Re: anyone running Ubuntu here?

"Andrew Hodgson" wrote:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:

Is anyone here running Ubuntu on a Dell laptop and
using VMWare or VirtualBox on Vista to run the
Ubuntu OS? I have the XPS M1330 laptop loaded
w/Vista Business, and I'd like to demo some simple
web apps which make requests on Apache/MySQL
servers.

I am researching this. Check out http://linux.dell.com,
because they state that we can just install from a standard
Ubuntu CD, but if we want the extra like the Dell DVD
player etc, we need to download an ISO image from the
Dell site. However, they don't state whether this
image will allow us to configure the bootloader etc, because
by the looks of the instructions it does a wipe of the disk
then puts an image back on the HDD.


That ISO image makes me a little nervous, as it sounds
like it will make the Ubuntu installation the entirety of the
HDD, wiping out the Vista installation. But... never having
installed Linux, I don't know for sure. And finding anyone
at Dell who knows about Dell's Ubuntu offerings seems to
be impossible. I was primarily interested in Dell's Ubuntu
ISO image because it has all the drivers for the XPS M1330
except for the nVidia graphics card (the Ubuntu version has
only the IC graphics), and I could always just download that
driver from the nVidia website. But if the ISO image will wipe
out the existing partitions, I'd have to get Ubuntu from
Ubuntu.com and download the nVidia graphics driver and
probably the Wi-Fi driver and the fingerprint reader driver
and maybe the CD/DVD driver. It could get to be a pain.

Installing Ubuntu may also wipe out the restore partition,
the utility partition, and the Media Direct partition - either
automatically during installation or it may require the user to
do it in order to free up a primary partition or two. What's
strange is that Dell won't tell how to delete those partitions
unless you pay them for it as a "service call". Do you know
if you just delete them like any other partitions?

You may want to shift Vista over to some of the freed
space, and that would take something like Partition Magic.
And you'd probably want to shrink down the Vista partition
a tad to make some space for Ubuntu, and that would either
take Partition Magic or a utility that is new with Vista, but which
I still haven't found on my XPS system, yet. Have you found it?

Of course, rearranging the partitions would require editing
the boot menu for Vista, something you'd probably want to
do with something like EasyBCD. And Linux's Grub boot loader
will be put into the MBR by the default Ubuntu installation, but
which I'm told will not interfere with booting Vista.

There's a lot there that doesn't meet the eye until you get
into the nitty gritty, and I was hoping to find another Dell Vista
laptop owner who has tackled the problem.


I am also interested in the M1330 notebook.

It's a beautiful machine - my first laptop. It has
the LED screen backlight option which gives wider
vertical and horizontal viewing angle, better color
rendition and longer service life and less power
consumption than fluorescent tubes. Getting used to
rubbing a finger on a touchpad instead of a moving
a mouse or a tackball has been a little frustrating for me.


Ubuntu runs fine under VmWare, and there are plenty of pre-
built environments available as VmWare images.

Do you know if one of those free VMware Linux "appliances"
has a Linux capable of supporting servers such as Apache and
MySQL?

Another way to go would be to run VirtualBox. It's free and
there are versions which will run on Windows and versions which
will run on Linux: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.


*TimDaniels*


.

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