LPIA Ubuntu Port

There is a lpia port of Ubuntu Intrepid available at ports.ubuntu.com compiled specifically for Atom processors. Seemed like a good thing to me, so here's a report on my experience.

Downloaded the iso image and transferred it to a USB stick. The image boots, but shortly into the install it crashes while trying to find a CDROM drive to install off. This has been a problem for all the Ubuntu 'alternate' iso's, however from Google I found there is now a solution:

1. Boot the stick with the kernel parameter "cdrom-detect/try-usb=true"

2. Create the stick with 'usb-creator' which is part of Ubuntu 8.10 default install and this will add the "cdrom-detect/try-usb=true" to the image

Having got past that hurdle, I got midway through the install when installer crashed again with an error message saying 'no installable kernel available'. There's a couple of bug reports already on Launchpad for this one, so it's a known bug.

After much Googling and playing around, I found the answer was to open a shell with ALT+F2 and install the kernel manually:

Code:

chroot /target apt-get install linux-image-lpia

Then - with lots more crashes - I managed to nurse the installer through a minimal install and get grub installed as a boot loader. After that I had a bootable system - yay - but not much else. I configured apt manually, then got the rest of Ubuntu:

Code:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-minimal
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-standard
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Apt didn't seem to know about the kernel, so:

Code:

sudo apt-get install linux-image-lpia

The repository has the backports-module with the ath5 wifi modules, but I can't get it to install due to some conflict. No wireless yet, but madwifi should be possible. No sound either - but I'm sure that's due to my bad install and very fixable.

Was it all worth it? Probably not; the battery life looks to be slightly improved over standard Ubuntu. There's no noticeable increase in performance, and it's difficult to install at the moment.

I think when the installer gets fixed, it will be worth trying.

 

I spent a few hours an evening playing with that - in the end I got tired of repairing an incomplete installation caused by a broken iso. Besides, while I can fix the obvious things there might be something I didn't notice that creates some odd bugg/behaviour in a month or two .

Ended up installing the mid-version (which is also lpia), removing the mid-stuff and installing ubuntu-desktop. A lot less hassle to get up and running and no problems with it so far . Got wireless running by apt-getting the kernel sources and building the ath5k module (didn't try madwifi but I see no reason why it wouldn't work).

Cheers for mentioning the "cdrom-detect/try-usb=true"-solution. Might come in handy in the future (I messed around mounting the iso on a loopback - worked but was a bit of a pain - guess I ought to google more ).