IT Milk: entry

Here’s an installation guide and review of Ubuntu 6.10 and Zenwalk 4.4.1 Linux distributions on the Acer Aspire 5100 laptop. Linux is a pain in the ass, most of the time, because everything doesn’t work “out of the box.” I find that you spend more time configuring hardware than enjoying the operating system.

The following installation will give you a dual-boot machine with Windows XP and a flavor of Linux on separate partitions. Also, my instructions assume that you haven’t messed with the partition table since you first purchased the machine.

1. Before you start, use the Acer proprietary recovery tool to make a backup of the the OEM Windows XP operating system. This will require either 2 DVD’s or 7 CD’s. Get ready to lose your Windows because we’re going to reformat the entire hard drive.
2. You can use a variety of software for this part, but I used the gparted tool on the Ubuntu Live CD to rewrite the partition table. If you downloaded the default Ubuntu 6.10 CD, it will automatically boot to the Live CD. Execute the following: hda1 (fat32) is 20GB; hda2 (ext3) is 20GB; hda3 (linux-swap) is 1GB; hda4 (fat32) is the remaining space. Note that hda1 will mount Windows XP, hda2 will mount Linux, hda3 is the swap space, and hda4 is the shared space between Windows and Linux.
3. Windows XP will be installed first. Insert the first CD/DVD that you created with the Acer backup recovery tool and reboot. (Your boot option in the BIOS should be set so that the CD Drive is the first boot device. To enter the BIOS menu, press F2 when you first boot up.) The Acer backup will automatically guide you through the proper installation of Windows XP on hda1.
4. Next, to install Linux, reboot with either the Ubuntu or the Zenwalk CD. The main things to note is that you should mount the root folder (/) on hda2, the swap space on hda3, and the shared space (/shared) on hda4.

That’s it. Easy, wasn’t it? But, like I said, you still have a long way to go before the Linux system is completely functional. Here’s a table of what works and what doesn’t on Ubuntu and Zenwalk.

Overall, Ubuntu delivers a better installation & configuration experience than Zenwalk does. But if you want to learn Linux through the sweat and toil of getting the damn hardware components to work, try Zenwalk or any other “expert” distributions like Slackware or Gentoo.

Also, good luck on trying to get the BCM4318 wireless card to work. I spent several hours trying the ndiswrapper and bcm43xx module, but neither prevailed for me. There are many resources that offer help for the BCM4318 card (search on Google), none of them worked for me. I’ll let you know once I figure this bit out.