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I recently downloaded Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, and Installed it on an HP Mini 110 1030nr, because Windows XP was a slow fat dog on this thing. Here is my experience with this... leaving Technical Guru junk out, because I am not a Linux Guru by any means
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1st up, I installed the live CD onto a thumb drive. Inserted the thumb into the netbook and restarted. After a few minutes I was greeted with a very different looking, yet extremely easy to use, desktop. I then clicked Install UNR. The same friendly easy to use GUI came up as most Ubuntu versions of the past have. I noticed the dual/multi partition option was changed to be even easier than many previous versions. I let it chose the 50/50 dual partition default and just blindly clicked continue till it started the installation. When it was done it told me to remove the CD/USB and hit ENTER to restart. So far so super easy right? I mean, the hardest part of all of this so far was creating a bootable USB from a CD image (iso), then changing the BIOS to boot USB before HDD. But both of those steps are easy enough that any joe off the street can do with 1 finger. When the computer restarted I was greeted with a text box asking me to chose which OS to start, UNR or XP. I clicked nothing, and it auto started UNR about 5 seconds later. When it was done, I had the same screen as I did on the LiveCD. But when I clicked ANYTHING at all, it was instantaneous. I was immediately impressed by just how snappy this little OS was on this even smaller Netbook. After playing with it a little bit I noticed I had no wireless, I also noticed a little green PCI-E looking icon next to where the signal strength bar would be. I clicked it, and right away it searched for wireless drivers. "STA" and "B43" were my options. I just clicked on one of them, it didnt seem to matter, and right away I had internet. I then downloaded VLC and Skype. VLC worked perfect with no tweaking. Skype had no internal mic. I clicked on the speaker Icon, then properties and noticed I had nothing coming in from the Internal Mic. After Typing "alsamixer" into console, hitting TAB a few times, I noticed that it had no Internal Mic listed (bug#458302). After tons of research I found how to fix it by installing the linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic package through synaptic. I then opened terminal "alsamixer" again, tab, set front mic to 100%. All the sudden my microphone was perfect!
Here I was, sitting with this perfect OS, on a perfectly tiny PC, wondering why I even still had Windows XP taking up half my HDD. So I got greedy. I started over with a new clean install, this time allowing UNR to take over the whole HDD. When it was all said and done installing I had no internal Mic, as expected, and no wireless. I started to do the same steps for enabling wireless again, but this time... no dice. No driver worked, at all. I searched and searched for a driver that would work, ran all the updates, listened to tons and tons of advice, only to fail time and time again. Finally I came across a program that allowed me to use a Windows driver instead. Luckily, this program 'ndiswrapper' comes with every flavor of Ubuntu 9.10 already. I check the box in synaptic to install it. This puts the 'Windows Wireless' button at the bottom on the settings tab. When I ran that, it asked for an INF file. But all the drivers I found for Windows are EXE's, rightly so. So how is this supposed to work? I found no answers on any of the 1st 100 links I checked through google. Finally I thought about my 'old friend' of a program called WINE. I downloaded it, ran the EXE driver (that I found on HP's website), then explored WINEs files till I found where it "installed" this EXE. In its folder I found the INF file. I then opened up Windows Wireless again, found that INF file again, and perfecto! Wireless is now even better than it was when I had 1/2 Windows on this thing! I then redid the internal Mic fix from previous. BTW, all this took me about 2 weeks to figure out... like I said, not a Guru.
After all this, I had a beautiful, perfect Netbook staring me in the face. Everything works perfectly. And I mean everything, including that little Wireless On/Off switch on the front. Sleep, Suspend, Hibernate, you name it, and it is all great. Startup time is maybe 15 seconds from power off to nothing still loading.
What a great learning experience! Now to give it to my wife!
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1st up, I installed the live CD onto a thumb drive. Inserted the thumb into the netbook and restarted. After a few minutes I was greeted with a very different looking, yet extremely easy to use, desktop. I then clicked Install UNR. The same friendly easy to use GUI came up as most Ubuntu versions of the past have. I noticed the dual/multi partition option was changed to be even easier than many previous versions. I let it chose the 50/50 dual partition default and just blindly clicked continue till it started the installation. When it was done it told me to remove the CD/USB and hit ENTER to restart. So far so super easy right? I mean, the hardest part of all of this so far was creating a bootable USB from a CD image (iso), then changing the BIOS to boot USB before HDD. But both of those steps are easy enough that any joe off the street can do with 1 finger. When the computer restarted I was greeted with a text box asking me to chose which OS to start, UNR or XP. I clicked nothing, and it auto started UNR about 5 seconds later. When it was done, I had the same screen as I did on the LiveCD. But when I clicked ANYTHING at all, it was instantaneous. I was immediately impressed by just how snappy this little OS was on this even smaller Netbook. After playing with it a little bit I noticed I had no wireless, I also noticed a little green PCI-E looking icon next to where the signal strength bar would be. I clicked it, and right away it searched for wireless drivers. "STA" and "B43" were my options. I just clicked on one of them, it didnt seem to matter, and right away I had internet. I then downloaded VLC and Skype. VLC worked perfect with no tweaking. Skype had no internal mic. I clicked on the speaker Icon, then properties and noticed I had nothing coming in from the Internal Mic. After Typing "alsamixer" into console, hitting TAB a few times, I noticed that it had no Internal Mic listed (bug#458302). After tons of research I found how to fix it by installing the linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic package through synaptic. I then opened terminal "alsamixer" again, tab, set front mic to 100%. All the sudden my microphone was perfect!
Here I was, sitting with this perfect OS, on a perfectly tiny PC, wondering why I even still had Windows XP taking up half my HDD. So I got greedy. I started over with a new clean install, this time allowing UNR to take over the whole HDD. When it was all said and done installing I had no internal Mic, as expected, and no wireless. I started to do the same steps for enabling wireless again, but this time... no dice. No driver worked, at all. I searched and searched for a driver that would work, ran all the updates, listened to tons and tons of advice, only to fail time and time again. Finally I came across a program that allowed me to use a Windows driver instead. Luckily, this program 'ndiswrapper' comes with every flavor of Ubuntu 9.10 already. I check the box in synaptic to install it. This puts the 'Windows Wireless' button at the bottom on the settings tab. When I ran that, it asked for an INF file. But all the drivers I found for Windows are EXE's, rightly so. So how is this supposed to work? I found no answers on any of the 1st 100 links I checked through google. Finally I thought about my 'old friend' of a program called WINE. I downloaded it, ran the EXE driver (that I found on HP's website), then explored WINEs files till I found where it "installed" this EXE. In its folder I found the INF file. I then opened up Windows Wireless again, found that INF file again, and perfecto! Wireless is now even better than it was when I had 1/2 Windows on this thing! I then redid the internal Mic fix from previous. BTW, all this took me about 2 weeks to figure out... like I said, not a Guru.
After all this, I had a beautiful, perfect Netbook staring me in the face. Everything works perfectly. And I mean everything, including that little Wireless On/Off switch on the front. Sleep, Suspend, Hibernate, you name it, and it is all great. Startup time is maybe 15 seconds from power off to nothing still loading.
What a great learning experience! Now to give it to my wife!
