Ubuntu 8.10

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Contents

Disclaimer and Warning

Installing or reinstalling an operating system is an exacting business. The possibility exists to lose all of your data, files, and cherished memories. The owners, maintainers, and editors of this site will in no way be held responsible for any way should you lost files, data, time, money, or effort from using the information on this guide.

Before You Begin

It may be best to create two separate known-good copies of all of your data on different drives or media, in the case something should go wrong. It is probably best to have the battery in, and the computer plugged in to the AC mains power.

In Windows, your data may exist not only in "My Documents," but also in C:/"User Name"/Documents and Settings/Application Data and Favorites. Some programs place their data in C:/Program Files/"Name of Program." In the root of the S10, there is a "i386" folder which may help you with creating a reinstallation disk using this guide, should that not be prohibited in your area. There may be additional drivers and software in the Windows C: and D: partitions that you may want to save.

Preparing the CD/DVD or USB Drive Installation

Prerequisites

Before you begin you will need the following.

To Prepare a Bootable CD

  1. Attach the USB DVD-ROM drive and turn on your S10.
  2. Download, and burn a copy of the Ubuntu .iso. If using Windows, there are several such utilities available: Imgburn, Deepburner, or Nero.

To Prepare a Bootable USB Drive from Linux

This method requires that you have access to an already installed copy of K/Ubuntu or a K/Ubuntu Live CD. Also required:

  • CD or .iso image of K/Ubuntu.
  • USB flash drive with a capacity greater than 800 MB.

Method

  1. Insert your USB Flash Drive into an open USB port.
  2. From the already existing K/Ubuntu system, open a terminal, and at the command prompt type: 
sudo apt-get install usb-creator
  1. When the download is finished, run usb-creator from the applications menu.
  2. Either insert the K/Ubuntu CD or select the .iso image by clicking the 'Other...' button.
  3. If there is enough free space available on the USB Flash Drive, you may chose to allot a space for persistent settings and file saving.
  4. Click "Make Startup Disk."

To Prepare a Ubuntu Netbook-Remix Bootable USB Drive from Another Ubuntu Distribution

There are good instructions here.

Note: Ubuntu Netbook-remix assumes a whole drive installation! Unlike, Ubuntu 8.10, it will erase your entire hard drive. If you want to multi-boot, you may not want to use the installer.

To Prepare a Bootable USB Drive from Windows Using UNetbootin

Currently, Unetbootin .307 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix do not play well together.

  1. Download [Unetbootin].
  2. Format the USB drive with FAT. NOTE: Be sure you have the correct drive selected, the USB drive, and make certain sure there is no valuable files on it, as this erases everything, deleting all the files on that drive.
  3. Start Unetbootin. It does not need to be installed to run.
  4. Select the radio-button for writing an Diskimage .iso file.
  5. Select the ellipses (...) to browse for the downloaded Ubuntu or other .iso. Apparently, Unetbootin can also download the .iso of your choice.
  6. Where the "Type:" dropdown box is, please be sure the "USB Drive" is selected. This may help prevent formatting the wrong drive in the next step.
  7. Where the "Drive:" dropdown box is, select the same drive you formatted before. Note: if you have rebooted since you formatted, since Windows may have reassigned the removable drives letters.
  8. Click "Okay"
  9. After a long wait, the USB drive should now be bootable. If you do need to remove it, it's best to "Safely Remove Hardware" before removing it.

Booting the Installation from an External CD/DVD or USB Flash Drive

Now that you have prepared an installation disk or USB drive, you can boot it.

  1. Plug in your flash or CD/DVD drive.
  2. When the Lenovo logo first flashes on the screen, press (F2) to enter the BIOS setup. Pressing (F12), really (Fn + F11) brings up a boot menu.
  3. In the BIOS setup screen, you will see a tab for boot order. On that page, using the plus and minus keys, make your installation device at the top of the list. It would be CD/CDROM/DVD, or alternatively the brand name of the flash drive.
  4. In the Config menu, set the SATA drives to "Compatibility." This should be changed back to "AHCI" when you are done with the Ubuntu installation, for best hard drive speed.
  5. Save your changes, and exit to reboot. If you bumped a setting, or you are unsure, discard your changes, and start over again.
  6. Machine should boot into Ubuntu from USB. Whether or not it is an external CD, or a USB drive, booting from these devices will be slow.

After booting, the computer should show a desktop with a brown background. You will now be in "live" mode.

Installation

From the "Live" desktop, you will see an "Install" icon. Double-click on that icon to begin the install process. Unless you are formatting the entire drive for Linux, you will have to determine how large you want the Linux and Windows partitions. After than, it's a matter of following the Ubuntu installation instructions.

Ubuntu Netbook-Remix's installation differs from the general Ubuntu desktop installation. (Instructions link??).

Partitioning and Formatting

You have you system backed up, right?

Altering partitions and formats will most-likely break your O)ne-K)ey R)estore feature, although some members have had success multi-boots with the OKR, feature intact. For dual booting it is usually best to (have installed) install Windows first, as the Ubuntu installers are more respectful of a multiple-boot scenario than Windows is. In the factory, the 80GB drive arrives with a ~40GB Windows D: partition. After backing up the contents of the D: Drive, that entire partition can be used for Linux. (Insert 160 GB? scheme)

Note: The Ubuntu Netbook Remix installer assumes that you want to use the entire drive.

Even is you delete the original Windows partitions, and the entire drive, you still have choices. Some of the major formats:

  • EXT3 file system: the default Linux file system, which has journaling for safety, but realistically cannot be defragmented, yet will require less defragmentation than NTFS or VFAT/FAT.
  • NTFS: Windows file system can be read and written to, but Linux may not respect Windows file permissions and security features.
  • VFAT: Also known as FAT, a Windows file system with good interoperability, but it may not be your best choice for large file system. It fragments easily, but can be defragmented. It may be safer for a dual-boot data transfers than NTFS.
  • Linux Swap: Necessary for good performance with all non-SSD systems. If you have a mechanical drive, a 2 to 8 GB swap should be adequate. The swap file system usually must be contiguous, and cannot reside inside other file systems. If you want virtual memory, you want to create a swap partition, but understand that placing a swap on a SSD will severely shorten its lifespan--even with its inherent wear leveling.

There are various partitions and mount point schemes you may see.

  • / boot
  • / or "root" is the place where Linux places most of its system files. Often your /home /usr and /var are placed in there, but given enough room, these can be separated for organization, security, and performance.
  • /home is where all of your documents will go. Making a separate /home partition and mount point usually makes upgrading the operating system more safe and easy, as your data is separate from the operating system. You should still backup before any major system upgrade/change. /home is vaguely similar to "My Documents" in Windows, but more accurately C:/Documents and Settings/"User Name".
  • /var and /usr can be placed in their own partitions for performance and security reasons. I don't often do it because of their space considerations. /usr/share is akin to C:/Program Files in Windows.

Updating Installed Ubuntu

Once installed, if you can access the internet, it is best to update your installation as many security and hardware issues may be fixed. The easiest way to update your system is to choose System/Administration/Update Manager, and then click "Check" to retrieve a fresh list of files from the internet, and then clicking on "Install Updates" if there are updates available. Once your system is up to date, you may select more software using System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager or Applications/Add/Remove.

You can also open a terminal window and type the following where xxx is the name of an application you want to install: 

sudo apt-get install xxx

Note: only one package installation method can run at once.

Networking

Under 8.10, Ethernet works.

Wifi networking works using the restricted "Broadcom STA driver. You may have to enable this using the applet at the top of the screen. The Wifi applet on the top-left of the screen can be clicked and right-clicked for separate settings. There is a reported issue when both WEP and WPA are both enabled.

(In Ubuntu Netbook-Remix, Wifi driver seems to load, but could not find wireless networks.)

Audio

Audio out seems fine. Some issues may exist with the internal Mic, that may be cleared up with a system update. If not, there is a thread here on Ubuntuforums.org and another on S10lenovo.com that have a possible fix.

The issue with the internal mic is only present in Skype for Ubuntu 8.04.01 and 8.10. The newest kernel release 2.4.27-11 supposedly fixes this but has yet to be tested. The kernel is available in the Backports repository of version 8.10. Please note that enabling backports may cause other issues and are potentially unsafe with your systems current software. For more information on Backports follow this link: UbuntuBackports

If still willing to use Backports you can see how from this how-to page: Ubuntu_Updates

Trackpad

An official patch may be in the works for a horizontal/vertical aspect ration sensitivity issue with the trackpad. Until then, Slacy has kindly compiled and offered a modified driver .deb. Tapping works.

Upon installation, the trackpad zone features are missing, but this guide may help.

Power Management, Suspend, and Sleep

You can right-click on the upper panel/menubar, and add to the panel, the CPU Frequency Monitor from Gnome's applet assortment. With this you can view and control the CPU power scaling. You will have to supply your password when you changes the frequency for the first time.

Upon installation, closing the S10 lid will turn off the backlight, but it does not it to sleep. This can be changed to "Suspend" at the System/Preferences/Power Management settings. Upon installation, pressing the (Fn + F1) also puts the S10 to sleep. Upon wake the S10 you may have to tap the (Fn + Up-Arrow) backlight brightness.

Hibernate works. To wake the computer on multi-boot systems, you will have to choose Linux at the boot menu, and then it will unhibernate. Hibernate is neither fast nor convenient.

Webcam

Works with e.g. cheese.

Bluetooth

Is recognized and available, though functionality needs to be verified.

Special buttons

  • touchpad (Fn + F6): enable/disable works
  • dedicated wifi button: enable/disable works
  • wifi (Fn + F5): does not seem to work
  • sleep (Fn + F1): works
  • webcam (Fn + Esc): enable/disable works (watch dmesg for current status)
  • brightness (Fn <-, Fn ->): works
  • volume (Fn arrow down, Fn arrow up): works
  • OKR One Key Recovery Button (next to wifi button): ???
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