On Wednesday, I helped some cool Linux folks at the Bern Openexpo. It was quite a successful event. The Openexpo page invited people to come “Try Linux and other open source software and get free support in the Linux Install Zone“. Whow. I helped 4-5 people throught the day, installing linux on 3 boxes :
- SuSE 10.3 on a HP laptop, with some perversity in the grub installer
- Ubuntu 7.10 on an old Dell laptop (no issue at all, beside the slow patching session at end of installation)
- fixed a trackpad/xorg on a very, very old Dell laptop, and made some Apache demo
- provided some free consulting for two people wanting to do something with Linux but not knowing where to start
- and finally getting the almost new, shiny Dell Inspiron 9300 of Louis working with Ubuntu
That last one was hard. First, Ubuntu NTFS resizing tool didn’t detect the strange disk partitioning made by Dell (sda1 : 100Mb maintenance, sda2 : 50 Gb NTFS, sda3 : 4 Gb of who knows what). I had to use ntfsresize and fdisk to made some room for Ubuntu. Then, the ATI Mobility Radeon X300 was a nightmare to configure, and it’s still not working completely. If you buy this Dell machine, be sure to avoid the ATI graphic chip, and get the Nvidia one. And be careful when you use the Ubuntu partitioning tool.
Anyway, thanks to Markus Tschannen from Puzzle. He throwed us in cold water, and it was cool, indeed 
Comments 1
Glad you liked it and many thanks for helping those people find a pleasant start into the open side of the world.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 2:09 ¶Post a Comment