Reply to: Dell Mini & New OS

[NickNick]

Will give it one last try tonight and see what happens. A quick look show that people aren;'t having much success in this area though.

What I need to do is get a company to provide tech support for my ltd and just hand it over to them to do. Anyone care to start a B2B relationship?

[~Craig~]

No CD / DVD drive and my other machine is a Windows one, so I'd assumed that I wouldn't be able to do anything with the CD to get it onto a USB and install it. Looks like I should invest in an external DVD drive.

you can create a bootable 'Live USB' drive to reinstall it. There should be plenty of info on:

http://mydellmini.com/forum/index.php

[NickNick]

No CD / DVD drive and my other machine is a Windows one, so I'd assumed that I wouldn't be able to do anything with the CD to get it onto a USB and install it. Looks like I should invest in an external DVD drive.

[~Craig~]

have you tried reinstalling Ubuntu from the disc that comes with it? The drives and memory are smaller on the Linux version so XP will run like a dog.

[NickNick]

And mine doesn't. Hence wanting to install XP.

[~Craig~]

mmm mine has a taskbar at the top with one or two drop-downs as well as the central menu's.....

[NickNick]

Ahh yes, but of course I can't see any drop downs. i.e. there is no task bar "start" button etc etc.

[~Craig~]

there's an option to change the layout to the standard Ubuntu one with a task bar etc. I think it's under Profile or something on one of the drop-downs.

It then just looks like a standard Ubuntu.

[NickNick]

Stick regular Ubuntu on it, in my experience these add-on's by vendors on OS's are more hassle than they are worth.

I'd love to. However, the thing now appears not want to do anything. I've already spent some 4 hours on hold to Dell in the last few weeks so it looks like I'll be calling them again tonight.

Bearing in mind I've had this since November and it has never worked.

And by worked I mean I've never been able to do anything at all on it, even correctly load up the GUI.

[portseven]

Stick regular Ubuntu on it, in my experience these add-on's by vendors on OS's are more hassle than they are worth.

[NickNick]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?

Use the laptop in any way at all.

There is no taskbar showing which means I cannot access anything on it at all. All i get is the desktop and a Dell "panel" (I believe it's called). Right clicking on the desktop only provides the option for "change background image". So all in all, it doesn't work. I wanted to do an install of XP jsut to get the thing working.

So anyway, I followed the EEE guide link from here last night and no joy, it just wouldn't work in the slightest. Now when I turn it on, not only do I get no task bar, but I get an error that says "Main partition is 100% full" Which is a laugh seeing as I've never actually used the laptop.

Dell of course only supply support for it 8-8 and are useless.

[expat]

I used the Linux install that came with my Asus for a while and it was 'fine', no problems, but when it comes down to it, its light years behind Windows.

Guess most people who get these mini Linux PC's give up in the end and whack Windows on.

Just an odd question: if it's slow on linux, does it have the muscle to run Windows?

[VectraMan]

FWIW I thought Kubuntu was quite good, and much more Windows-like than old brown Ubuntu.

[Durbs]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?

I used the Linux install that came with my Asus for a while and it was 'fine', no problems, but when it comes down to it, its light years behind Windows.

Guess most people who get these mini Linux PC's give up in the end and whack Windows on.

[~Craig~]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?