port powered USB hub. No special procedure required during installation |
| Keysonic wired keyboard ACK-595C+ | Works | Via Belkin 4-port powered USB hub. No special procedure required during installation |
| Epson D120 printer | Works | Didn't even have to set it up or install anything. It was simply available for print when required. |
| Canon 9950F multi-scanner | Does NOT work | Still not supported by SANE project. |
| Apple IPOD (30GB) | Connects with standard Rhythmbox app. | Needs IPOD set up first for manual file management (See below) |
| MS OFFICE 2007 | Works inder Wine 1.2 (XP Mode) | Needs "Wine 1.2" installing from Package Manager, also needs "riched20" added from the dropdown list in winecfg "Libraries" tab |
| Concise Oxford Dictionary for Windows | Works in Wine 1.2. | Sticks at 80% loading for quite a few minutes then installs as normal .local/share/applications/wine/programs/COED11/ to user's desktop. |
| NETMETER 1.1.3 Windows Version | Works inder Wine 1.2 (XP Mode) | Install as normal in wine from installation .exe |
Kernel 2.6.32-22 (generic) after first update. Gnome 2.30.0
Conclusion
As near perfect as I could have hoped for, apart from the annoying habit of providing a distro which will play virtually no media without codecs and whatnot.However, much has changed in the last two years to improve out-of-the-box compatibility.
Installed in dual boot with Windows 7, it required Startup Manager to be installed from the software package manager to easily alter the Grub boot default if Windows is your main bag.
Installation of Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (32 bit)
Source: Single CD from The Linux Manwhom I thoroughly recommend. Got 64 bit and 32 bit versions for total of £4.99 and 48 hour delivery, superb.
First thing was to back up all my documents, music, pictures etc to a USB drive, including hidden files from old /home folder (for Netmeter log etc)
As this was a brand new hard drive, I installed Windows 7 first, using 35GB of the drive.
I then booted with the Ubuntu live CD, selected the "Install" option and requested the manual partition option and selected three more partitions as follows:
One new 250GB partition was Ext3 (format option) to contain all my data backed-up from my original D drive and this would be mounted to "/home" in the install.
One partition of 32GB ext4 (format) for the linux mounted on "/"
Finally 6GB which is far too much (but hey it's only space) to /swap.
The beauty of using /home for all your data is that all the linux and other tools, such as my Bluefish HTML editor and Rhythmbox that I use to feed my ipod, seem to have all the data where they expects it rather than constantly having to tell it to look in the D drive.
However if you are not really into partitioning there are alternatives described below.
I'm pleased to say Ubuntu 10.4 installed first time on default settings.
Last thing is to go to the USB drive and copy my pictures back into my new "home" Pictures folder, same for documents and music.
I installed Startup Manager from the Synaptic package manager so that I could change the boot priority to Windows 7, though subsequently have reverted to boot Mint first!
Alternative partitioning methods
You can choose to install in the "unallocated space" which may require you to remove unwanted partitions, and shrink partitions, again using either Windows partitioner or GParted.There is also an option to install side-by-side with Windows and the installer will shrink windows automatically.
These methods do allow you to keep your data on C: or D: drives and you can mount them as per "NTFS Files" below.
If you use that method you will not see any option to Import Windows Docs and Settings, but it will set up empty mount points for My Music, My Documents etc in your home folder, which you can leave empty if all your documents and media are on the Windows NTFS partition.
Finally the "Nuclear Option" is by selecting "Use entire disk". This will will wipe the entire Windows and all your data off the disk FOR EVER. A great option if you really have had it with Windows. Remember to save all your data to a USB drive first!!
Audio Visual Playback
Nothing much will play (DVDs, iplayer etc) without installing at least the "Restricted extras" package, and also adding several repositories (Multiverse, Ugly etc). I dived in and went looking for individual codecs, Flash etc before reading about restricted Extras! Rhythmbox would not accept mp3 as an optional write format without my trying several gstreamer versions before finding that gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly seemed to work - even then I installed both versions of that.NOT a distro for the beginner unlike Mint 8.
General stability
Most of what I installed including Wine 1.2, Mac4Lin, Cairo Dock etc, did not show some of the annoying bugs that I found on Mint 8. So it's swings and roundabouts.If only we could have the care of Ubuntu with the user completeness of Mint.
Mobile Broadband
I have Orange Internet Anywhere and have two "Dongles". One is the standard Huawei E160E that came with the contract, plus I have an Unlocked Dell 5510 (Novatel Merlin XU870).BOTH adapters worked, they were automatically detected with no special action required. The drivers for both devices are already in this kernel.
To connect, the action was the same:
1. Insert the SIM card in the device (With PIN number de-activated first)
2. Plug the device into the laptop. The Dell device is a 34mm PCI Express card.
3. Right-click on the network icon in the System Tray
4. Select Edit Connections.
5. Click on the Mobile Broadband tab.
6. Click on Add.
7. Select the device from the drop-down and click Forward - it will appear there if the device has been recognised.
8. Select country (Britain UK in my case)
9. In the Select your provider, I selected "I can't find my provider...." and typed in "Orange USB" and hit forward.
10. I typed "consumerbroadband" for domestic UK Orange service (yours may be different and if not Orange WILL be different. Google for it)
11. Confirmed next 2 pages. The dial number was correct so I made no changes.
To connect Left click on the Network icon and select the connection you just added.
Wifi
I tested wireless on my old BT Home Hub v1 on WEP and WPA-PSK encryption. No problems, it works out of
the box even on WPA-PSK, no need to install WPA supplicants or ndiswrapper. If necessary update the
security info in the connection by Right-click on network icon and "edit connections".Remove the annoying AVAHI message about your network being .local (see pic) by
sudo apt-get remove avahi-daemon
Printer
My Epson D120 was detected automatically and did not even need setting up. I just went to print a document and there it was! Better than Windows, and none of that CUPS nonsense.IPOD
You should best clear out the Ipod and set it up for manual file management, using Itunes in Windows. Then forget about "Sync'ing" the ipod and think about drag-and-drop instead.Connect the ipod to the USB and open Rhythmbox when prompted. After a few seconds the ipod will appear as a device entry in the left panel. Highlight (or Ctrl+A) the files in Rhythmbox that you want on the Ipod, then simply drag them with the mouse to the ipod entry in the left panel. Simples.
NTFS Windows files
If you have documents in the Windows "My Documents" you may want to have a permanently mounted windows file system.To find where this is go to Menu - Control Centre - Disk Utility
Clicking on the correctly sized partition on the drive's tree showed my C Drive "device" name as being /dev/sda3/ Yours may be another number.
Next step is a bit more tricky for the beginner, and take care with the typing and remember Linux is case sensitive!.
In the Menu click on Terminal to give the terminal session.
First create a file folder to mount the NTFS to
Type in sudo mkdir /media/Win7Disk and hit enter.
and when asked type in your login password. You now have the folder created
Type in sudo gedit /etc/fstab and hit enter.
This takes you into editing the fstab (file system table) file.
To the end of the file add the following line:
/dev/sda3 /media/Win7Disk ntfs-3g user,auto,noexec,rw 0 0
or whatever device name you found for your drive if not sda3.
Then click on Save and exit. Next time you start up Mint the drive will be shown as an icon on the screen
Wine 1.2
You will need to load Wine from the package manager if you want to run (some) Windows apps like Office or your favourite SIM card gadget. Wine 1.2 is needed for Office 2007 and unlike in Mint 8 it is quite stable. If you really mess up see below.Purging Wine (!)
I stole the following from an excellent web article I can't find again...Uninstalling Wine...
Please note that in the following TERMINAL commands there should be no spaces in the path, particularly between $HOME/ and .whatever. As you own the .wine directory sudo is not required.
rm -rf $HOME/.wine
Also the uninstaller does not remove menu and desktop entries. To remove all Wine-created menu entries run the following commands
rm -f $HOME/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine*
rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/applications/wine
rm -f $HOME/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine*
rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons/????_*.xpm
Tip - to see .wine directory in your home user directory, select View then Show Hidden Files.
Extras - Mac4Lin
See my Mac4Lin article Mintintosh where I added Mac4Lin, Cairo Dock, Compiz, Emerald etc to make this Ubuntu look very like Max OSX. Ubuntu had less bugs that the same theme and dock in Mint 8. I used a MacOSX theme within the Cairo Dock itself.
Lego vs. Burago
Hey, as someone once said, if you want a toy car that works out of the box don't buy Lego. This Ubuntu lego car however will race out of the box, and faster than Windows 7!WARNING If you re-install WIndows at any time it will destroy the Grub boot and you will not be able to dual boot into Ubuntu until you have fixed the Grub-2 boot (Google "Ubuntu fix Grub-2 boot after WIndows install")