Customers return 'confusing' Linux netbooks

[newbie]

has everybody gone

I might use this thread to blog then.

it seems the solution to the suspend problem involves repartitioning (fair enough and I'd have known that if I'd read every line of detailed instruction). The Wiki says to download a Partition Manager, which involves hunting around and reading confusing stuff and getting the wrong package: a lot of faff.

Two reboots later it's working and has, wait for it, 09:47:40 remaining to resize 190GB to 100, it's currently done 2.6GB in 15 minutes.

Vista does that sort of thing in the background in a lot, lot less than 10 hours without any reboots. If I'd whipped the drive out and hooked it up to a Vista machine I'd have it back in and working by now- as it is I've still got to create the new partitions after the resize finishes sometime in the middle of the night.

I'm beginning to care.

 

[stowpirate]

It's more than that, I think. Besides users shouldn't be expected to have to spend ages trying to work out how to get the laptop to work.

Are you just saying that because you are familiar with an alternate OS?

Are they attempting to run Windows or Mac software and find it refuses to run then assume that Linux is rubbish?

What other OS comes with a complete set of applications even the most basic Linux distros make other OS look like a con.

Here are some homemade OS including one customized to run on an Eee

http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads/puplets

 

[newbie]

ooh, this is good, I'm so pleased I listened to what i was told on the internet.

When I went to bed last night there was under 2 hours to go. This morning there's over 14! 14 hours more and there's still 0 of 1 operation completed.

 

[Jonti]

has everybody gone

I might use this thread to blog then.

it seems the solution to the suspend problem involves repartitioning (fair enough and I'd have known that if I'd read every line of detailed instruction). The Wiki says to download a Partition Manager, which involves hunting around and reading confusing stuff and getting the wrong package: a lot of faff.

Two reboots later it's working and has, wait for it, 09:47:40 remaining to resize 190GB to 100, it's currently done 2.6GB in 15 minutes.

Vista does that sort of thing in the background in a lot, lot less than 10 hours without any reboots. If I'd whipped the drive out and hooked it up to a Vista machine I'd have it back in and working by now- as it is I've still got to create the new partitions after the resize finishes sometime in the middle of the night.

I'm beginning to care.

What, it was just a matter of doing a job before, was it?

And now you've convinced yourself (prolly the only one, mind!)

 

[Jonti]

Windows an Ubuntu both have an incomplete selection of drivers built in. The difference is, with windows, you can fill in the gaps by downloading them from the manufacturers website, whereas with Ubuntu the missing drivers probably haven't been written.

This is good advice. Ubuntu's hardware recognition is excellent; there's not much point in newbies fiddling if it doesn't Just Work. Hence the importance of testing with a liveCD.

There are usually workarounds, mind. Wireless driver problems in particular should be easily fixed by a competent computer shop; and the fix is well within the reach of any 'power-user'.

 

[newbie]

I've not convinced myself about anything, although I've reaffirmed my view that installing operating systems is non-trivial and only the naive would pretend otherwise.


It's all very well saying test with a LiveCD but this is a netbook without a CD drive. I did test with a downloaded system- Wubi- that runs from the XP partition. That's when it became apparent that a reboot was required everytime the lid was shut. hence the repartitioning and hence the borked machine (I've pulled the plug and will try and resurrect it as I need to use it later today).

 

[Jonti]

I've not convinced myself about anything, although I've reaffirmed my view that installing operating systems is non-trivial and only the naive would pretend otherwise.


It's all very well saying test with a LiveCD but this is a netbook without a CD drive. I did test with a downloaded system- Wubi- that runs from the XP partition. That's when it became apparent that a reboot was required everytime the lid was shut. hence the repartitioning and hence the borked machine (I've pulled the plug and will try and resurrect it as I need to use it later today).

... so what you're saying is that the incredibly flexible and user-friendly ubuntu can even be installed just like a windows application, using Wubi.

Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Are you curious about Linux and Ubuntu? Trying them out has never been easier!

 

[newbie]

yes, it worked fine (ish), except that it wouldn't return from suspend, and a netbook you can't suspend when the lid is shut isn't much of a joy. Hence repartition, hence gparted, hence pain.

 

[Jonti]

It seems strange to me to think it would be different running straight from the hard disk.

Anyway, this from the Inquirer ...

... if your hardware doesn't work with Linux out of the box, or with minimal fuss (like adjusting some sound settings), as a newbie, simply forget it. Thats how simple linux is You most likely won't get it working, because the hardware isn't supported in the kernel. You can blame "linux" for that, or you could blame the supplier of the hardware that provides Windows drivers, but no support for Linux. Fact is that the vast majority of hardware out there simply works, requires no driver downloads never mind compilation at all. Its right there even during the install process.

When I have to reinstall a Windows machine, I spend more than a day downloading windows service packs, 232 drivers for motherboard, audio, video, printers, RAID, joystick, webcam, even my bloody mouse, then .NET packages, security updates, an AV, office sofware, other productivity software, codecs, flash plugins, etc etc etc. I dont even think I'd manage in a day.

With ubuntu (medibuntu), I install it fom a cd, and everything works and is right there.
source

 

[stowpirate]

yes, it worked fine (ish), except that it wouldn't return from suspend, and a netbook you can't suspend when the lid is shut isn't much of a joy. Hence repartition, hence gparted, hence pain.

Are you saying XP worked OK but not Linux? If so what about a compromise. you could try running KDE on top of Windows assuming your netbook has enough spare storage on its flash drive.

http://windows.kde.org/

 

[newbie]

Not a flash drive, a 250GB hard drive.

The story is all is all up there in the thread, but to repeat, the wiki for installing Linux onto my netbook is http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Ubuntu_8.04_Hardy_Heron, and those are the instructions I followed. Wubi worked fine, except that suspend wouldn't work, and if closing the lid means a reboot the machine isn't much use.

That's why I had to put Ubuntu onto it's own partition, and to create that I used gparted because I've been told so often how good it is. I started that at around 4.30 thursday afternoon, by 8.30 friday morning it was reporting some 14 hours still to go, which is just plain ludicrous.

I bombed out of it, reformatted the drive and reinstalled XP so I could use it over the weekend. I have to say that was quite smooth- my backup wasn't that recent but XP found changed hardware drivers and all the updates by itself and didn't cause me any problems.

 

[newbie]

now here's a thing. when gparted was asked to resize an NTFS partition from 190GB to 100GB it still had 14 hours to go some 16 hours after I started- a total of about 30 hours. I never found out how long it would take to create the new partitions, that was just to resize the existing one. I ended up with a trashed drive and all data lost.

I've just used Acronis to resize NTFS from 230GB to 150GB and to create new ext3 and Linux swap partitions and an unallocated one that will become OSX. It took less than 3 minutes to do all of it, all data is intact.
.

 

[boskysquelch]

now here's a thing.

I wud have used this http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_Installation_Guide

 

[newbie]

I read them, I already had the XP & OSX installed. Those instructions recommend using GParted for repartitioning, I tried that, it took forever and trashed all the data.

 

[boskysquelch]

a bad workman always blames his tools.

I guess you are colour blind?