Jeremy Stein - Brain
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Dell Inspirion 530n with Ubuntu
I bought a Dell Inspirion 530n with Ubuntu with the following specs:
- Inspiron 530,Intel Pentium Dual Core processor E2180 (2.00GHz,800FSB)
- Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 with DVD Playback
- 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
- 250GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200RPM)
- 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT- DDR3
- 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
- IEEE 1394a ADAPTER
- Dell 20in E207WFP Flat Panel Analog and Digital
I immediately upgraded the RAM to 4GB with some cheap Crucial memory from Newegg.
At first, I wanted to install 8.04, just to have the latest version with long-term support. Also, I wanted to install Ubuntu from scratch so that I could choose the whole-disk encryption option. I love computer security.
I realized that Dell must have put quite a bit of working into customizing Ubuntu to work with this hardware configuration. I know they use a non-Ubuntu-supported nvidia driver, and I’ve read about a couple of Ubuntu bugs for which Dell has included work-arounds in their custom installation. So, I decided to skip the full-disk encrypt.
I opted for the upgrade to 8.04 with Synaptic package manager. When the upgrade completed, my computer went into an infinite reboot cycle. I couldn’t find anything that looked similar to my issue online, so I restored to the factory installation.
Dell conveniently provides an ISO image of the factory installation. Humorously, it is 5Gb – slightly too big to burn to a DVD. The restore partition worked fine, but if my disk crashes, I’ll be out of luck.
I’ve recorded all the modifications I’ve made to my system.
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