It has been over 3 weeks since I wrote about my adventure with the Latitude 2120. Time for an update!

After confirming that the DELL image I downloaded from the manufacturer’s site seemed to work fine, I ran the certification tests on the 10.10 build. They all passed! no glitch.

At that time, I was getting ready to travel to Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) and I chose the lattitude 2120 as my companion for the trip. However, I was not ready to show up at UDS without Natty running on the netbook 😉

I created a USB install stick for Natty using the 2120’s 10.10 image and set up an additional partition for it, so I would have dual boot between 10.10 and 11.04. The installation process went just fine. Continue reading “An Ubuntu Adventure: Latitude 2120 Certification and UDS” →

Here it is!

Well that is just the box, and inside the box:

Unfortunately, the system did come pre-installed with Windows 7. I could not choose any other option… Nevermind, I plan to remedy this quickly with help from DELL.

The first step is to make some space in the system to install Ubuntu. So I booted Windows 7 and from the “computer management – disk management”, I managed to shrink the windows partition to 60 GB.

At the same time I started downloading the image provided by DELL on their website.: Canonical Ubuntu 10.10. Once the download completed, I created a USB Startup disk (System -> Administration ->  Startup Disk creator).

Pressing F2 during bootup of the DELL Latitude 2120, I got into the BIOS. Here I changed the device bootup sequence to check for USB device before the HDD.

Rebooting with the USB startup disk in place, gives me a few option – including DELL recovery Linux OS partition only. I have selected this and it is now taking me through the Ubuntu install process, including creating new partitions…

The adventure has trully commenced!

Next Chapter: Installing DELL’s patches

In a previous post I described the certification release of Ubuntu pre-install for the Dell Latitude 2120. This post seems to have drawn some interest on the process from both internally in Canonical and externally.  I decided that I needed to experience myself what a user buying a Certified “Pre-Installed only” system would go through from buying the system to getting the bespoke image from the manufacturer and ultimately upgrading to the latest “stock” Ubuntu release. The Dell Latitude 2120 seemed like a good companion for this adventure.

Without further ado, I introduce you my “Ubuntu Adventure” – the objective is to arrive to UDS-O in Budapest with a Latitude 2120 with dual booting  a DELL specific Ubuntu 10.10  image and the (soon to be) publicly available 11.04 Final Release. I will keep you posted of my progress with frequents updates on my blog.  Lets get started!

Chapter1 – Buying the system… but which one!?

The first thing that I did was to visit the DELL UK website and selected the Latitude 2120. At this point I got presented with 2 options.

It is important that you check the components listed in the certification at Ubuntu.com.  Manufacturers some time change components depending on local or as a refresher/upgrade of the systems. This new component can be not supported by Ubuntu.  The key components are listed in the front page of the certificate: Processor, Network and video – but you can drill down and see a more exhaustive list.

I know from owning a Vostro that Dell’s own wireless card are sourced from Broadcom and it seems that the two 2120s have the same video cards, but one offers multi-touch… We are good to go! I think I will stick with the cheapest option 🙂

Ideally, I would like to buy the system with Ubuntu already pre-install from factory. Searching the DELL UK site, that seems to be a possibility, along with other OSs:

However, once that I select the system I want to buy, I am only presented with two flavours of Windows 7 as pre-install options… Not to worry, DELL provides a page full of updates and ISOs for Ubuntu 10.10 specific for this system. Which will lead to more longer yet more interesting Ubuntu Adventure!

Ok, I have ordered the system! now to wait patiently for delivery..

Next Chapter: Unboxing of the DELL Latitude 2120