Experiences with Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 on Vostro (dual w/ XP)?

[BoulderGeek]

Has anyone used the new ISO of Ubuntu 7.10 with a live XP install on Vostro/Inspiron?

Wondering if there are any "Oops" type things to watch for, if Gparted is robust for live NTFS modification, etc.

I have a lot of hours into installing and locking down my Vostro XP install. I don't want to blow it away with bad partitioning. But, I have lots of experience installing Linux.

My laptop runs the Live CD very well, and 1680x1050 looks great right out of the chute.

[BoulderGeek]

I guess that it is bad form to reply to your own thread.

I decided to be bold and to go for it with Ubuntu 7.10. I successfully repartitioned my 150GB NTFS partition and shaved off 22GB to give to Linux.

I made 2GB of that swap. Which isn't really necessary, since I have 3GB of RAM. But, it it the Unix Way, so I did it as per usual.

Installation went fine, including downloading NVidia proprietary drivers and updating the default install with some favorite tools and packages.

The real test came when booting back to XP. Fortunately, the boot blocks were fine in the NT partition and it came up into the CHKDSK screen. The modified partition table confused XP, and it needed to do a thorough fsck of the partition. After that, no problem: Windows as usual.

I'm running a happy dual-boot Vostro 1500 now. 7.10 isn't much different to the user than 7.04. But, having Linux and Doze on my laptop will be helpful as I go to the South Pole and capture my experiences.

[Sredni Vashtar]

I guess that it is bad form to reply to your own thread.

I was saying something similar to Harvey, my 9 ft tall rabbit...

Installation went fine, including downloading NVidia proprietary drivers and updating the default install with some favorite tools and packages.

I am about to add Ubuntu to my penguins collection. Did you download the 32 bit or the 64 bit version? I am new to Core2Duo and I don't know if the 64 bit version is better suited to this sort of 64 bit cpu, or if I should stick to a more stable 32 version.

I'm running a happy dual-boot Vostro 1500 now. 7.10 isn't much different to the user than 7.04. But, having Linux and Doze on my laptop will be helpful as I go to the South Pole and capture my experiences.

You going to the South Pole???
Lucky sod! :-)
Roasted penguins and fried snow, how I wish I could go there.

Will you bring back some good penguin pictures to place in the free domain?

[Sredni Vashtar]

OK, installed.
One note: it seems to me that the default - and sole - option for GRUB is to install it in the MBR. Bad thing.
I had to click on the advanced button on the seventh installaton screen to uncheck the installation of grub on hd0.
Other distros (Knoppix, mepis, kanotix) allows one to choose where to install grub.
Luckily I had my Kanotix grub on another partition and I was able to boot into the newly installed ubuntu after editing one entry.

After the first boot I get very hot air coming out of the air vent. This never happens with Vista.

All in all I do not like the Ubuntu way too much (it's too muck windows-like for my tastes). But I think I'll keep it. Now I'm off for some updating and drivers downloading.

Gee, I though I was able to install grub on a separate partition but it seems it is not so. Shouldn't I follow the instructions for installing it in a separate boot partition? (in this case the partition is the same used by /).
i'll try again later.