[jaguar]

Hey all, I found this post to change the trackpad driver.

[ubuntu] Disable bottom 1/4 of touchpad on Dell Mini 10v - Ubuntu Forums

i just installed it and it seems to work fine.

[Offroadie]

Did you use the standard desktop 9.04? There is also a Dell version of 9.04 available. I don't know if it'll help any buy it's supposedly configured more for Dells. I used it on a six year old Dell C640 I have. Worked right out of the box. Download here. Dell 9.04 Wiki here.

[inigopete]

I've been working with 9.04 on my 10v for a while and occasionally update this thread as I learn new stuff:
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell...04-my-10v.html

[jaguar]

Originally Posted by Offroadie

Did you use the standard desktop 9.04? There is also a Dell version of 9.04 available. I don't know if it'll help any buy it's supposedly configured more for Dells. I used it on a six year old Dell C640 I have. Worked right out of the box. Download here. Dell 9.04 Wiki here.

I did use the standard 9.04 image. The new trackpad driver I installed is so much better!

After reading the wiki about the Dell version of 9.04, it does not seem worth installing -- unless the microphone problem is solved in that image!

By the way, some of the issues in this thread overlap with this one

cheers

[jaguar]

If you enable the 'pre-release updates (jaunty proposed)' in the settings of the update manager, then the fix for the microphone bug (#394793) is downloaded installed --- presto, the front mic works!

[cstaats]

Originally Posted by isoutar

I searched the net for a week trying to find a post saying that the Dell Mini 10v can have Ubuntu 9.04 installed without difficulty. No posts ... so I tried it. The Dell Mini 10v runs Ubuntu 9.04 perfectly!!

My daughter Meghan just received her Dell Mini 10v with Ubuntu and as usual the Dell version of Ubuntu was terrible. I have upgraded a half dozen mini 9s to Ubuntu 9.04 and each machine was a real winner after the install. Before I helped them the people wanted to send their machine back to Dell!! I will not go on about how bad the Dell version of Ubuntu is ... but if you know linux at all you cannot use it without frustration. The main issue is Maximus which insists on making everything full screen. The next issue is that you can hardly find any software in the Dell version. If you try and add repositories they seem to fail. I am an old debian fan so I know this is not usually the case.

So I booted the Mini 10v with Ubuntu 9.04 using the live USB version of ubuntu to modify the root partition and move all the data over to the root, erasing the operating system but leaving her data in the root. This was done by using sudo nautilus. The new Ubuntu 9.04 live USB makes a very very good computer maintenance tool. Previously I had relied on Knoppix because the ubuntu live cd was rather poor in performance. Not any more.

Then I issued the command "metacity --replace" to stop Compiz 3d effects ... essential because if Compiz is running you cannot access the radio buttons in the install properly! Very Important to do this. Otherwise you can get into an issue where the buttons jump up when you try and hit them with the mouse. Buttons like format y/n cannot be selected without the command to stop Compiz.

Then I resized the 160 gig drive so that 15g was free but the data was still intact. I made two more partitions, 2 gig for swap and the rest for the new operating system mounted as /

I mounted her data partition as /home with the initial folder called "meghan". Straight install but i made sure to use the same user name as she used in the stock Dell ubuntu installation.

Then I did a manually partitioned installation where I mounted the swap, root and data partitions as above.

No mysteries ... the install went great and now it is a great machine!!

Dell take note ... your version of Linux is extremely poor. The new Linux users wanted windows NOW because Ubuntu appeared to be so bad. The experienced linux users wanted a REAL ubuntu NOW. That Dell version was one of the worst distros I have seen.

So in the end she got a really fine machine running the leading edge Ubuntu. My theory is that Dell is used to Windows which issues beta releases as their normal releases with lots of minor problems. Dell was probably thinking that Ubuntu was the same as Windows and you want to stay clear of the latest release. However the release called Jaunty or 9.04 is a masterpiece of perfection. I would highly recommend that all users either install it themselves or get someone with the know how to do it for them.

A superb machine was the result!! All codecs arrived correctly and worked. Everything is fine, no glitches with flash ... great machine once you fix it.

Dell ... PLEASE take note ... you need to move on from the version you are shipping 8.04. Use the stock Ubuntu 9.04 which is perfect on the Mini 10v. The Dell version has dozens of broken issues.

Also Ubuntu take note that the stock Ubuntu 9.04 is way better than the remix version. Even the first time linux users hated the remix and asked for help to get something better. Just selecting the Classic desktop is not good enough. You have to kill Maximus or else all windows go to full screen and you have to keep minimizing their size.

But after the new O/S fix the Mini 10v is a really great machine. If you have a windows or ubuntu machine ... get yourself a live USB version of Ubuntu 9.04 and boot into it. You will be hooked! Installation is really easy if you do not have to protect existing data.

Moral of the story ... buy a Dell Mini 10v but do a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04 before you use it!!

I haven't read all the forums yet, but has anyone tried Easy Peasy 1.5? It's Ubuntu based and being that 1.5 is the 3rd iteration, it runs pretty darn well.

Maybe someone else has mentioned it, but in case I missed that I thought I'd share.

Also, OpenSuSE runs pretty well on my Wind U100, just FYI.

Cheers,
Charlie

[barrydrake]

I agree with the comments about the Dell variant of Ubuntu. However, I like Netbook Remix, and am using Lucid with no problems. (well, one small one) As installed, it was freezing on boot from time to time whenever a forced run of fsck took place. I seem to have overridden this by including GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="noapic, nolapic, noacpi" in /etc/default/grub followed by sudo update-grub.

By way of technicalities, I formatted the entire drive to ext2 as this is faster than the ext3 that Dell use, and less write-demanding than ext4 because it does not use journalling. I put the dos based diagnostic partition onto a dos bootable SD card in case I need to use it. The restore partition has gone entirely. Why would I need it?

I have a small SD card with Puppy and have installed partimage on it so I can keep a backup of the installation as I like it, but without data. This is backed up separately. I'm delighted with the result! I too was getting very frustrated by the difficulties accessing other repos and being unable to update in a normal Ubuntu manner. The proper Ubuntu version is ideal. When will Dell learn?