Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Intrepid Leopard XP on My MSI Wind (Dec 17 08)



My wife told me that my Dell Inspiron 6000 was too heavy at over two kilos, for an old man like me to be toting around. So I got myself an MSI Wind U100x, which weighs just a little over one kilo. This Wind had the famous Atom N270 processor that runs at 1.6GHz, 2GB memory, 160GB SATA disk, six-cell battery providing about 3.5 hours at this configuration, and cost me about PHP21,500.00 at PC Corner on Gilmore Street in Quezon City.

I asked the store technician to install the default WinXP Home (SP3) on a 30GB partition. This is the Microsoft-licensed OEM version that ships with the Wind.

When I got home, I prepared an Ubuntu 8.10 installer on a 2GB USB thumbdrive, using my Yebuntu installer, a Ubuntu installer with development packages and manpages-dev and various developer documentation. Yebuntu can be downloaded from:

http://curry.ateneo.net/~ambo/yebuntu.html

Aside from the 30GB primary partition containing Windows, I created a 30GB primary partition for Mac OSX Leopard, a 30GB primary partition for Linux root, and the rest of the 160GB as extended partitions for Linux swap and Linux /home. Ubuntu 8.10 installed without problems, except that I had to get the Realtek 8187se WiFi driver from

http://boskastrona.ovh.org/

Ubuntu runs fine on the Wind. I had to remove the bottom panel and retained only the top panel (task bar), since the 1024x600 resolution is too little for two panels. But one top panel is fine. I added to the top panel a Window Selector, to select from active windows using a menu. If you add a Window List instead, you can select from active windows using buttons, but the top panel becomes too crowded with buttons that you can not read the button text anymore, making them useless for switching between windows.

Next I will describe how I installed Mac OS X 86 Leopard 10.5.4 on the MSI Wind. More on the next post.



4 comments:

Murrfk said...

Did you HAVE to install Windows first....I am also looking at a triple boot system...but mine came with Linux Suse on it...

Ambo said...

The store technician installed the Windows XP Home. This is part of the package, and PC Corner won't sell MSI Wind without the WinXP. I asked if I can pay less if WinXP is not installed, but the salesman said that the price is low enough. So I had them go ahead and install WinXP. The technician agreed to devote only 30GB for WinXP, so I had the rest of the 160GB for other purposes.

Ambo said...

Murrfk: If you have Suse Linux already installed, then you can use parted, the partition editor to adjust one of the existing partitions to make way for a hfs+ partition for Leopard. I suggest a 30GB hfs+ partition if you intend to do program development under Leopard.

Murrfk said...

I want to have all three....Suse is on it already....I THINK that Windows does only install well if it is the first installation...which means I will have to overright the Suse partition and factory restore info. I am looking for a way to avoid that, but I don't believe there is one.... The U90 has dropped to about #250,00US with Linux