Tala Ko

Pardon the corny title. :) Yesterday, I was able to buy an MSI Wind U100 with some money from a savings account that my dad started when I was smaller (thanks, Dad). I needed to be more mobile, and he agreed that a laptop would be a good investment.

I’ve named it Teacup, after the ones in “Train Man,” by Hitori Nakano. My desktop PC is named Stella, after the abandoned theater in “The Thief Lord,” by Cornelia Funke. Just felt like sharing.

I’d done research before going to the store. But even if I already knew what I wanted, I let the clerk go through the motions. They didn’t have it in pink or red. I don’t really love pink or red; I just wanted the chassis to be different from the usual black or white units.

I asked for the OS-less Wind, of course; no use paying extra for Windows XP when I was just going to delete it. I did, however, accept their offer to install, at no extra cost, a trial version of XP, just so I could try out all the hardware’s bells and whistles.

Once at home, I’d determined that all the bells were ringing and the whistles whistling within about fifteen minutes. Five, if Trixi and I hadn’t been goofing around in front of the webcam.

I soon reached for a GNU/Linux installer.

I downloaded the Puppy Linux ISO first, because it was only 88Mb large. The MSI Wind doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive, so I decided to try UNetbootin to turn my USB Stick into a LiveUSB. The tool’s amazing. :D It’s quick, and it works.

Puppy Linux didn’t detect my screen settings properly, though. :/ After asking at the forums, I still didn’t learn the proper configurations, and then one poster finally said that Puppy probably didn’t support my screen. :(

Back to Ubuntu, then. I downloaded the ISO from an Indonesian mirror and got it intact on the first try, within a few hours! The first time I ever downloaded the ISO, I chose the Taiwanese mirror, because it was geographically nearer. But it took a whole day, and quite a few tries (so, a few days) before I could get a good ISO. :p

UNetbootin again (I feel really sorry for my USB stick. But now that I have a laptop, it should now get some rest from all my PortableApping.). Ubuntu detected my screen settings right away, so I didn’t hesitate to click on “Install.” Planned partitions with the help of the trusty Psychocat tutorials and this byte calculator.

(Teacup, not Stella, is my first Ubuntu-only system. Will probably convert the desktop, too, once Intrepid Ibex is out.)

Installation took minutes, no hiccups at all. So, that’s it. I now have an MSI Wind running Ubuntu! :)

There’s still a lot left to do, like configure for wireless and install updates and codecs. Will let you know how that goes, of course. But in the meantime, I’ve got a busy day ahead. I’m taking the Wind and going sailing into Project Land. :)