Ubuntu For Free

I recently got a new Dell laptop, an Inspiron 1520. It came pre-loaded of course with Vista. I of course wanted Kubuntu on it, and that’s been an adventure.

Now… first things first. I setup the notebook using Vista and made sure that everything worked. Fortunately, everything worked… and worked perfectly.

Next, I moved into using GParted/CloneZilla from their LiveCD so that I can resize the NTFS partition. At first when I opened it, I noticed that it had a couple of partitions, including a recovery partition, the OS partition, and two others that I was uncertain of their purpose. It’s my first Dell, so I left those alone for now.

I resized the largest partition, the one used by Windows, so that I would have enough free room to support Ubuntu and all my desired files. I rebooted and attempted to let Vista load. Windows Vista noticed something had changed and spent the next 25 minutes checking integrity. It then allowed me to proceed to log in and everything again worked as expected.

I rebooted to use the GParted LiveCD again, this time with the intention of creating my desired partitions and this is where the problem began. I was unable to create any additional partitions because Dell had created all 4 partitions as Primary partitions, and that’s the limit. I opted to delete the last partition on the drive for convenience. The unallocated space was before this partition, so it just made the most since and required the least amount of data to be moved. I later found out this partition held the wonderful MediaDirect 3.0 software, that must be reinstalled prior to any OS.

I put the Hardy Heron Alpha1 disk in the tray, rebooted, and allowed it to install. I could not let it use a guided setup because I wanted /home on a separate partition. I also chose to put /etc on it’s own separate partition, and the Install program let me do it.

After rebooting, on the Ubuntu loading screen with the sliding orange progress bar, my caps lock and scroll lock lights begin to blink/flash. I rebooted and chose the Recovery mode from GRUB. This time, I see where it stops and it shows this error:

init: error parsing configuartions no such file or directory.

After searching the internet for reports of bugs with the flashing lights, I found a bunch of irrelevant stuff. Searching for the specific error message, I found the problem in a this bug report on Launchpad.

I re-installed and put /etc on the same partition as / and it now boots properly into Hardy Heron.

It seems that /etc can’t be on it’s own partition. Who knew? Not me. Not the install program. To me, it’s a bug that it wasn’t able to tell me : DO NOT install /etc on a separate partition.

Now that it boots, my next step is to get the wireless and audio working.

After Top 10 Kubuntu Applications Part 1 I noticed the fellows at SpeedCrunch linked to me, and it prompted me to look into the software a little further. I am always interested in active open-source projects, and here is a group that is really interested in their software.

Researching it further, I am very happy with what I have found, and there are a few features I overlooked I’d like to share.

I began with the menus and checked out the Tip of the day. With the nice animated effects, it is very helpful in revealing some not-so-obvious features.
Visually, “Syntax” highlighting is helpful for inputting functions or calculations with more than a few operations. Parentheses grouping is also available and helpful for the same purposes.

Insert function list via Control-F is awesome. This present us with a quick list to some commonly used functions we are bound to use over and over.
The Inline result display I find essential. It calculates and displays the current result as you type your operations. This is helpful to double check your work as you go.Another area I have seen grow since 0.8 is the built-in lists of functions and of constants.

Important to me, is the sophisticated Qt interface that allows users to drag and drop panes which contains lists for functions, history, variables, constants. These are also undockable, if that’s the way you want to calculate.

Unfortunately it lacks a Load session feature, however the user is given an option to save a file, yet so far the result has always been an empty file. It has been reported at their bug tracker as a reproduced error though.

It needs RPN input, which I also saw is being developed.

Also in-development, but of more interest to me, is a huge project of an open-source math book being integrated with the application. This is a lofty goal, but one that can really help to make the software stand out on it’s own even more.

Overall, I think I’ll be using SpeedCrunch more and more for doing my mathematic evaluations.

It works on Windows too, so if you’ve decided to stick with that operating system, here’s a better replacement for the included calculator, and at a great price with code you can trust that is actively being enhanced.