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Why Would I want to install linux on my nice new netbook?

Well - my partner's also going for that option because she doesn't like the threat of viruses (viri) and most of her work happens in a browser, with occasional word docs or spreadsheets.

I've been shifting more and more onto linux recently and my main laptop is XP home and has a linux install on a solid state drive. It works but it's really slow, so I wanted something which was running linux at full speed.

Please note this is an elaborated version of this blog (http://quefyx.com/2009/05/23/installing-ubuntu-9-04-jaunty-on-asus-eee-p...) I knew I'd have to do this twice since we got two identical machines so have been documenting as I go and checking/expanding the second time around.

Probably the main difference is I'm making one 20gb partition for windows, another 20gb for ubuntu, 100gb free as data drive and leaving the windows recovery data intact.

You will need:

- usb cdrom - mine was a regular cdrom plugged into the guts of an external usb hard drive.

- a wifi dongle which is recognised by ubuntu out fo the box.
- test on a liveCD first before committing because without the network connection
you'll be stuck. I didn't test first but was lucky and only realised after
the relevance ;)
- tested and worked with ootb with a grey dlink dongle with a pen-type lid.
model: DWL-G122, version: C1
- also worked with an EDUP ED-1296 and a bluenext BN-WD54G, so ALL 3 adapters i had worked out of the box.
Testing was very simple - plug it in, if it finds wifi right away you're sorted, if not keep looking.

- a partition resizer like partition magic or Easus.
- this free partitioner from easus looks like it should do the job. I've used their
server program before and it worked very well:
http://www.partition-tool.com/landing/free-partition-magic.htm?gclid=CK-...

- ubuntu jaunty 9.04 on a cd
download here: http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.04/

- asus eee 1008ha seashell netbook.

- boot into windows

- use easus (or partition magic) to delete the second large partition and resize the first
partition to 20gb (for the windows install)
This leaves the recovery partitions at the end still and a gap of 120gb in the middle.
Easus/partitionmagic will need a reboot at this point.

- right click-my computer, "manage". Go down to disk management.
You should have the first partition with windows on it, then a big space of "unallocated" (124gb in my case), then a "PE" partition (system recovery I guess) then a small partition of 47mb or so.

We *really* don't want to mess with the last ones, they're your recovery partitions and effectively your "undo" on this whole process if it all goes pear-shaped.

Because this disk is going to have over 4 partitions we need to make an "extended partition" container to hold the remaining partitions we need for this to work nicely.

right-click in unallocated space, "new partition", ok, ok, then extended partition for the full amount of space available. create extended partition for the full 120gb

- create a logical drive within extended 20gb (20480mb), don't mount, don't format, will be linux system drive (ext3)

- create a logical drive within extended 4gb (4096mb), don't mount, don't format, will be linux swap drive (hibernate data too)

- create a logical drive using the remaining 100gb, NTFS, assing to D: and quick format, no compression. This will be the shared data partition (accessable from both windows and linux)

- shut down (off)

- plug in usb cdrom and then switch on so the bios finds it.

- f2 to enter bios then:

- on boot menu, disable boot booster

- make sure cdrom is first boot priority in the boot order. I set it to: cdrom, removable dev, hdd

- F10. save and exit (off)

[SAFE POINT]
If you've got this far, the next bit you can do over and over again if need be.

- wang the ubuntu disk in and fire it up.

- follow the install till you get to the disk partitioning "prepare disk space".

- you should have something with a number of stripes which resemble an xp partition, a linux system partition, a small swap partition then a big data , and a couple of little ones at the end.

- all we do here is tell the installer to use the partitions we prepared in windows.

- Why not set it all up from here? I don't know why but it wouldn't let me do the extended partition stuff in here, hence I ended up going back to windows and set it up beforehand.

- so once you select specify manually and then forward the bar goes red and it scans the disks.

- Then you shoudl have a table of the filesystems on the sdisk and where they appear as devices in linux. (/dev/sda etc). There should be two partitions of about 20gb, the ntfs/fat32 one (/dev/sda1 on mine) is the windows system, the second shoudl not have a type listed and is what we want for the linux system.

- double click on that rao to bring up the properties for the one after the windows install (not the windows install). Should be also 20gb, no type listed.

- "use as" "ext3 journaling filesystem", tick format, mount point "/", "ok", scans disks and back to the table.

- now you should have two 20gb partitions, one listed as ntfs, one as ext3.

- now find the 4gb partition we made as the linux swap. Although it's only got 1gb ram at the moment
I'm planning on upgrading it to 2gb if possible, and swap does temp space as well as hibernation data so 4gb should be plenty without being wasteful. double-click the partition and go use as "swap area" (format greyed out). Ok. Scans disks...

- that's it - the swap disk shoudl now also be labelled as type "swap". the ext3 drive should also be shown as mount point /

- click forward

- then you're onto the standard ubuntu install which I'm not going to repeat here. (google it, it's well documented).

[standard ubuntu install]

- once installed, on reboot you'll get a boot menu giving you the choice of linux or the XP install.
I'm pretty sure you can muck about with the order too in the /boot/grub folder (??check)

- as detailed here:
(http://quefyx.com/2009/05/23/installing-ubuntu-9-04-jaunty-on-asus-eee-p...)
my install went fine but no wifi.

- This is where you need the dlink wifi or dongle, or one which you know is recognised by linux.spare, plugged it in and was online rightaway. A usb wired dongle would also do as long as you know it works.

I set up a wifi connection by right-clickign the little wifi icon, edit connections. Wifi tab, add, enter your details.

- then open a commend shell and go:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade (this can take a while depending on the speed of your net connection. It did seem like it pulled down a whole CD)

[reboot]

- open a command shell and type:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

//sudo apt-get reboot ??

- reboot and wifi should work.
(it did!!)

- now should also pick up ethernet port.

- sudo apt-get install openssh-server

- enable vnc
- system/preferences/remote desktop

- edit /etc/fstab to add "noatime" in main hdd entry... speeds up hdd access hugely!

- open a shell and type:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_bak01

- i.e. copy the file in case you mess it up. Then:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

find the line which looks like your main hard drive - it will be ext3 type and have a few options.
change the bit "relatime" to "noatime". This stops the os from writing the last access time for a file.

so instead of reading:

relatime,errors=remount-ro

it reads:
noatime, errors=remount-ro

save and exit then reboot. Don't change ANYTHING else in that file.

Effectively (as far as I understand it) when you request a file it reads the file but then also logs the last accessed time, handy but means every file access is at least 2 disk actions..bit ott for most people. Noatime means reading files speeds up dramatically. You lose the last accessed time, but for most normal users they'll never notice the difference.

Hopefully: "Tadaa!" one fully functional and connected linux netbook :)

[edit]this has been running really nicely now for a couple of months. The battery life isn't anywhere near as good under linux, I get 2-3 hours on ubuntu and under xp it gets the full claimed 6hrs. That's even with only writing meta-data to the HDD at a lower rate and also the NOATIME option in fstab (see linspak for how to do that)

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Notes to self:

Install wine, samba, smbfs, ultravnc, set up network shares.
Test speed of TCP_nodelay from linspak