[YLUG] Installing linux (Fedora 10) on a Samsung NC10 - a nice success

[mike cloaked]

If anyone is looking to find a netbook with a relatively
straightforward install for linux and where everything works out of
the box, I can relate a recent experience with the Samsung NC10
netbook.

This machine is a 10" netbook weighing around 1.3kg and has a keyboard
with keys that are about 93% of normal full size. It has 3 usb ports,
and standard ethernet port, and includes a webcam.

I researched the available machines for some time before deciding on
this one - and it turned out my thoughts were about right on getting
this machine to work.

On arrival on first bootup you get a one-time opportunity to change
the split for the c: and d: partitions on the 160GiB hard drive, and
it installs XP from the recovery partition at this stage. I shrank the
c: drive and expanded the d: drive which I would later use to make
space for linux.

I also bought a 2GiB ram replacement for the 1GiB memory that is
default with the machine.

After updating XP and configuring that as I want it (including the
usual Firefox and extensions, and flash etc) I decided that I would
partition the drive for dual boot linux by using Parted Magic
(http://wiki.partedmagic.com) before running the linux install. At
this point I swapped out the 1GiB RAM and put the 2GiB 200 pin SODIMM
strip in its place, and checked that XP was happy.
This netbook does not have any optical drive so the challenge was how
to boot Parted Magic without a CD. I downloaded the Parted Magic iso
into Windows first.  It turns out that the easiest way is to run
UNetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) by downloading it
directly into Windows, and then plugging in a usbkey before executing
UNetbootin within Windows, and then asking UNetbootin to copy the iso
onto the usbkey and make it bootable.

Then re-booting with the usbkey still in place allows you to partition
the HD. (You have to interrupt the boot with F2 and change the boot
order so that the usbkey has higher priority than the HD for boot). So
I shrank the ntfs formatted d: drive partition leaving me enough space
to create a 15GiB root partition (ext3) a 4GiB swap partition and a
54GiB /opt partition (ext3).
This was straightforward though took some time to execute but it
completed without problems.

Then I booted back into XP to check that all was well. Then I plugged
in a usbkey containing the liveCD iso for Fedora 10 (main one not the
KDE4 one) as released in November.  After copying the iso to the c:
drive within Windows, I loaded UNetbootin and overwrote the usbkey to
make a bootable usbkey for Fedora 10 (the reason I used this method is
that the standard facilities to make a bootable live USBkey as
advertised on the Fedora wiki did not work and the key failed to boot,
but the bootable uskbey created by this method worked fine.

Booting back to the new LiveUSB for Fedora showed that everything just
worked out of the box, including the wireless running under
NetworkManager, and also the built in webcam.  Having checked that
everything was in order running the LiveUSB, I decided to install
Fedora 10 to the hard drive by clicking on the "Install to HD" icon on
the desktop. This install took only a few minutes to complete and then
I shutdown, removed the usbkey and booted into the new Fedora 10
system.

Installing from the LiveCD version leaves a lot of applications that
need to be installed afterwards, and in hindsite I perhaps should have
make a LiveDVD usbkey for the full install using the analogous method,
as I would have had much of what I needed already on the machine
though the install would clearly have taken longer (the LiveCD is less
than 700 MiB, whereas the DVD iso is around 3.6 GiB).  However I
already had the majority of the update rpms on another machine, so I
set up the yum.repos.d directory to configure yum to use particular
mirrors, and then rsynced the update rpms from the other machine into
/var/cache/yum - then I ran yum update to bring the system fully up to
date, and then installed the various other applications I wanted (even
vim is not on the install done via the liveCD iso!) So I added yum
install kde-desktop, flash-plugin, and various codec related files so
that I could play mp3 files, and use Firefox sensibly.  Also
Thunderbird was not on be default either from the LiveCD.

Additionally I installed Skype from the Skype repo, and configured it
to use the correct microphone, and checked that video was working
using the webcam built into the screen.

After configuring the Gnome desktop to suit the smaller screen and
customise it to my needs I now have a fully working dual boot system.

With this experience being very positive the only thing I now have not
checked is how long the battery will keep going running the system
during a working day!

Overall I am extremely pleased with this machine - it is small and
light enough to pop into a backpack and take it with on journeys away,
and it is also light enough to carry around on a day to day basis.
Overall I would recommend this machine as very functional. The only
downsides are that the screen is smaller than I am used to but I will
get used to that, and that the touchpad is not quite as big as I might
have liked but I will get used to that also!  The machine has
bluetooth already built in so getting a laptop bluetooth mouse to work
this machine would make it nicer to use even though it would mean
another piece of kit to carry! The power supply box is very small and
does not take up much room.

I know that others have had some experience with other netbooks such
as the eeepc - and it would be interesting to compare stories with
this one?  The NC10 is available from various outlets including Amazon
where it was £307 which is pretty good for such a capable little
machine.

-- 
mike