Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Ubuntu 9.04 on Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop
So, I tried to load Linux on an old Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop at home. This time Ubuntu 9.04, code name "Jaunty Jackalope" worked. It was actually easy. Well, have not tackled getting the Wireless card working yet.
Ubuntu looks great and fast considering how underpowered the laptop. That fan is too loud!!!!
One nice touch is I can control the Ubuntu laptop from my Windows XP laptop by using Synergy. I just move the mouse across monitors and the same mouse and keyboard are used on the other laptop. That is sweet.
Would I recommend Ubuntu? If pre-installed, sure. Also, one must be very computer savy if one must install and configure the system. For example, I thought I knew how to set up the network manually, but it did not work. Found out I had to set the 'route' too. None of the self-help forums I visited mentioned that. Another example, I installed the Google Toolbar on FireFox 3.0.10 and it worked fine. Then the toolbar stopped working. No clue what happened; reinstall of toolbar did not fix it. I can type a search string in the search box, hit enter and nothing happens, though I still get the dropdown list too. I also can't click on options to change toolbar settings.
Update
2011JAN23: I just tried to install Ubuntu on this laptop again. No luck yet.
Ubuntu
Release 9.04 (jaunty)
Kernel Linux 2.6.28-11-generic
GNOME 2.26.1
Hardware
Memory: 496.0 MiB
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron CPU 2.00GHz
System Status
Available disk space: 13.7 GiB
I already installed a few things on it.
Synergy
FTP server
PersonalBrain
Mercurial
etckeeper
KeePassX
Now the wireless card. I'm dreading this.......
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3 comments:
Did you get the wireless card to work? I used the same laptop last year with 8.0 and got it work, but now I am trying 9.04 what's the trick?
I got 9.04 installed with out a problem. Using a third party wireless with an atheros chipset (smooth sailing in linux).
But an apt-get upgrade later and my video only works on the external. Have you had this problem??
9.04 installed perfectly on my 1100, and my USB wireless dongle worked nicely right away.
The problem I'm having is that any time I place a data CD in the drive, any file browsers I have open abort and close. I can't open a file browser when a CD is in the drive. If I take the CD out--any CD, everything works fine. This kinda makes it hard to restore my data after the install from 8.04.
Any ideas why this is happening?
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