Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose
Summary: Sometimes you just lose, lose, lose, which is the kind of day I have had today. It started out with the stupidity of Windows Update.
Sometimes you just lose, lose, lose, which is the kind of day I have had today. It started out with the stupidity of Windows Update. After that I thought it would be interesting to look at the new release of Linpus Lite 1.7. My only previous experience with Linpus was quite some time ago on a very early netbook system, and I wasn't impressed with it, so I wanted to see if they have improved it significantly. The release announcement sounds very promising, but of course they always do. I downloaded the ISO, burned it to a CD-R, and installed it on my Samsung N150 Plus. The N150 is a classic netbook, with an Intel Atom CPU, so it should be very much the type of system that Linpus is targeted for. Unfortunately that didn't work out very well. There was no indication of trouble during the installation, but when I tried to boot the installed system it wouldn't work, it just kept cycling back to the boot screen. Grrr.
When I gave up on that, I decided to have another look at the latest Ubuntu 12.04 daily build. Now fair is fair, and this is pre-release software so there are absolutely no guarantees that it will install or run properly yet. But they have made a couple of alpha/beta releases already, so it has been installed by quite a few people and it is generally shaping up and stabilizing by this time. Not for me, unfortunately. The installer (ubiquity) crashes when it gets to the disk partitioning step, apparently it doesn't like the large number of paritions I have. I tried on several different systems, and got the same crash every time. Grrr.
So, some days it just doesn't pay to even try. After three strikes I was out, I put away the computers and went off in search of some other form of entertainment. I hope that your Sunday has been more rewarding and/or productive than mine.
jw 18/3/2012
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Talkback
Anyhow, keep up the good work, JW!
Best regards,
Francisco
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
Was it the AO522 that you installed Linpus on? If so, I'll probably give it a try on that as well. After the failure on the N150 Plus, I didn't feel like wasting the time trying another system, but if I knew that I had a better chance of success, I would still like to see what it looks like.
Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
Its worth viewing that partition table with Acronis Disk Director, or Paragon Tools - just to see if it is viewable under different (commerical) tools. Acronis Disk Director is quick to pick up on errors in the table structure. It all gets a bit dicey when you use all 4 partitions, well 3 + an extended one. When you create, move, delete partitions - small gaps can be left between tables, which in effect - break the 4 Primary Partition table rule, same goes for having more than one visible Primary Partition.
You may find switching between OS's that you whole partition table becomes unreadable in the coming weeks (have a backup!)- that is why I tend to recommend using only one piece of software to create, and edit the tables (I'm using newly released Paragon HDM 12 Pro), and avoid using different versions of tools between OS's.
Its just safer to only use one piece of software for manipulating your partitions, as there can be small technical differences on how each tool, interprets a 'standard' Windows/MS-DOS partition table.
My theory on this is commercial Packages will have paid MS for the technical info on the exact partition layouts, where as the free ones may have done so by analysing how MS creates the partitions, ie. before and after analysis of sectors (spot the difference), which might not be as accurate. You can't completely rely on a so called 'standard Windows/MS-DOS Partition table', in reality it doesn't really exist, when you mix in many different operating systems.
Just be careful, as I've been in the same situation, and lost data big time. Always backup the important stuff.
I doubt it is anything to do with Linpus Lite 1.7, you'll probably find Acronis can't read your partition table either.
My personal guess is that Linpus either doesn't like having so many partitions (15), a problem I have seen more than once previously with other distributions, or they don't like having it installed in an extended partition.
I certainly agree with you about being careful and always keeping current backups. Not only because of the partitioning dangers, but also because I move things around and install new releases so frequently that I sometimes forget what is where and why.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
The problem with the software center on Linpus 1.7, is that there is no easy/intuitive way (maybe no way at all) to add software sources or any program apart from the very limited offer that can be found there. Again, I did not fiddle with it for a long time.
@JW
My AO522 came with the Ontario C50/Radeon HD 6250 combo, with a higher screen resolution than regular netbooks (1280x720). It is a great linux machine, although the internal mic doesn't work really well (this problem is apparently fixed in the next LTS Ubuntu). Good luck with the Linpus installation this time!
Best regards to both of you (larmani & JW)!