Installing Ubuntu on a Dell

Have a 6 year old Dell here I'm working on. Had several virii on it. The owner spent 5+ hours on the phone with my personal favorite Symantec Angry-Tongue who couldn't get rid of all of them.

By the time he brings it to me, it's in a reboot loop making it to mup.sys and rebooting - safe mode, whatever doesn't matter. All tried all the hardware stuff of resetting the board, adjusting ACPI settings, pulling and trying different RAM - no go.

He also does not have his restore disc. It has Media Center and neither of my XP discs will even recognize it has an OS installed on it in order to attempt a MBR repair or anything else.

According to Dell, this machine is not capable of using Win 7.

Enter installing Ubuntu on it. Had 10.10 already downloaded and on a USB key. Only there's no option to resize an existing partition anywhere. So, downloading 11 - only it klooks like it's going to take 5 hours to download the stupid thing and I'm not going to be a happy camper if there still is no option to resize the partition as the Ubuntu directions say that there is.

I'd rather not have to backup the entire drive - I have already backed up his pics and stuff he "says" he wants off it. So, my question... Is the Ubuntu11 iso going to give me the option of resizing the existing partition or should I just pull it and hook it up to my Win 7 rig and try it there?

The app you're looking for is gparted (there are numerous but this would be a good one to start with). You can get it through apt/Synaptic if it's not installed (I don't remember if 10.10 comes with it on the live cd). Either way, you can install it while running the live cd. Either open up Synaptic and search for gparted or at the command line, execute the following two commands:

Ubunti Natty Narwhal does allow for partition resizing, at least it did on my hp laptop with XP already installed

Thanks guys. Found the gparted app. But, it won't resize the partition either. It lists the min and max as the existing size and won't take any changes if I try and force it. ?? Have 110Gb free on a 150GB single partition on the drive.

Guess I just need to go ahead and backup some more stuff just to make sure he's got everything and blow it away.

One of these days I'll learn to quit taking on these projects.

The partitioning bit should be part of the install process from a live cd

But back-up anyway just in case

Yeah it should, but it's not. Have the same options whether booting from the stick or running the install after booted up. Leads me to believe there may be an issue with the drive itself. But, I haven't had any issue accessing the drive copying data from or reading it from Ubuntu Live.

The travails of working on this stupid box.

Well, after taking an hour to download the first 100MB, the other 600MB of Ubuntu 11 downloaded in less than 10 minutes.

Get it copied onto the USB stick, pop it into the Dell, format the drive and it won't install. Ok, figured maybe a bad download, verify the checksum and all good, use VMWare to install it on my Mac... all good. Figure a bad copy to the stick, so do it again. Still won't install.

Ok, let's go back to 10.10. Get it on the stick and voila, it installs no problem... wt?.

Now we need to update to 11, takes about an hour to download the update, then... an hour and 50 minutes to unpack and install it??? Give me a break.

Anyway, the update is done and looks pretty cool I guess. They sure are copying and combining the latest features of Win 7 and OS X in the user interface though. Get all the owner's documents, pictures (about 3,000 of them), his music, etc. installed on it. All seems to be good.

Leave it on overnight. This morning, it takes 3-5 minutes to do anything. Click - wait 3 minutes for a menu to open. Click - wait 5 minutes for a window to open. Now, I'm thinking I was right yesterday - maybe not - let's reboot - we get back to the desktop, open up a couple of windows and close them - open a 3rd - locked up tighter than a drum.

omg - I was right yesterday - oh well, off we go to get a new drive - and do it all over again - when will I learn to just say "No, I don't do Windows".

Must be a bad drive, I have Unbuntu 11 on an old Centrino HP and is very zippy

Yeah, it looks pretty good and looks as if they're packaging everything an ex-windows user needs in it now also without having to go figure out how to play a dvd, install flash, etc. I hadn't really touched anything Linux since I bought my Mac.

My wife's old P4, 2.8Ghz Dell has been sitting for a couple of years unused. Think I may install it on there and play with it some more.

Don't really know what to think. Rebooted again, played a game, browsing the web, playing with pictures, moving files around, the things been working fine for an hour now.

(And don't comprehend why it takes an hour to copy 6GB of data to a flash drive - from two different machines. First time using one for that much data. Thought these things were suppose to be fast. I could have created DVDs in less time than that.)

You could also use WUBI thats what I had to do on mine that already had 4 partitions
its faster than virtual but not as fast as a true partition.

The thing with the Unity interface in 11.04 is that it's a 3D accelerated interface. If you don't have the proper video drivers installed (or don't have a supported card), this interface is going to be either really sluggish or it just won't work. GNOME3 is accelerated too in case you give that a try.

The Ubuntu community is receiving a lot of flak for their choices this time around. One thing you could look into if you like Unity but are having issues with it is to look at the 2D version which will run a lot nicer. More info here.

Van you were right. The video card is basically a 2D only card. I just put him back to 10.10 and he likes it pretty well.

Only thing now, he's got a Dell all-in-one printer. One for which there is no direct Lexmark crossover and no Linux drivers for it.

So, now we're stuck - get a new printer - see how much Dell will charge for a restore disc, if they'll even do that for a 6 yr old machine. According to Dell, his computer is not capable of running Win7 and gives no clue if that's due to motherboard, just the video card or what.

Was able to locate a XP OEM disc for $88, but never heard of the site.

When will folks learn to keep their freaking discs????

Yeah, the 3D option is a pain. I'm not sure why they did it that way but no point complaining now especially since the leader (Mark Shuttleworth) of the Ubuntu project doesn't seem to keen on being flexible (see here for instance).

Printers and scanners are probably the weakest point for Linux in terms of basic consumer hardware. Dell (or should I say Lexmark) printer support is limited - see the list of supported ones here compared to the list of HP printers for instance. What model is it? I'll take a look to see if I can find anything.

Van, been out of the loop since I got really sick a few months back. Does Open Suse use the 3D interface? I have had better luck of late with Open Suse over Ubuntu.

Bob, that Dell sounds like a real pain!! I have never gotten along with Dell printers as most are Lexmark. Poor driver support.

I forget now. Did check the Dell/Lexmark crossover model number site and found the model series it corresponds to.

I also found 3 threads in the Ubuntu forum with the same Dell model &/or series where at least a couple of the long standing members had helped out and was a no go. Lexmark doesn't have any OS X drivers for this one either.

At this point, I've just given him the option to: a) replace the printer, b) call Dell and see if he can get an original replacement disc (already tried through their online request and they denied it since it's out of warranty), c) see if we can still find an OEM XP disc, d) upgrade the video card and get a Win7 OEM disc, or e) get a new computer (6 yrs is long enough).

He does have a laptop in the house he can print from if he needs to and right now seems to like what he's got without spending any money. And since I'm not getting paid either... If he's happy, I'm tickled to death.

dtravis7 said:

Van, been out of the loop since I got really sick a few months back. Does Open Suse use the 3D interface? I have had better luck of late with Open Suse over Ubuntu.

Click to expand...

It is 3D accelerated but unlike Unity, the acceleration is not mandatory. You can turn off the desktop effects and have GNOME/KDE work just as well unlike Unity which requires it.

bobtomay said:

I forget now. Did check the Dell/Lexmark crossover model number site and found the model series it corresponds to.

I also found 3 threads in the Ubuntu forum with the same Dell model &/or series where at least a couple of the long standing members had helped out and was a no go. Lexmark doesn't have any OS X drivers for this one either.

At this point, I've just given him the option to: a) replace the printer, b) call Dell and see if he can get an original replacement disc (already tried through their online request and they denied it since it's out of warranty), c) see if we can still find an OEM XP disc, d) upgrade the video card and get a Win7 OEM disc, or e) get a new computer (6 yrs is long enough).

He does have a laptop in the house he can print from if he needs to and right now seems to like what he's got without spending any money. And since I'm not getting paid either... If he's happy, I'm tickled to death.

Click to expand...

Haha, you're probably out of luck then. The list of options you've got there is reasonable and if the gentleman doesn't want to spend any money, he's kind of limited in his choices. Now, if the printer is hooked up to another machine and he doesn't print all that often, I'd say he should just stick with what he's got.