Getting Linux running in dual-boot on my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop with Windows XP.
I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10/Edgy Eft from ubuntu.com, a single ISO image which functions as a LiveCD and an installation CD. I burned the CD, stuck it in the drive and rebooted - which was successful, up to a point. The system loaded fine, right into the desktop - but the video was so distorted (vertical bands of missing/repeated display) that I couldn’t even see enough to start fixing it. There are known problems with this laptop and its ATI Mobility M4 video card, and googling revealed the quick answer was Fn-F7 to flip display modes.
So now the LiveCD’s working OK, albeit on at only VGA resolution. It’s good enough though to run GParted to set up my partitions: shrinking the sole 30GB NTFS XP partition to fit in a 3.2GB ext3 and 768MB of swap. Running installation from the icon on the desktop goes fine until the partition stage tells me the swap needs to be a primary partition (I’d set it up as extended), so I recreate the swap.
The only other problem with the really straightforward install was again my own mistake. I was asked where to install Grub and without checking changed the suggested hd0 to hda2 (my ext3 root partition), since I wanted to avoid overwriting the Windows MBR. Grub has its own syntax for disks and partitions though, and what I should have typed was hd0,1 (first disk, second partition - it’s zero-based). Since it didn’t recognize my answer, it defaulted to hd0 and bang goes the MBR. Practically speaking, it’s OK - after the installation’s finished, both systems boots fine - but the overwritten MBR makes me nervous about both screwing up Windows and not being able to revert to Windows-only should I have to.
Anyway, I want to set up the video card before trying to fix that. This thread at the Ubuntu Forums lists the necessary configuration changes, and that works - the resolution’s up to the full 1400×1050. There’s still a glitch in that the Ubuntu splash screen (after the Grub menu but before the login prompt) is off-centred and wrapped around the VGA-sized boot resolution, but I’ll come back to that.
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