HOWTO: Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 on Dell XPS M1330

[SnowflakeRV7]

Here's my success story after installing Ubuntu on my Dell XPS M1330 laptop.

I - The basic configuration:

XPS M1330
Processor - Core2Duo 2.2GHz
Memory - 2GB 667MHz
Hard Drive - 160GB 5400rpm
Graphics - nVidia 8400GS, 128M RAM
Screen - Slim 1280x800 LED Backlight
Wireless - Intel Wireless A/G
Extras: Fingerprint Reader, Dell Infrared Media Remote

The laptop by default has four primary partitions, in this order (sizes approximate, I forget the exact numbers):
1 - tiny partition - 100 MB?
2 - Dell Recovery Partition - 10 GB, 5 GB of which is in use.
3 - Main Vista Partition - 135 GB, 24 GB of which is in use.
4 - Another smaller partition, 2 GB or so. Apparently it's a "Media Live" partition or something.

Within the fourth primary partition is a single extended partition, that fills the entire primary partition.

II - Setting up the computer:

During a startup, hit F2 and go into the BIOS setup. By default the boot order is HD, USB, Network, CD or some such. You want to move the CD to the top of the list, at least. I put things in the following order: CD, USB, HD, Network.

A note that i'll place here as it's a "general" comment": When booting from the Ubuntu CD, I pushed the F4 key and selected the screen resolution 1280x800x32 each time. I don't know if the Ubuntu CD would boot with the correct resolution or not, I didn't give it the chance to try (or to screw up .

III - Resizing the partitions:

I read through all the notes here online about using Vista's own partition resizing tools to resize, but Vista would only offer to reduce the 3rd partition to 86 GB, so I didn't want to do that. A few people used gparted to repartition without problems, so I elected to go that route. I disabled the pagefiles, and let Vista do a defragmentation on the drives. It took about 6 hours to defrag.

I booted into Ubuntu from the stock 7.10 CD (not the alternate). I fired up gparted, and made the following changes:

1. Partition 1 was tiny, so I left it alone.
2. Reduce partition 2 from 10 GB to 6 GB.
3. Reduce partition 3 from 135 GB to 35 GB, and move it up next to partition 2.
4. Increase partition 4 from 2 GB to whatever was left (104 GB, I think), to fill the whole drive.
5. Moved the 2 GB extended partition to the start of partition 4.

I did it this way because it keeps all of the partitions in the *same order* that they were when the computer was built by Dell... Anything I do with Ubuntu now will show up on the computer *after* the other partitions, hopefully not screwing up or confusing the Vista install.

I told it to Apply the changes, and went to have a coffee. It worked on each step in turn, resizing and moving stuff around. Note: When it went to resize the 135GB partition, it seemed to die. You could still move windows around and move the mouse, but the gparted status window stopped updating for a few minutes. I'm not sure what part of the process was taking the time, but it needed to finish that before it would continue. I let it work, and in about 2.5 hours I had all of my partitions shuffled.

IV - Cleaning up the Vista Partitions

Next, I rebooted the computer, and dropped in the Dell Recovery DVD. I didn't bother trying to boot into Vista first, based on reports of others online it seems the chances of a clean startup were nil anyway. I assumed it wouldn't work and that I would need to do a repair. The Recovery CD started up, and I just followed the prompts until I was offered the option to Repair my installation... It's in the lower left corner of the window. I chose that option.

Vista immediately detected that a repair was necessary, and when I said "ok" to the fix, it was finished almost as quickly as I hit the key. Next, reboot. Vista automatically detected that the drives had been played with, and performed a chkdsk on them.

V - Installing Ubuntu

On the next reboot, I popped in the main Ubuntu disk. I booted into Ubuntu Live first, then clicked the "install" link on the desktop.

I proceeded through the install prompts, and when it got to the partitioning section, I chose "Guided, use largest available space".

Ubuntu installed hands-off, and automatically set up GRUB with the Vista partition, and the MediaLive partition, alongside the Ubuntu parts.

VI - Enjoying Ubuntu

After rebooting, I let Ubuntu download updates (about an hour and half over DSL). Then I activated the restricted drivers for the nVidia card, rebooted to get the new nVidia xserver running, and then activated all of the fancy compiz features.

Basically, from here on out, the laptop is running just fine. I added the DVD/MP3/FLASH/WMV stuff using the ubuntu repository, all seems to work fine. Vista boots fine, and i've had no problems with the reduced drive size. There's about 10G free in Vista, and I don't plan on installing anything else there now so that should do me just fine for the times I need it (I use MS at work, so i've got to have MS available at home from time to time).

VII - Final cleanup under Vista

I went back and turned on the pagefiles again, using the Vista default values (about 2G).

That's about it! I hope this helps others who might want to install Ubuntu on this Dell model.

-Rob

[SnowflakeRV7]

Update: Since installation, i've been having a blast. I haven't found anything that doesn't work yet, although it appears that I can't boot into the Media Direct partition using Grub, which means i'm pretty much locked our of media direct. Makes me wish I had turfed that partition when installing, rather than going to the trouble to try and save it. Oh well.

The SD card reader works flawlessly, both a Sandisk Ultra 2G and a Patriot Class 6 8G card were recognized, mounted, copied files to and from, and unmounted without problems.

World of Padman is an awesome game, btw. Just had to throw that in... I found it in the latest issue of Linux Journal, and had to try it since I used to play Q3Arena and loved the Padman levels. The only problem is that after about 10 minutes of play, it switches from fullscreen mode back to windowed mode, and essentially locks up. I can hear the game playing in the background, and see some graphics in the window, but I can't control the game anymore or exit to restart. The only way out is to ctrl-alt-backspace and re-log in to X. Maybe a graphics problem, or maybe something is updating on the desktop and I dont' realize it.

Haven't tried suspend/hibernate yet, i'll try those sometime and post an update as well.

[beamur]

I also have an XPS M1330 with Vista and Ubuntu. However, I am having issues with the wireless card (Broadcom BCM432 and the WLAN (SPRINT). Were you able to get those working?

[SnowflakeRV7]

I purchased mine with the Intel Wireless card, and have had no problems with connectivity. I didn't really need 802.11n capability, so I elected to forego it in favour of getting a known good wireless setup. Basically, my configuration has the same hardware that the Ubuntu-preloaded 1420n has in the US.

I haven't tried the WLAN capability. I didn't know until I bought the laptop that it had a SIM card (or whatever that is) slot... I only saw it when I swapped the battery the first time. It wasn't capability that I needed, so it wasn't a factor in the buying decision.

Oh, and to update an earlier question, suspend/resume works perfectly. Wireless too, it picks right up after opening the screen again. Haven't tried hibernate yet, i'm still a little leery of something that needs to futz with my hard drive.

[ninocass]

have youhad anyissues with the soundin that when the volume isset to 50% or below there is no soundand youcan onlyhear stuff between 50% and 100%?

Thanks

Nino

[SnowflakeRV7]

Hi Nino,

I haven't had any problems with the audio at all. Note that I have the basic built-in audio, not the upgraded audio. That might make a difference.

On mine, sound works from volume 0 to volume 100, out of the box. The remote works to control volume and playback as well.

[darktreb]

Hi, I've been thinking of getting myself an XPS M1330 as well. The only thing I wanted to confirm was that the Ubuntu hard drive (way too many load cycles) issue could indeed be dealt with on the M1330. I sadly didn't discover it until it was essentially too late on my current computer. I'm not getting a laptop if I'm not going to run Ubuntu on it, but I'm not going to run Ubuntu on a laptop if it's going to mess up the hard drive. I don't see any reason why the hdparm stuff wouldn't work for the M1330, but just in case, I figured I'd ask.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for the handy guide which I will hopefully soon be using.

[SnowflakeRV7]

Darktreb, can you include a link to some details? I'm not keen on killing my hard drive either, but have heard nothing about any hard drive problems under Ubuntu... What are the symptoms, failure modes, etc?

[darktreb]

The Launchpad coverage is probably the best, though if you Google something overdramatic like "Ubuntu kills hard drive" you'll probably find some other good results.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ort/+bug/59695
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/104535

Please let me know if you would like more information.

[rhonaldmoses]

Hi,

I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my DELL XPS M1330 2.2Ghz Laptop and everything works fine except one.

My memory card reader is not reading any memory cards, but the same card reader works without any problem under openSUSE and Windows.

How do I make it work in simple ways.