I recently picked up a MSI Wind Netbook and love the damn thing. Ubuntu Netbook Remix brings in a great UI which makes navigating on the small screen much easier.I used Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 4 as the base install, mainly because I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting my ext3 partitions to ext4 when it comes out on April 23rd, and the driver support is more complete. I haven't had many problems with it aside from a few random firefox crashes.
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We're going to make a bootable USB stick to install Ubuntu
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On a separate machine, Download the cd image. If you want to use 8.10, get the iso here
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if you are already using an Ubuntu install of 8.10 or higher, skip to step 11
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burn the image to a cd
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Boot to the cd, do not install, load the demo OS
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click System->Administration->Create a USB startup disk
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point it to either the cd in your drive, or the iso
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point to the correct USB stick
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the rest of the settings can stay default
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click Make Startup Disk
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Insert the usb drive into your wind, power it on, and hit delete to go into the bios, change the first boot device to USB Drive
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save and exit the bios
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If the wind boots off of the USB stick correctly, you should see the same screen as when you had booted off the cd
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Install Ubuntu
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I made my partitions as follows:
|30 gig recovery partition|20 gig XP partition|15 Gig Ext4 Ubuntu Partition|4
gig swap partition|the rest of the drive as an ext4 partition
![](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ng3QbVQfLZ8/SaYPBBQ2EmI/AAAAA
AAAa74/DBWWqZQOEko/s1600-h/partitions.png)
- That last partition is where I will mount my home directory, as well as mount from windows xp using ext2fs (I havn't actually tried this yet)
- Add the netbook remix repositories to your system. This can be be done in synaptic or by typing the following into a terminal
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
- add the following:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install go-home-applet
sudo apt-get install window-picker-applet
sudo apt-get install maximus
sudo apt-get install human-netbook-theme
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Select the "Human Netbook Theme" in System Preferences>Apperance
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go into System Preferences-> sessions->startup programs and confirm that "Maximus" and "window-picker-applet" are thre
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Disable Compiz Effects System Preferences->Appearance->None
This is what is required to get netbook remix running, I continued with the
following to tweak it some more
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Delete the bottom panel by right clicking on it
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Delete all the applets on the top panel by right clicking on them
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Add applets to the top panel so it ends up like:
Window Picker Applet | Trash Can |Notification Area | MixerApplet | Clock
- I also made alt+q the hotkey to show the desktop, makes navigating to it faster. Another option is the show desktop applet button that can be added to the top bar. Preferences->keyboard shortcuts->"Hide all normal windows....."
More info is available here.