Adventures testing my NetBook for Ubuntu — then installing and using it.
Remember, I am a Mac user. A power Mac user who started on DOS, but prefers ease and efficiency.
The NetBook: Compaq Mini with Intel Atom processor. Similar to the HP 500 that is listed as officially compatible. (This gave me hope. There are online boards full of compatibility posts but way too many for me to sift through. Plus, only the latest version matters.)
This is my documentation of my foray into Ubuntu on a friend’s NetBook.
Challenge 1: What format must the USB stick be? Ubuntu.com’s simple instructions didn’t say. My USB stick had been reformatted for the MacOS and I suspected that wouldn’t do. Following the directions to install on Windows, I found the stick needed to be Fat32. OK. Next, reformat. Easy? No! Reformatting on a Mac is simple. But here and now I had only Windows XP Home Edition – and only in Spanish, and without a mouse using only a tiny trackpad and side-placed clicked that is very foreign to me. And in a place with very little light to add to the difficulty. So, I tried doing reformatting on a friend’s PC. It failed. Something was missing on her PC. We tried several times, even enlisting screen shared help from PC geek Benjamin Rockwell. Yet later, upon the arrival of a hotel guest from Argentina, I tried the reformat on my own NetBook. Now I was able to right-click without fear and learned a few key command option words. (Guarder means Save!)
The Argentine guest was only with me for a few minutes. I was soon on my own again. But I reformatted just fine on my own.
Challenge 2: Download the two linked files and just follow the directions. Not so easy. It says to download the first file and open it using the torrent of your choice. Great. What’s a torrent? How do you open a file in a torrent? And remember, I am in Spanish, please.
So I searched for a Windows torrent app, downloaded and installed it. Now just launch the file? No… That act downloads another file. And where is that file? And what happens in the torrent reader once it is open? I clicked around and figured it out but don’t particularly think I did it efficiently rough to tell anyone how.
Finally, when I launched the second downloaded file, the Setup, it could run and do its thing. Armed with the right files, and enough Spanish Windows experience this part became easy.
Finally, I had the bootable Ubuntu stick. I shut down the PC via the Inicio (Start) menu. (I still wonder at the logic of putting any stop command under a start category.)
Challenge 3:
I’d had to learn somewhere that upon start-up a PC would offer an opportunity to press F9, then arrow keys to tell the PC to boot from the USB stick instead of the internal hard drive. (To be fair, one must take the time to learn that on the Mac you must press Option to make your startup volume choice. It is just more informational and prettier on Mac.) I pressed F9, arrowed down to my USB stick, pressed Enter (I think) and….
Finally, I saw Ubuntu on my NetBook. Ubuntu in English. English, beautiful English, THE language I can work in.
Challenge 4: Discover how well Ubuntu works on this particular NetBook.
After taking a few moments (it seemed longer) to simple enjoy the sight of Ubuntu and English on the PC, it was time to try it. Would the drivers be compatible: would the keyboard work properly, would the trackpad, a mouse, the camera, the mic, the sound card and speakers…? Would programs run?
I put my finger to the trackpad and smiled broadly as the pointer moved on the screen!
Then I clicked an app icon in the Launcher to try the keyboard and my smile faded as I discovered that my clicking was in vain. Time to shut down. Time to find a mouse to test. It was very late anyway.
The next day I walked over to a friend’s office, pushed a RF stick into a USB slot, manned the mouse – and smiled again! (I don’t expect to become very comfortable with that clicker so I planned on getting a mouse anyway.)
But interestingly, I soon realized the trackpad clickers were working as well.
Anyway, I continued testing for a few hours.
I launched the included LibreOffice and found the keyboard to work well. If there were to be small glitches I could live with then.
Sound? It appeared that the built-in speakers would not provide sound, but I heard well via the earphones so I was happy.
The mic seemed to be picking up sound when I watched the levels in the Settings.
Would the camera work? I thought to install Skype to try so it was time for a download.
I worried when a notice came up that said there was no Broadcom support built in. If I cannot connect to the Internet, how can I download and install the driver to connect to the Internet?
Clicking Activate without internet...
The option to Activate was there. Although I didn’t have Ethernet and thus didn’t have internet, so there was no logic for my action, I clicked to try the activation. Interestingly, the driver activated. I received Wi-Fi. (I also received a notice that I needed to restart in order to complete the installation but when using the bootable USB stick option this activation and all other settings customizations are not kept.)
So the wi-fi worked. I think I got Skype and camera worked.
There was no Bluetooth to test as this PC does not have it.
I was happy enough with the way my tests went. And settings and app installation don’t get saved to this bootable USB app, so it was time to install.
I double-clicked the installer and let it run. It handled everything. And… Upon reboot off the hard drive, everything worked. I had sound both in and out, camera, trackpad and mouse. I again downloaded the wi-fi driver – and it stayed in effect upon reboots.
Update?
After the install, I was notified of an update — to 12.04 LTS.
Did I dare? People had told me to go with an older version – tried and true. But in the Mac world new brings new features…
I went for it!
It works.
I don’t like all the features though. Like the side launcher doesn’t disappear like it did before I updated. And I wonder if before the DASH I would have seen my apps.
Both a Pro and Con:
Ubuntu sees my iPhone as a hard drive so I can simply drag my audio and video and images to the NetBook. But, there is no iTunes for it so I can’t do a normal sync. I cannot add music to the iPhone. There is an Ubuntu app but I don’t dare try it.
Pro: SFTP is built in. It is so easy to upload files to my cloud backups.
Con: There is no one-click file rename. Renaming files is tedious.
Con: You cannot see your apps folder. I can’t even know what apps I have. It has a DASH but It searches by complete name. Seek FTP and it won’t show you KFTP or gFTP. It WILL show FileZilla though. So it cannot be trusted. When you add an app don’t undock it. The dock will get crowded though.
Con: You cannot add items to the right side launch bar.
Still to learn:
Ubuntu can read my Mac formatted USB sticks. Can I write to it and then see that on a Mac??