Ubutnu 9.10 Karmic Koala on HP Mini-Note 2133

In a word, WIN!!

I had previously installed 9.04 from CD with no problems.

Easily got the update by clicking System->Administration->Update Manager and selecting to upgrade to 9.10. Update took some time but was successful.

I had not done much since 9.04 install, but it looks like all my program settings have been preserved and wifi hooked right back up on reboot.

Mini 2133 Ubuntu 9.04

Installed Ubuntu 9.04 on the mini-note 2133 with no problems.

Only hiccup was the Broadcom BCM4312 wifi card. Once installed, the OS recognized and offered the use of Broadcom STA drivers which works perfectly.

Will give the OS a try on the ole Inspiron 5100 with a Broadcom wifi card that has never worked with any distro of linux, even with ndiswrapper...

SD Card Format from command line

Weird thing today, my SD card dropped from 2GB to 1GB. It's a mini in an SD adapter that I use this in my Palm Treo 700P for pics and docs storage.

I was able to read the files in ubuntu but the phone would not acknowledge the card at all. I copied the files into a backup folder on the laptop and proceeded to check it out.

Lifesaving post at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1243539

df -k [or h if you prefer] showed the drive mounted on /dev/sde1. Unmounted and attempted to run with 'sudo mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sde1' which left the card unchanged and still not showing in the phone.

Last entry in the post shows a format command 'sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde1 bs=512' which did the trick! Ran the format, removed card but re-inserting card didn't do anything so I put it in the Treo and it threw an error.

Apparently this was the kick it needed because I put it back in the laptop and sweet, 2GB card was mounted! I copied my backed up folders onto the card and worked fine this time when I put it in the Treo

MINI 2133 XP Downgrade

In a word, FAIL!

Try as I may, never got a clean boot...