Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on a Sony Vaio VPCW12Z1R

So, I was asked to describe the process of installing UNR on my netbook. Actually, it’s all described here, but there’s one detail that caused me quite a headache because I didn’t know about it. The thing is, while installing Ubuntu, my netbook (and my laptop too) went to a black screen, and nothing happened. Things were a little better on the laptop: at least I could see where it had frozen:

... can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow ...

After some Googling, I came across the thread Install gives sorta blank screen on netbook, and post number 9 specifically helped me solve the black-screen problem. Now I’ll go through everything in order…

Creating the USB image

Since it came with Windows 7 Starter, we’ll be creating the bootable USB and doing the other preparations under that OS. Then we’ll move over to UNR and finish installing Ubuntu.

If you need to back things up or edit partitions, I can recommend “Hiren’s Boot CD,” but since we’re using USB rather than a CD, read about making a USB version. You can grab the latest distribution here: http://www.hirensbootcd.net/.

Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook and download ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso, then open the ISO file with any archive utility (I used 7zip) and extract the little program “usb-creator.exe” from it.

The flash drive must be at least 700 MB and must be formatted beforehand.

Launch usb-creator, click “Other” [1] in the first panel and load our ISO image, select the drive [2] in the second panel, then select “discarded on shutdown, unlessyou save them elsewhere” [3] and click “Make startup disk” [4].

That’s it, the image is ready. Let’s get on with the installation!

Installation

Plug the flash drive into a USB port, restart the laptop, enter the BIOS (F2 during startup), and select “boot from flash drive.” Save the settings and exit the BIOS.

Now, if everything is fine, you’ll see Ubuntu’s boot menu. You can run it from the flash drive, start the installation, or choose from a few other options: checking the integrity of the distribution, testing the computer’s memory, and so on.

Select the appropriate item and proceed with the installation. You’ll need to create your account, specify your location and locale—I think you can manage that. At the end of the installation, you’ll be asked to allocate space on the hard drive for Ubuntu (Prepare disk space). This step is also quite simple, and Ubuntu will correctly allocate the amount of disk space you specify. I allocated 50 GB.

You can also use the utilities on Hiren’s Boot CD to partition the hard drive.

That completes the installation. By the way, after restarting, grub successfully picked up the Windows 7 partition, which is certainly nice—I couldn’t get FreeBSD to do that.

Starting up

I installed an English-only version for myself and just added a Russian keyboard layout after installation, so my interface looks like this:

Here’s another screenshot, of Firefox:

After installation, I recommend updating the system, and the kernel in particular. To do that, launch “System > Update Manager” (once you open the System tab, scroll down).

That seems to be everything. There weren’t any particular problems apart from writing the USB image.

Impressions

Overall, I liked almost everything! All the devices worked properly. The interface is what I like most—just right for netbooks. But I didn’t like, for example, the way it enters hibernate/suspend modes. It’s rather clumsy: everything just freezes, and after a while it switches to the appropriate mode. Until then, you’re sitting there like an idiot, trying to figure out what happened. They could at least show a black background with a message saying that the transition is in progress, or, better still, show each stage of the transition.

I also noticed a bug: the laptop was charging and reached a full charge, after which I put it into hibernation and unplugged the power cord. Later, I turned it on without plugging it in and worked on it for four hours, but Ubuntu kept telling me the battery was fully charged the whole time. Somehow, I didn’t believe it… unless I’ve got a super-laptop powered by bioelectric currents ;)

P.S. Sergey Mozhaysky’s impressions of UNR: A Netbook, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and My Linux Experience (he’s the author of frenzy, my favorite FreeBSD distribution).

Update: If Skype’s interface is glitchy—specifically, if the background and text in its context menu are the same color—you need to go to “Skype > Options” and select “GTK+” under “Choose style”.