What I learn from trying to install Ubuntu eee

If you’re following me via tweeter, you already know the pain involved in this process.

XP runs fine on an eeePC. However, XP’s UI is clearly not optimized for eeePC’s shorter screen resolution. I’ve been looking for alternatives, and Ubuntu eee looks very good. This is a place where the open source community has the clear advantage to develop a netbook-optimized UI. Another great thing about Ubuntu eee is the super easy instruction to make a bootable USB flash drive as the install source.

So, for starter, obviously I want to backup the XP install on my eeePC first. I already have a backup on my Windows Home Server, but I thought making a ghost image would mean faster restore when things got awry. In searching for a free ghosting app, I found Clonezilla. Hey, it’s free! 🙂 Also, the site shows a clear step-by-step process and super easy step in creating a bootable USB flash drive containing Clonezilla live. Another prop for the open source community. Microsoft and most paid ghosting programs are still stuck in the 90s, only supporting bootable CD. Guess what, more and more PCs (especially netbooks) don’t even come with optical drives anymore. Besides, installing from a USB flash drive is much faster than a CD/DVD.

Anyway, I managed to create an image of my XP install to an external hard-drive using Clonezilla. The process was painless. Next, installing Ubuntu eee. Another quick and painless process. Then it went downhill.

First of all, the UI on Ubuntu eee is very nice. Obviously it is optimized for the low res nature of netbooks. Very easy to interact, and definitely has a lot of potential. However, couple minutes later, Update Manager showed a gazillion of updates for Ubuntu. This was the tipping point. Ubuntu eee is a modified Ubuntu, and the updates will yell at you that it needs to uninstall some eeePC related apps. I would’ve refused, but I want the latest security patches/updates (Ubuntu eee by default only comes with Firefox 3.01). So I bite, and let some of the updates install.

Things seemed okay, but then I was wondering how do I turn on the wifi on the eeePC? Obviously there’s a switch in the BIOS, but having to restart the OS everytime just to turn-on/off wifi is not ideal. Pressing Fn+F2, as documented, will crash Ubuntu. So WTF? Not having a basic functionality like this is not good. The wiki site suggested to install eee control, an app that looks like the eee tray app in Windows. I tried installing, it doesn’t like a conflicting item called eee-config. I uninstalled eee-config, now it wanted some python related stuff. The problem is I couldn’t find it in the Package Manager at all! WTF? Oh, to add insult to the injury, I plugged in a USB flash drive to the eeePC, Ubuntu eee said I need a super user privilege to mount it. Huh? Plenty of users posted these problems online, and typical Linux community, all of them are spewing sudo command lines. Yet another reason why Linux won’t become a mainstream OS soon. I didn’t even bother to see if my USB EVDO modem work or not, I decided to scrap Ubuntu eee and go back to XP.

I ran Clonezilla again, restoring the previously made image. Seems okay at first, but then it froze at about 40 something %. Uh oh. I reset the PC, and XP seemed to start fine, then it started yelling about some file errors, and to run chkdsk. Oh great. Rebooted XP, ran chkdsk, and it found tons of errors. I saw some of them are Firefox files. Not good. After it finished, XP booted normally, but Firefox is crapped out. It ran, but none of my extensions are usable, even after uninstalling and reinstalling.

Last resort, the backup I have on Windows Home Server. First of all, how do I use the WHS restore CD? Google to the rescue, I found this link. It basically walked you through on how to make a bootable flash USB drive using Vista, and it mentioned making a WHS restore “CD” on a USB flash drive. Easy, but required Vista. Luckily I do have a Vista machine.

After creating a bootable USB flash drive containing the WHS restore software, time to go to work. It booted just fine on the eeePC, but then it asked for drivers since it needs a network driver to access the WHS unit. Luckily, Microsoft must have thought about this, and in the WHS backup, the software automatically saves the needed drivers. All I need to do is copy them to another USB flash drive, and have the WHS restore software read it. Awesome! Restore process was painless, fairly quick (the eeePC’s partition has only about 9GB used space anyway), and the most important part, it was a successful restore! Whew!

Okay, let’s recap.
Ubuntu eee:
+ Great netbook-optimized UI
+ Easy install and creation of bootable USB flash drive source
– Basic hardware functions are not complete (wifi, unable to mount USB drive). I mean c’mon, mounting a USB flash drive is supposed to be simple.
– Questionable ability to update the OS from official Ubuntu source
Another great potential from the open source community, but hampered by the geek mentality of the community itself.

Clonezilla:
+ Free disk cloning utility
+ Easy to setup as a bootable Clonezilla Live on a USB flash drive
+ Backup process is successful
– Text only UI, can be confusing for some due to some confusing menu options/explanations
– Restore process is screwy (not much useful for backup if you cannot restore it)
Might be a great utility for cloning Linux systems, but I won’t let it touch my Windows systems anymore.

Windows Home Server:
+ A must have for those wanting easy backup solutions for their XP/Vista PCs.
+ Restore process is quite straight forward and painless
– MS only gives an ISO for a bootable CD. MS needs to provide a utility to create a bootable WHS restore USB flash drive. Sure, it’s easy to make your own, but why can’t MS provide a built-in utility to create one?
– Costs money
I thought I would never use the backup function of my WHS. I’m glad that it worked fine. 🙂

If you want a netbook with Ubuntu/Linux, get one that is already preinstalled with those OS, thus providing full function out of the box. Dell Inspiron Mini has the option for Ubuntu. Oh well, hopefully MS will provide a netbook-optimized UI in Windows 7.

 

Installing XP from a USB drive

OK, after knowing that I can install Ubuntu from a USB drive, how about XP? Re-installing XP takes a lot of time, mainly because the slow speed of optical drives. It would be great to be able to install XP from USB drive. I found this guide, which details how to create a bootable XP install on a USB drive. The guide focuses on eeePC, but it can work for any other PCs. I used a slipstreamed XP SP3 install disc.

Couple tips:
1. In preparation of the USB drive, change its drive letter to be something above the regular drive letter, something like K: or P:. At first, I have my USB drive as the D: drive, and the process was halted in the middle where one of the process said D: drive is invalid. Changing it to P: works.
2. I tried booting the USB drive on my old desktop, it went through the first loading of drivers, but when windows setup said “starting windows,” it BSOD. Dunno why. I tried the same thing on my old laptop (the one I installed Ubuntu from USB drive because the optical drive is busted), and it worked.
3. During the reinstall process, don’t change the boot order of the computer until you are actually get into the XP desktop. There will be 2 or 3 reboots, keep the USB drive as the boot drive and pick option 2 to “continue install/start XP.” If you switch the boot drive to the computer’s C drive before the whole process finishes, you’ll get missing hal.dll error.

There we go. Loving this USB install as it is much faster than installing from a CD.

 

Installing ubuntu from a USB drive

Got an old computer? Installing ubuntu on an old PC is a great way to recycle and breath in new life to old systems. However, what if the old PC’s optical drive is busted? This is even harder if you have a laptop since optical drives for laptops is harder to find and expensive. Well, no worries. As long as the computer can boot from a USB external drive (I was surprised that an old Dell laptop from 2004 can do this), you’re in for a treat!

You need a running windows/linux system (can be the same system you’re planning to install ubuntu to) and a USB flash drive. Download the ISO of ubuntu, and UNetbootin. Make sure there is enough space on the flash drive for the ISO. Install and run UNetbootin. Select the ISO and the target flash drive, and let it run. It will make the flash drive bootable, containing the ISO. After it finishes, reboot, go to the BIOS and set the computer to boot from a USB device, plug-in the USB flash drive (if you haven’t done it), and you’ll be greeted by the standard ubuntu installation. What’s the treat? The install process is much faster than using a CD simply due to the faster read rate of USB flash drives. You’ll be up and running in no time. Neato.