TooMuchGreen

Due to a change of circumstance I eBayed the Dell Mini 9 last week. Don’t get me wrong, it had been, and was still, superb as a cheap little Ubuntu dev box to SSH into however now I’m “on-site” at the Leeds office certain days of the week it just wasn’t a viable option to work on all day, cool as it was that mini keyboard was just too small for anyone larger than a woodland elf.

So, enter the Dell Mini 12, the “big brother” of the 9. I was looking forward to getting to grips with it and didn’t foresee any problems (famous last words). Priced well at £259 I was left with an agreeable buffer of beer tokens after also eBaying the MacBook Air for £675 (a bargain even if I say so myself). It arrived in good time and on opening the box I was pleased with the size and weight, in fact it was perfect and I couldn’t wait to install Karmic 9.10 RC on it in readiness for the final release the same week, I’d “unetbooted” the a USB stick a few days earlier so in it went.

To cut a long story short(er) the 12 comes with Intels popular GMA500 graphics chip which above Ubuntu 8.04  causes a right headache as Intel haven’t produced any official drivers (nor do they intend to). Foolishly I’d taken the eBay listing spec “as was” and was of the impression it had the Intel GMA950 on board, had this been the case I wouldn’t have lost two days of my life trying to get it going.

Anyway, here I am two days later and with vastly increased Dell laptop & associated Ubuntu driver knowledge. It IS possible to get the GMA500 fired up on Karmic but in the end I opted for the still-complex-but-easier Jaunty procedure, my imminent needs are for a lightweight Ubuntu laptop providing a mobile LAMP for groupware development at the back end with a useable 1280×800 laptop/desktop at the front for general day to days, as it is now the relevant buttons are pushed.

For those who may find themselves in the same boat here’s the run down to get things sorted on a clean install of Jaunty 9.04 (or Mint 7). It’s good for the Mini 10′s also. Looking at the list as it is now I find it hard to believe there’s two days of head scratching there. Open Terminal and..

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-mobile.list

..add the following content to the newly created file and save..

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

..next (typing “Y” when prompted)..

$ sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys C6598A30
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo aptitude install psb-kernel-source psb-kernel-headers
$ sudo reboot

..after reboot go back into terminal and..

$ sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-psb poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d
$ sudo reboot

..that’s it, not too bad really when you get into it. Feel free to contact me if you have any bother.