Greetings
I have just finished a successful installation of (K)Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake on my 1710 and it works brilliantly - including WEP wireless connection to my home network, 3D with the 7900 GTX, sound, touchpad (YUCK!) etc. I had originally tried to install 5.10 (Breezy) but my install suffered from lack of video support for the 7900GTX and I gave up tinkering after a while. That was probably lack of experience on my part but with Dapper waiting in the wings, I dumped Breezy and went for Dapper instead.
Here's a step by step guide to what I did to get the system set up.
**** WARNING and obligatory Disclaimer: ****
I did this install on a new system so keeping any existing data was irrelevent. If you need to keep an existing windows installation, either try shrinking the partition (google for some good guides) or simply back up your data and flatten the laptop drive (figuratively of course).
1) Reformat and reinstall XP
NOTE: Get copies of the latest drivers for the 1710 from the DELL website and put them on a USB Stick or CD. I know this is a pox, but not all drivers are on the Resource CD from DELL and certianly not always the latest ones.
I have the 100GB drive and wanted to make room for the linux partitions as well as a good sized Fat32 partition for sharing between the two operating systems. The planned partitioning I used was: 20GB XP, 30 GB Linux, 2GB Swap, and the remaining as FAT32.
(a) Ensure that the system is configured in the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive before the hard drive. This is explained in the handbook and was set that way by default on my machine anyway.
(b) Insert the windows OEM disc and reboot. Once the XP BSOI (Blue Screen of Install) comes up, choose to install XP. At some stage it will ask which partition to use for the install. Use the arrows to highlight each partition, and press "D" to delete the partition and confirm your action when prompted.
*** WARNING: THIS WILL DELETE ALL DATA ON THE PARTITION ***
You should now be left with a single entry in the partitions list of Empty Space 100GB. Press "C" to create a new partition. I set the partition to Primary and Bootable and a size of 20GB. (Since I prefer the partitioner in the linux installer, I didn't bother with the FAT32 partition at this stage). Windows automagically sets this partition as C: .
Select the partition and install windows, drivers etc as described in the handbook. Use the newly downloaded DELL drivers instead of those in the Resource CD wherever possible.
2) Installing Linux
I assume you have downloaded the Dapper Drake install DVD/CD which you can get from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/re...pper/flight-7/ as either direct ISO downloads via Http or Bittorrent. I downloaded the dapper-install-i386 CD using the Azureus Bittorrent client. Burn the image to a CD.
NOTE: I ran the install with the laptop connected via ethernet cable to my network since I am not sure if wireless connectivity is already available during installation. Using the cable though, the latop was able to automatically configure its network settings via DHCP on my network during the install.
Insert the CD into the drive and reboot. When the system holds with a "boot>" prompt, type "install" and the installation proper will start. The installation process is straightforward and after a few steps you will come to the partitioning step. Here select the option to Manually Edit the Partition Table.
You will see the Windows NTFS Partition listed there as "sda1" and another entry which is the empty space. Select the empty space and create 3 new partitions:
- 30 GB Primary partition formatted to either ReiserFS (my perference) or EXT3 and set the mount point as "/" (i.e. the root directory). This partition becomes "sda2"
- 2 GB formatted as "Swap"
- Remainder as a logical partition, select formatting as "FAT32". Note: to set a mountpoint that isn't listed, use the arrows to select the mountpoint entry press enter and in the popup select "Enter manually". Type in "/share" (without the quotes) and confirm out of the dialog.
A summary of changes to the partitions is then shown. Ensure that your NTFS partition is not listed (in other words won't be changed in any way) and confirm to write the changes to the disk.
As the installation proceeds you will be asked where the GRUB bootloader should be installed. I installed this to the MBR since I wanted GRUB (rather than windows) to control the boot process. So far windows boots from the GRUB selection menu without any trouble and McAfee has so far kept its mouth shut about the new bootloader. I can't see why you shouldn't install it to the MBR but maybe someone with more experience can add to that.
The remainder of the installation went smoothly. Simply follow the prompts. Once the system restarts, you will be presented with the OS choice menu which defaults to Kubuntu after 5 seconds. The system boots to the kubuntu login screen and off you go.
3) Moving in
Kubuntu and Ubuntu have great support on their websites, Wiki's and documentation.
To set up 3D support follow the steps outlined in https://wiki.kubuntu.org/BinaryDrive...t=%28nvidia%29 (but note that in Dapper you only need to install nvidia-glx since nvidia-settings is already part of the nvidia-glx package ). I get over 18300 FPS on glxgears (using "glxgears -iacknowledgethathistoolisnotabenchmark" or "glxgears -printfps") so that's not too bad
To use WLAN I used the KDE tool "Wireless Assistant" to set up the WEP connection to the network. I did notice that the system was detecting wlans even before I configured anything so the hardware was detected and operating properly
One thing you should be prepared for is the amount of downloads and updates available for download once the initial installation is complete. This didn't bother me since I have DSL but be prepared if you want to get up to date with the latest Dapper packages. I think it tool about half an hour to get all the initial updates done and there's more coming online everyday.
Of course you don't need to do the updates since 3D and WLAN, sound etc all worked before the updates. However you should do the updates at some stage or get a hold of the Dapper DVD once it is out.
The amount of updates is probably due to the fact that the Dapper packages are still being prepared for the release in June. I imagine once the DVD image is there the amount of downloading after the install will be trivial.
4) Summary
Installing Dapper Drake on the 1710 was smooth and I can literally say trouble free. All hardware was recognised and easy to configure. If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro this one is highly recommended.
If anyone has any corrections or comments please let me know.
5) Good links:
Creating a dual boot XP and Ubuntu Laptop: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...ot-laptop.html
Kubuntu FAQ: http://www.kubuntu.com/faq.php
Linux on Dell Laptops http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html
I have just finished a successful installation of (K)Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake on my 1710 and it works brilliantly - including WEP wireless connection to my home network, 3D with the 7900 GTX, sound, touchpad (YUCK!) etc. I had originally tried to install 5.10 (Breezy) but my install suffered from lack of video support for the 7900GTX and I gave up tinkering after a while. That was probably lack of experience on my part but with Dapper waiting in the wings, I dumped Breezy and went for Dapper instead.
Here's a step by step guide to what I did to get the system set up.
**** WARNING and obligatory Disclaimer: ****
I did this install on a new system so keeping any existing data was irrelevent. If you need to keep an existing windows installation, either try shrinking the partition (google for some good guides) or simply back up your data and flatten the laptop drive (figuratively of course).
1) Reformat and reinstall XP
NOTE: Get copies of the latest drivers for the 1710 from the DELL website and put them on a USB Stick or CD. I know this is a pox, but not all drivers are on the Resource CD from DELL and certianly not always the latest ones.
I have the 100GB drive and wanted to make room for the linux partitions as well as a good sized Fat32 partition for sharing between the two operating systems. The planned partitioning I used was: 20GB XP, 30 GB Linux, 2GB Swap, and the remaining as FAT32.
(a) Ensure that the system is configured in the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive before the hard drive. This is explained in the handbook and was set that way by default on my machine anyway.
(b) Insert the windows OEM disc and reboot. Once the XP BSOI (Blue Screen of Install) comes up, choose to install XP. At some stage it will ask which partition to use for the install. Use the arrows to highlight each partition, and press "D" to delete the partition and confirm your action when prompted.
*** WARNING: THIS WILL DELETE ALL DATA ON THE PARTITION ***
You should now be left with a single entry in the partitions list of Empty Space 100GB. Press "C" to create a new partition. I set the partition to Primary and Bootable and a size of 20GB. (Since I prefer the partitioner in the linux installer, I didn't bother with the FAT32 partition at this stage). Windows automagically sets this partition as C: .
Select the partition and install windows, drivers etc as described in the handbook. Use the newly downloaded DELL drivers instead of those in the Resource CD wherever possible.
2) Installing Linux
I assume you have downloaded the Dapper Drake install DVD/CD which you can get from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/re...pper/flight-7/ as either direct ISO downloads via Http or Bittorrent. I downloaded the dapper-install-i386 CD using the Azureus Bittorrent client. Burn the image to a CD.
NOTE: I ran the install with the laptop connected via ethernet cable to my network since I am not sure if wireless connectivity is already available during installation. Using the cable though, the latop was able to automatically configure its network settings via DHCP on my network during the install.
Insert the CD into the drive and reboot. When the system holds with a "boot>" prompt, type "install" and the installation proper will start. The installation process is straightforward and after a few steps you will come to the partitioning step. Here select the option to Manually Edit the Partition Table.
You will see the Windows NTFS Partition listed there as "sda1" and another entry which is the empty space. Select the empty space and create 3 new partitions:
- 30 GB Primary partition formatted to either ReiserFS (my perference) or EXT3 and set the mount point as "/" (i.e. the root directory). This partition becomes "sda2"
- 2 GB formatted as "Swap"
- Remainder as a logical partition, select formatting as "FAT32". Note: to set a mountpoint that isn't listed, use the arrows to select the mountpoint entry press enter and in the popup select "Enter manually". Type in "/share" (without the quotes) and confirm out of the dialog.
A summary of changes to the partitions is then shown. Ensure that your NTFS partition is not listed (in other words won't be changed in any way) and confirm to write the changes to the disk.
As the installation proceeds you will be asked where the GRUB bootloader should be installed. I installed this to the MBR since I wanted GRUB (rather than windows) to control the boot process. So far windows boots from the GRUB selection menu without any trouble and McAfee has so far kept its mouth shut about the new bootloader. I can't see why you shouldn't install it to the MBR but maybe someone with more experience can add to that.
The remainder of the installation went smoothly. Simply follow the prompts. Once the system restarts, you will be presented with the OS choice menu which defaults to Kubuntu after 5 seconds. The system boots to the kubuntu login screen and off you go.
3) Moving in
Kubuntu and Ubuntu have great support on their websites, Wiki's and documentation.
To set up 3D support follow the steps outlined in https://wiki.kubuntu.org/BinaryDrive...t=%28nvidia%29 (but note that in Dapper you only need to install nvidia-glx since nvidia-settings is already part of the nvidia-glx package ). I get over 18300 FPS on glxgears (using "glxgears -iacknowledgethathistoolisnotabenchmark" or "glxgears -printfps") so that's not too bad
To use WLAN I used the KDE tool "Wireless Assistant" to set up the WEP connection to the network. I did notice that the system was detecting wlans even before I configured anything so the hardware was detected and operating properly
One thing you should be prepared for is the amount of downloads and updates available for download once the initial installation is complete. This didn't bother me since I have DSL but be prepared if you want to get up to date with the latest Dapper packages. I think it tool about half an hour to get all the initial updates done and there's more coming online everyday.
Of course you don't need to do the updates since 3D and WLAN, sound etc all worked before the updates. However you should do the updates at some stage or get a hold of the Dapper DVD once it is out.
The amount of updates is probably due to the fact that the Dapper packages are still being prepared for the release in June. I imagine once the DVD image is there the amount of downloading after the install will be trivial.
4) Summary
Installing Dapper Drake on the 1710 was smooth and I can literally say trouble free. All hardware was recognised and easy to configure. If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro this one is highly recommended.
If anyone has any corrections or comments please let me know.
5) Good links:
Creating a dual boot XP and Ubuntu Laptop: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...ot-laptop.html
Kubuntu FAQ: http://www.kubuntu.com/faq.php
Linux on Dell Laptops http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html
I don't know why I didn't think to do this for my M170.
I don't think synaptic will be installed by default in Kubuntu but it should work without a problem. One nice thing about adept is the automatic notifier daemon which periodically checks if any updates are available for you. Saves us obsessive-compulsives from having to check the repositories every 10 minutes 
I'll have a look when I get a chance and try and find out what is being used. Here's a gratuitous screenshot to show that it does work on a 1710 though (running Kubuntu Dapper without excessive tinkering): 
. Can you give a detailed description about installing the drivers? (Or did you only use Synaptic Package Manager?) Would be veeery nice.
