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.



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



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.

Dell's Custom User Interface Photo Gallery

The Defualt desktop and the Dell clutter launcher.


Entertainment


Games


Learn


Productivity

(why do I need Adobe Reader? Gnome reads and writes PDFs)

Web


Web Browser In Action (Dell's version of Firefox)

Google has a deal with Mozilla to be the default search engine for Firefox, since Dell doesn't see a dime of that money the decided to sell that privilege to Yahoo! In order to do so they cannot use the Firefox logo or name. Dell makes this worse by installing a Yahoo! toolbar onto their Web Browser. Firefox defiantly doesn't need a Yahoo! toolbar and it takes up way too much screen space. Thanks Dell! I bought the Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu so I wouldn't get crapware.

I'm not a big fan of Dell Custom User Interface. It's slow and not my style. The good news is that it's easy to turn it off. You need to do is click the Ubuntu logo and select the Switch Desktop Mode entry.


The Normal Desktop

Ubuntu feels and runs much faster in this normal mode.

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

A Look a Dell's Custom User Interface

This video features Doug Anson, Dell's lead who worked with Canonical, going through some of the features of Dell's custom interface for the Mini Ubuntu operating system.



I still think that The Notebook Remix UI is better, with its darker colors, the launcher's smarter layout and the window picker applet.

I plan on deleting Dell's installed version of Ubuntu after tinkering with it and installing Ubuntu 8.10. I want to partition my drive and use the ume-launcher, window-picker-applet, and maximus.

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