I am posting this from my newly configured XP x64 within Ubuntu Hardy Heron set up on my laptop. It was not super easy, but it was not super hard either. I am confident that anyone that can follow directions can accomplish a cool setup like this. I've done two Ubuntu installs and finally have everything working.

So first off, this laptop comes with Vista. It is horridly bloated with stuff you don't really need that HP threw in to frustrate us. I did not like this Vista, but I decided I paid for the license for Vista when I bought the Laptop, so I don't really want to just throw that away, but I want Ubuntu 8.04 and XP. Solution: Dual boot Vista and Ubuntu, then use VMware to run XP inside Ubuntu whenever I boot there.

So basically its a dual boot with three operating systems. My computer science buddies at work (I work at an ITS Help Desk) might even be impressed! Lets get started.

First off I am not a linux guru by any means. I know several, but I am not onemyself, I am just a firm believe in the logic that if I'm having a computer problem, someone else has had that same problem and posted something in a forum somwhere and someone told them how to fix/do it. I will be linking to best guides I have found to configure this setup.

So lets get started. Everything in this guide is in the order that I did it to finally make it all work.

Clean Install of Vista
This will make your Vista run much faster. It will also allow you to divide up the partitions however you would like to accomidate your Ubuntu/XP stuff.

This guide should work flawlessly. I cannot possibly thank OREV for this guide enough. You rock OREV!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228

*Note* When you are re-partitioning your drive to install this you have to make some descisions that will greatly affect your Ubuntu work.

The way I see it is you have two options. 1) Put your OSes into smal partitions and use the majority of your hard drive as a shared media partition. 2) Keep your two OSes seperate and assume they won't play nice together anyway so don't teach them to share. This will probably depend alot on what size hard drive you have. This laptop has a 150GB drive, so I let mine share. I put Vista in a 10 GB partition, Ubuntu in a total of about 25GB (so I could install XP in there w/o having to worry about stuff) and the rest is a media partition.

So at the step where you partition your hard drive in your new Vista install you need to decide this. If you want to share your media partition you have a couple options for the format. You don't have to pick one until later (during the linux install) but I'll go ahead and put this in here to help you decide if you want to try to let them share. You can choose a filesystem that Linux and Windows can both share, or you can use a product for windows that will allow it to read Ext3 Filesystems. I have not tried this yet, but here are some links with useful info:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=430184
http://www.reviewingit.com/index.php/content/view/52/2/
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/0...-from-windows/

I don't really plan to use Vista for much. So I just put it in a small partition and will worry about letting it read my media partition if I ever need it to, which I doubt I will. I will almost certainly not need it to write anything to that partition.
I just set up my 10GB Vista partition and left the rest to play w/ during the Ubuntu install.
*End Note*

Now that you have Vista, lets dual boot it with Ubuntu so you never have to use Vista again! But of course, if you need to for some desperate reason, or you have a weird craving for Vista you can.

Dual Booting with Ubuntu

These days this is much easier than it sounds. Realy all it entails is putting the Hardy Heron Live CD in and selecting Install Ubuntu. The only thing you really have to think about here is your partitioning. Here is how I sliced it:
OS partition: 25 GB Ext3 named "/"
Swap: 2GB Swap
Media: Everything else Ext3 named "/*yourname/whatever*"
*LEAVE YOUR VISTA PARTITION ALONE, unless you've decided you want to go all out and switch to Linux...*
Here is a guide to the ubuntu install. (its a screencast)
http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/MoS200..._Ubuntu_Part_1

So after following that guide everything should work besides your wireless. Hook up to ethernet somewhere and lets get that wireless working. This computer uses one of the two broadcom cards that aren't supported with the proprietary driver maker fw-cutter, so you have to use the old school ndiswrapper. Heres how to do it:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...eisty_No-Fluff
***Make sure and pay attention to which step you need to do. For the HP DV2419us you have a bcm4328 card, so you have to follow step 2d.***

Now everything should work in Ubuntu. Install all the updates, and whatever else you want, install compiz to make cool effects w/:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

*This laptop is powerful enough to handle lots of these effects w/o hurting performance*

Now install VMware in Ubuntu

Since I made a nice big partition for Ubuntu (because I knew I didn't want to mess with putting VMware Virtual Machines on a different partition) I just followed this guide exactly:
http://www.howtoforge.com/installing...on-ubuntu-8.04

Then I installed XP x64 Server without any problems. It was automatically connected to the internet whenever my Ubuntu system was. I chose the NAT option for my virtual machine setup. I was able to connect to the internet and put Visual Studio on it no problem (I need this for many of the classes I take, it is the reason I wanted VMware and XP). I won't be using this XP virtual machine for anything else. You should definately install VMware Tools once you finish your XP install, it makes things much smoother.

So after that stuff I could not be happier w/ my computer.

**If you happen to go to the University of Texas at Austin and are experiencing problems with connecting to restricted.utexas send me a PM and I can help you get that working**

So in the end I now have an awesome laptop setup, and Ubuntu has another huge fan. Hopefully anyone that has a DV2419us and reads this post will soon share the same story!

nice how-to!

thanks for posting, and welcome to NBF.

stuck!

Is there any point in worrying about the video driver since no games run on Linux?

Hmm that is a message bordering on flame-bait to be honest.

Taking it seriously though, I suggest you look at a variety of games that are out there, that do use 3d drivers...

Commercial Porting and Publishing of games for Linux:
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/

A list of games that run natively on Linux:
http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

Run a variety of Windows games on Linux:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/
http://www.winehq.org/

A Random list of top 25 games according to someone:
http://rangit.com/software/top-8-linux-games-of-2007/

And at least one commercial developer/publisher that specifically targets Linux with its games...
http://www.s2games.com/

Aside from that there are MANY other things that use the video card on Linux. Many programs use XVMC to assist in Mpeg2 video playback, There are a fair number of 3D modeling and animation programs out there, Scientific analysis is very common on Linux and sometimes does take advantage of the video card some window managers use it for compositing effects making for 'shiny desktops', etc....

So yes there is a point.

Seablade

Hmm another link I got from one of the comments at a link above...

Specifically commerical games that have come out in the past year for Linux:
http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/games-catalog/

Seablade

No i mean does a video driver even exist for mobile nvidia chipsets on linux since i had a heck of a time trying to find them for even windows.

So I actually meant is there a point in looking because I'm not sure they (the drivers) even exist.

One of my biggest fears of going to Ubuntu is that I won't be able to do what I do on Windows. Say that a blue moon happens and Crysis gets supported on linux....well I don't want to be getting 1 fps because of non-existant video drivers.

yes nvidia drivers (and ATI for that matter) do exist for linux, I'm using the NVIDIA x86_64-173.14.05 driver at the moment.

3D rendering certainly uses them (drivers), and lots of THAT gets done on linux even leaving out gaming.

and I'll bet if you're willing to spend the time to learn, you'll find VERY little you can do on windows that you cant do on linux, and probably just as much you can do on linux that you cant do (or cant do as easily) on windows. give it a whirl. it's not like you have to ditch windows to try out linux.

Ahh I misunderstood in that case. Yes as Dr. Louis points out, there are closed source NVidia drivers, and there is an effort to Open Source them as well (Nouveaux) though I think it has lost some momentum recently unfortunately. Ther eis also a rumor that NVidia is planning something Linux related announcement in the next couple of weeks, but I wouldn't hold my breath for open source drivers from them just yet.

As of right now, in recent years NVidia has been the much better supported of the closed source competitors, however ATi has made motions to open their drivers and have been following up on it, bringing their drivers on par from what I have heard with NVidia's in Linux, and probably going ot surpass them soon. Combine that with rumors of Intel entering the discreet graphics market, and their habit of maintaining open source drivers, and there is definitly pressure there at least.

But yes long story short, there are drivers for linux.

Seablade

Wow, this is a very nice tutorial.

OK I officially have Ubuntu on my laptop tri-booting with XP and Vista! Yay!Now....I read that to get a good resolution, Linux has automatic driver downloads and for the wifi i just need to run a magical string to do it. That's one thing I already am woozy about....running commands that I understand nothing about and the wifi magically works.

We'll see how getting my modem working goes since I heard that can be a problem too. Quick question. I read in the other sticky that there are different "skins" you can apply to Linux like KDE and such (with Gnome being the default in Ubuntu). So are these just skins or do they actually change how Ubuntu works and what apps it can use.

Heh a lot to cover there believe it or not

Well in regards to resolution, there has been a LOT of work done recently i this regards to keep people from having to configure it themselves, sadly not quite enough You can get good resolutions by configuring XOrg by hand, and can download drivers if you choose to use proprietary drivers instead of Open Source. For ATi and NVidia, Proprietary drivers tend to be the best for 3D support, as the open source drivers tend to not have 3D support. That being said, the open source drivers do have full 2D acceleration, so if oyu don't use 3D it isn't an issue really. Also ATi especially has made a lot of moves in supporting an open source driver over the past several months and eventually we may find that the open source driver for ATi DOES have all the capabilities for 3D.

Nouveau is trying to reverse engineer the proprietary NVidia drivers to provide 3D support in open source form, however because they receive no help whatsoever from NVidia, it is very slow going for them.

Now all that being said, why would you want to use the open source drivers if the closed source is so much better? Well aside from the ideaologies of Open vs Closed Source, which can be a HUGE part of it, the kernel developers can't troubleshoot the kernel effectively unless they have access to ALL the source code. Problem being with the proprietary drivers, they DON'T have access to all the source code and as a result, they can't support it. As such you may find that the proprietary drivers cause problems on your system that can't be fixed by the community at all, and you would be stuck with it as they can't troubleshoot those drivers.

On to wifi. Post up this 'magic string' that you are supposed to type in and I will be more than happy to explain exactly what it is doing, so long as I know, which is fairly likely. You are absolutely correct in worrying about running commands without knowing what they are doing is a VERY bad thing. That is how a lot of problems on Windows start as well, and there isn't much the OS can do about it if you tell it do something.

Modems... can be interesting. If you have a full hardware modem it is generally a peice of cake. Sadly a lot of vendor, and I will even go so far as to venture a guess that most modems produced nowadays, are what are called software modems. These require special drivers that essentially shift some of the work off the modem and ont your CPU. As a result these are MUCH more difficult to find support for in Linux, as in most cases thos drivers are closed source windows drivers(Thus their nickname, winmodem). I believe support has increased in recent years from where it was the last time I used a modem, many moons ago, so you may have better luck and I am giving outdated info

In as far as 'skins'... This is likely to be a bit confusing, in part because you are confusing a couple of different things. The best way to explain this is likely to give you a basic run down of how graphics on your desktop work.

The very low layer that interfaces directly with the drivers and draws the windows, reserves memory for their contents, etc. is called XOrg. In some cases you may see it referred to as XFree86, which was its predecessor, but is rarely used anymore in most Linux distros due to a license change on their part causing the fork of XOrg.

Now on top of XOrg runs something called a Window Manager. On linux there are MANY different window managers and they determine how your desktop acts and looks at a basic level. For instance do you get a window that is a set size when you open a program, or does that window automatically fill the screen as happens on some window managers. What happens when you click on the desktop. What do window controls look like and how do they act? In general most people refer to Gnome and KDE as Window Managers, though in actuality they are desktop environments that provide much more than just managing windows. They also provide the ability to have icons on your desktop, file managers, application launchers, etc. They also provide to other software the means to use the same window toolsets(Via Libraries of Code) to make everything look and act identical on your desktop. For Gnome the toolkit they use is called GTK while on KDE it is KDELibs(Which in turn use QT). This doesn't mean you can't run QT applications, or even KDELib applications on Gnome, just that they may not look the same, and might not act exactly how you would think. Same goes for GTK applications on KDE. There are other Window Managers out there as well that aren't quite so large as to provide full desktop environments, XFCE, e16, FluxBox, BlackBox, WindowMaker.... This list goes on and on. There is a LOT of choice, though most people are happy with Gnome or KDE. I use one similar to both of them myself called e17(As you might guess, it is the successor to e16).

Now that I have throughly confused you, I will add one MORE layer on top of this. This is Themes, or Skins. Most window managers allow you to ccustomize certain parts of their appearance. How much depends on the Window Manager. Gnome and KDE both act much like you would expect in this regards from Windows. e17 allows a good bit more customization, part of why I like it. Others are designed to be very minimal barebones that don't allow much at all. The basics is you can change the color scheme of your desktop, icons, wallpapers, etc. like you would expect in Windows in the larger Window Managers(Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.)

So when you say you want to change a skin, that is what we wil be thinking about. But what you described is actually changing a Window Manager. Which Window Manager is right for you is actually a very personal choice, and sometimes it can be a while before you discover one that blows you away. I suggest reading ABF's sticky thread located above this one in this forum on Window Managers to give you a basic overview of what the differences are.

Seablade

Thanks so much for the reply. I just came out of a class so my brain is already toasted, but I'll read your post a few more times until I get it.

The magic command for wifi was the whole "ndis" thingie. But I'll have to get back to you with more questions and whatnot by the weekend when I have time to play with my ubuntu install.

Edit: Just having Ubuntu on my system makes me feel so geeky i'm giddish....hopefully my signature will say Ubuntu 8.04 (Main) by the time I have to go back to full-time student in the fall.

Oh, and I found this: http://monkeyblog.org/ubuntu/install...ckage_manually It eased a ton of confusion I was having (where's my exe's )

Edit (again): Also found this amazing blog post: http://aldeby.org/blog/index.php/how...series-laptops

Ok I'm in a bit of a snafu. I have no way to get on the internet (god I feel like a 5 year old for saying that). While I think my nforce ethernet is working, I only have wifi and dial-up internet available to me. Problem is that my wifi is broadcom and my dial-up is on a software modem (conexant). I went under "hardware check" or something like that and it detected I have a broadcom a/b/g/n card, but I have no idea how to tell if it's working. I flip the switch and the light stays orange which I assume isn't good. I found the network icon in the top right corner, and tried to set up a point-to-point connection using my modem (pci\modem) with the phone number and password, but I couldn't find any way to tell it to connect.

I'm kinda in a catch-22, i can't get drivers/run any "magic" commands to get the drivers working/download them without having a network already running. Even if my ethernet was working (which I have no clue if it is since I have no way to test it), I don't have a broadband isp.

And on this page: http://aldeby.org/blog/index.php/how...series-laptops

Where am I supposed to enter the commands it refers to throughout? *crossing fingers for some sort of command line tool*

And this low-res is killing me. I'll have to see if I can flash drive over some nvidia drivers and pray my 7150m works with them....I try to enter in my card and linux and it says none found.

Oh and it doesn't save my brightness setting for some reason. It just starts off dim. And it can't see the partition (E:\) where it's installed using Wubi. It sees the other 2 partitions, just not the non-dedicated one it uses.

Not to rant about linux, but one of the things that has always turned me off with it was the whole "one man vs. a million" feeling you get when you're in it. I'm sure I would probably feel the same way about Windows if I had never used that before, but *trails off*. To quote stewie (whose teddy bear, rupert, is my avatar) "What's this?!?!? I don't like change!"

Hmm several things there....

You can always use a flash drive and another computer to get any drivers for Linux as well. Directions won't be quite as simple as apt-get but won't be to bad usually.

In as far as where to type in the commands, you would type them in in either a terminal window, or on the console. You can get to a text console with the key combination CTRL+ALT+Fx Where Fx isa function key F1-F6 usually. Each one will take you to a different(But likely initially identical looking) text console. CTRL+ALT+F7, or sometimes CTRL+ALT+F10 will get you back to the GUI you are used to. Or you can just open a terminal window in the GUI, either one works

I can't help with brightness settings right off unfortuanatly, sorry. And yes everyone always fears change, it is part of human nature. When we are comfortable we don't want to change. It is the being uncomfortable that drives us to seek it.

Sorry I can't type out more detail right now, kinda at work.

Seablade