toshiba-t100-series team mailing list archive

[wabi <wabi.quark@xxxxxxxxx>]

*Toshiba Satellite T135-S1312 (**Windows 7 to Ubuntu 10.04.1-desktop-amd64)

--- Wireless and headphone/cutoff working OUT OF THE BOX! ---

*** Ubuntu 10.04.1 is amazingly sweet! ***
**
This was by far the easiest OS install I have done in over 25 years!

I bought this laptop for my son in January and didn't feel Ubuntu was 
ready and didn't have the time until now.  **So when we received the 
laptop I shrunk the Windows partition to 100GB of a 500GB drive, leaving 
almost 400GB free for the future Ubuntu install, which I finally did 
today, expecting to have to dig into the forums to address problems with 
wireless, headphones, microphone, etc.  How wrong I was.*
*
We re-partitioned in Windows, rebooted onto the Ubuntu 10.04.1 Live USB 
stick, answered a few questions, and just a little while later we had a 
working Ubuntu laptop with wireless and the headphones and the 
headphone/speaker-cutoff working -- OUT OF THE BOX!**
**
We also chose to import all settings possible from the Windows 7 
installation.  A very nice and smart touch by Ubuntu.  When my son 
checked his home folder in Ubuntu, all of his documents had been copied 
over from the Windows 7 partition.

My son wanted the Google Chrome browser, so he went to the Chrome 
website, the webpage detected he was on Linux, he clicked the "download" 
button, the website sent a chrome ".deb" debian package file, which was 
handled by an Ubuntu/Gnome utility which installed the package.  SLICK!  
Later we found that Google Chrome was also available in the "Ubuntu 
Software Center" from the main Ubuntu desktop menu.

In the Synaptic package manager, we updated the system and installed the 
ubuntu-restricted-extras package to make sure that mp3s and DVDs and 
such would work.

The 2GB stick yields a somewhat sparse, but fully functional, install, 
including the main OpenOffice bits.  I like it that way, because then 
you load only the software packages that you need.

There's still space on the laptop disk for another OS install or two.  
Originally I thought that we might need to have 2 or 3 Linux distros on 
there to see which one worked the best.  Now, I'm beginning to think 
that Ubuntu is it.  Why try another one?  Well, I am still curious about 
Mint Linux and some others which might be nice to try.

For those interested, here are some step-by-step details about the 
re-partitioning and install process:

First, I downloaded the ISO image via bittorrent on my Ubuntu desktop:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04.1/ubuntu-10.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

Second, I used the Ubuntu Startup Disk utility on my Ubuntu desktop 
machine to create the live USB stick on a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer.  I took 
the option to completely format the stick. (I've messed around with this 
stick a lot to make other live grml.org and FAI sticks, so it might not 
have been factory clean as far as the MBR and partition table goes.)

Re-partition In Windows 7:
To shrink partition (this was the most difficult and tedious step):
  1- Turn off paging.
  2- Something else I cannot remember.
  3- Control Panel, Admin Tools, Management?, to Disk Management
      shrink the main partition (be careful!) I did it when the system
      was new and got it down to 100GB.
  4- Kept the small partitions at the beginning and end of the disk.
  6- Created 10GB Fat32, 30GB /, 10GB /var, 100GB /home partitions.
Rebooted windows and checked partitions again.

Reboot to Ubuntu Live USB!

Went straight to install, skipped "try it."

Chose the last partitioning option, "Advanced."
Quickly assigned the partitions made in Windows Disk Manager
to the Linux filesystem types and labels. 

Partitions look like this:

small recovery partition (original)
100GB Windows 7 (original, shrunk)
10GB Fat32 (for common storage if necessary)
8GB linux swap
30GB root (ubuntu)
10GB var (ubuntu)
100GB home (ubuntu)
200GB+ unused free space
small vista? partition (original)

We watched the install for 15 or 20 minutes at the most, rebooted, and 
voile!  We saw the grub boot loader screen, with both the Ubuntu and 
Windows partitions listed, Ubuntu as the default.  Booted into Ubuntu no 
problem, clicked the wireless icon in the upper right hand corner of the 
screen, selected our network name, and we're online!  Wonderful, easy 
install!

I still need to check the sleep/hibernate/suspend functions.  If those 
work, the Windows partition may never be used again on that laptop!

--
wabi

*