randomness | (no subject)

(no subject)

After spending an entertaining morning installing ubuntu on my Toshiba netbook, I hit a brick wall when it utterly failed to boot.

Some searching found me this suggestion, which actually seems to work:

hi, try this:
on startup press F2
on bios > avanced > SATA controller Mode change AHCI to Compatibility

and that's it!

Question for folks with more hardware fu than I have: Do I care that I've turned off AHCI mode on a netbook? My choices are AHCI or Compatibility; in Compatibility mode ubuntu boots up ok.

Thanks for any thoughts.

I'm running ubuntu 11.04, 32-bit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi there. I have no answer to your question. Just wondering when you are coming home...

Sorry, I can't help you regarding AHCI vs compatibility, but I would like to hear how ubuntu 11.04 works for you. I'm still running 9.something because that's what my Dell netbook came installed with, and since right now it's my only GUI I fear updating it.

I did do a brief bit of googling and ran across someone where their box would only boot under ubuntu if it was set to AHCI and it would only boot under XP if it was set to compatibility. Go figure.

So far, it works pretty well. I've been warned that putting my Toshiba into sleep mode may result in it not waking up, so I haven't tried that yet. Other than that, and the aforementioned SATA controller oddity, things look okay.

I had originally installed ubuntu Netbook Edition on the thing but that was like working inside a straitjacket.

Good to hear that things are looking ok. I'm curious, what was straitjacket-y about ubuntu netbook edition?

So, the general theme of the Netbook Edition seems to be "no user serviceable parts inside: do not open". It appears specifically designed to make adding applications or making other changes to the interface difficult.

This was particularly annoying when I tried to install the software supporting my cell modem. I realized it would be easier to install a full ubuntu distribution instead of trying to make it work in the Netbook Edition.

I'm sure the Netbook Edition is good for really cramped screens, as the whole interface is designed to maximize use of limited real estate. And I imagine it's also optimized for slow processors. But I have a netbook with a relatively big screen and a reasonably fast CPU, so it turned out to be the wrong choice for me.

On a netbook you probably don't care. It might make hard disk accesses a little slower, but probably not noticeably so.

Cool, thanks; that's pretty much what I suspected.

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