Thursday, October 16, 2008

Mini 9 Ships with Partition Error

Dell really dropped the ball with the Mini 9. The Ubuntu version is just severely crippled. The Dell Custom User Interface isn't anywhere as fast, advanced or intuitive as Netbook Remix's ume-launcher and it ships with a poorly partitioned hard drive.

I bought the 16BG hard drive with my Mini 9, as you can see from the picture below. What I received from Dell was a 4GB install of Mini OS. Thanks Dell, I don't need the 8GB of extra hard drive space I specifically paid for.

Screenshot_fdisk

I quickly ditched Mini OS and installed Ubuntu 8.10 Beta. Look at the difference:

new_partitions

To check your hard drive partitions
In a terminal type:
sudo fdisk -l

And, don't worry UbuntuMini.com has your back. You can learn how to make a LiveUSB and then install Ubuntu properly onto your Mini 9. - Install guide HERE

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover?
Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

6 comments:

Joe Dericho said...

that's interesting. i did not check the partitioning on my 8gb drive before i reinstalled. i wonder if that was an imaging mistake (i.e. they pushed the wrong image to it in the factory) or if that is what they intended. surely they don't expect you to create a new partition and mount point for anything over 4gb.

Anonymous said...

I'd be interested to know where did you find the lpia binaries for Ubuntu 8.10. I assume you installed the i386...

redDEAD said...

I am also thinking imaging mistake. No quality control on Dells part.

WolfKeeper said...

Just finished installing 8.10 using your instructions. Except for a CD-ROM that didn't cooperate (changed over to a USB key), everything went smoothly. Recognizes my 2GB of RAM.

Two bugs, probably due to 8.10 from what I'm reading: none of my USB flash drives will mount, and there are graphical glitches whenever I open Firefox (but they go away as soon as it's done loading, I'm guessing it might be a problem with compiz.)

Excellent work guys!

Ron Z said...

Does Ubuntu on the Dell Mini have dual monitor support or does it only provide mirroring?

Douglas said...

FWIW:
I got my Mini9 today and the partition error appears to be fixed on the newer ones. I got the 4gb drive.