Ubuntu: Miracles Are Happening
Today I was called out to help a young mother who got a Dell Mini 12 refurbished some months ago, which had come with Ubuntu on it. I was surprised again because there are contacts who are obviously geeky and who have participated in the community to some degree and then there are those out of the blue contacts who need help because they bought a computer directly from the OEM and now it needs someone to give it some attention.
This machine only had one problem, she couldn’t remember the password. The guides on-line that she had tried had told her to press [Esc] and load up the recovery mode. But Dell has stripped that option away, yay Dell. So I reinstalled the computer with 9.04 replacing the Dell crusted 8.04 install and making sure it had skype and all the other user facing goodies that people expect; obviously making sure to back up her 35MB of photos and documents. I backed up and installed from a single 4GB memory stick (800MiB for the installer, 3.3GiB for data) which I now carry around with me everywhere (Very useful device).
We made arrangements to meet at a coffee shop, not that it’s too much of a problem installing Ubuntu on battery power and I can certainly understand the need for public places when meeting some stranger. Fortunately the battery power at 45% on this machine lasted 2 hours, so the whole install and medibuntu + restricted extras completed on battery even with the coffee shop’s 60MiB/s wifi connection.
I do love helping people who have come to Ubuntu, although this refurbished machine was kinda odd since I didn’t think Dell shipped Mini12s with Ubuntu and it did have a ‘Designed for Windows XP’ sticker (but no license sticker). But everything seemed to work out ok, she’ll get in touch if there are problems. We finished up and she headed out.
As I was getting up, someone on the next table raised her voice and asked if I knew anything about Ubuntu. Now i think I’ve entered the twilight zone where everyone in the coffee shop appears to be using Macs but are actually Ubuntu users. Anyway, turns out her computer has a duel boot with Ubuntu 7.04 and windows xp, she wanted to know if I could remove Windows and upgrade Ubuntu. I gave her details of my private support and of the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo Tuesday Education and Support sessions that we run for free and hopefully she’ll be in touch to sort out her machine too.
As an aside to my utter surprise at coming across two Ubuntu users at random. I am starting to note a pattern, of the 5 chance encounters that have needed Ubuntu support in the last year: all have all been women. Now either it’s because women are more willing to try something new when offered by Dell, are less invested in Microsoft’s desktop familiarity, are more willing to go out and find help (and thus find me or the LoCo group) or some unforeseen force, but I’m very happy to see the 50% of people who have been typically excluded from technical areas coming to Ubuntu naturally.
Anyone else found Ubuntu users randomly because you were helping someone else with their Ubuntu machine in a coffee shop? Because I think there is progress in the air.
Tags: coffee shop, dell, install, Ubuntu
Not to skirt your question entirely, although the only story I have to share was once seeing someone wearing an Ubuntu shirt, but did the Dell Mini 12 appear to have any issues with the resolution? From what I know the Mini 10 and 12, as well as a few other netbooks, use the GMA 500 “Poulsbo” chipset for graphics which is currently a major PIA on linux. I have a netbook with the GMA 500, and currently the only thing available is a 2D only mostly working driver in the ubuntu netbook remix ppa.
Interesting, well I installed default 9.04 and didn’t notice any problems. The resolution wasn’t strange or odd in any detectable way. Although the machine was quite slow with it’s Atom processor and 1GB or ram. I’ll make a note to check what kind of graphics processor it has, I know it had to have a closed binary blob for the wifi driver.
is because of your good looks of course
seriously, did you have any problems installing acrobat’s flash player? I did a UNR install in a acer one netbook last week, everything worked great with the exception that I couldn’t install a flash player (a problem with some dependency, I believe)
thanks
Not exactly, I work for a software company that is primarily Windows (although they have a Mac product, their Linux product is lacking). While wearing my Mythbuntu Dev shirt one day a fellow coworker asked me if I was really a Mythbuntu Developer, which I am. He didn’t have any questions or concerns for me, but just let me know that he runs Mythbuntu at home.
Couldn’t you just have used that USB Live-installer as a recovery tool, mounting the Mini’s file system and resetting the password?
And leaving her with an outdated version of Ubuntu? It was quicker to just reinstall, sometimes it’s more useful. So far people who have had the Dell specific stuff removed have been much happier with bog standard Ubuntu.
Installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package will install flash and everything else such as mp3, avi, divx codecs.
I see lots of girls with netbooks at university. At far as I see though, most are on Windows! My guess goes out to the fact that it’s nearly impossible to stumble on, nevermind obtain, one with Ubuntu here.
Checking for official support with her service tag wouldn’t hurt.
Your vanilla install is missing things like commercial DVD playback and legal codecs, which are included in any Dell pre-install.
Once a vanilla version is installed, the only way to get that software back is back calling support.
They’re also less likely to be addicted to DirectX-based PC games.
@Fabian Rodriguez – It’s true that support tags would help, but support is restricted to hardware support. I have several blog posts in the past which account in detail both the position with Dell Ubuntu support and the position of legal media codecs.
@ f.p.: It’s probably true, that girls are usually not addicted to DirectX games. And sometimes they use Ubuntu because they get free support from boyfriend or brother. (in my case)
(Haha, well, I keep telling myself it’s not *that* outdated: I’m still on 8.04 on my laptop, too – it’s working too well for me to even risk updating… so I’ve only played with newer versions on a USB disk)
But no, you’re right, it’s a nice thing to help and update the thing while you’re at it. I guess I stopped to do that because people always gave me this strange feeling that if I offered to do more for their PC than they asked for, they just didn’t dare to say no… so now I only do what’s being asked, and only if something goes end-of-life I mumble something like “you might consider updating that thing you had me look at last year”, then wait till they ask…
My grammar is ***. I think that should have read “…I stopped doing that…”
Uh…I thought Dell *didn’t allow* their customers to run anything but 8.04LTS on their minis, under warranty.
@Mackenzie – Always worth considering, but this was a refurbished machine, besides according to the law you can’t ditch the entire implied warranty responsibility based on changes to a single part. See how the car industry is still responsible if your breaks fail even if you’ve had a new (none approved!) set of window screen wipers.
[...] with Ubuntu on it. This machine only had one problem, she couldn’t remember the password. More here I do love helping people who have come to Ubuntu, although this refurbished machine was kinda odd [...]
An unsupported port of the psb driver for jaunty is available in ~ubuntu-mobile PPA. That being said, it will be the last port of this driver to a new release :-/
Girls interested in Ubuntu is great. Especially when the hottie with sexy glasses is asking you for the ‘hand’ to help her. “Hello, good-lookin’…” *getting sleek hair*
)
Er no, We don’t help people because we are attracted to them, we do it because they are people in need of help.
Maybe the guys have more of a do-it-yourself-or-die mentality… I’m a guy and they are few people I would ask for help, it would feel like I’m an idiot to ask someone even if it is a difficult problem… unless it’s someone who already knows me, so then, there’s no “loss of face” or whatever.
An extension of the “guys never ask for directions” stereotype.
Oh Martin, girls are just getting smarter. And they understand evolutionary trends. And from some women’s viewpoint, it’s just cool. If you are wanting to mate with someone, they should be at least using Hardy.
How to scare women away from Linux: see parent
*bangs head on desk*
There are no stupid questions. Remaining ignorant instead of asking questions, however…