Nov 27

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on a Lenovo R61

Category: How-To, Technical Review
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Installation Steps:

1. Plug your computer into the power outlet. Do not install an operating system while running on battery. I went on issues a couple of time when installing Windows as well as Linux distributions when doing on batteries.
2. If you are dual-booting with another operating system like Windows, make sure you have freed some space on hard disks.  Perhaps you may be forced to resize an existing partition.  You will need to create at least 2 partitions, one for swap partition and one for file system.
3. Put the Ubuntu 8.10 CD into your DVD/CD reader and start the computer.If it does boot on the CD, verify your BIOS settings or click the ThinkVantage button to choose a boot device.
4 Once the CD has started, you will be asked what you want to do:

  • Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer
  • Install Ubuntu
  • …
  • Boot from first hard disk
5. I have chosen to boot Live CD (Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer) to be able to easily take screenshots while installation process is going on.  If you are sure you may want to install Ubuntu immediately but it is always safer to run Live CD first to test your hardware compatibility.

Ubuntu 8.10 Boot CD Menu
6. After a couple of minutes waiting for the Live CD to boot, the desktop finally appears with an “Install” icon on it.  You can already appreciate the new artwork which is the nicest one, in my opinion.

If you play a little bit with the Live CD before installing, make sure to unmount any local hard drives before starting installation because you may run into problems like I did at step #9.

You just have to click the “Install” icon to initiate the installation process.

7. When the installation wizard starts, the first thing you are asked is to choose the language and then to select your timezone.Choose the appropriate zone for your location in order for the system to display clock properly according to DST (Daylight Saving Time).
8. The third wizard step is to configure your keyboard layout.  In my case, I chose canadian french.It is not always obvious to find our layout when coming from Windows environment so you can take advantage of the test box at the bottom of the screen.
9. Now is the time to prepare the disk space.  As stated at step 2, you should have already prepared some free area on your drives for the swap and file system partitions.  Since I do dual-boot with the original pre-installed Windows, I have a particular setup.Note that since I was taking screenshot captures, I mounted a local hard drive partition to save images to.  When I first reached the step 4 of the wizard I had a blank screen like this the one below.  This is a new “behavior” of the installer because I documented all my installation of Ubuntu since 6.06 and always did it that way.  First time I got this was with another laptop (Inspiron 8600) and thought I had an hardware compatibility issue.  I aborted installation.  Then I start this installation on Lenovo and got it again…  this is when I suspected something different than hardware compability…  I unmounted the local drive partition and put a USB key, restarted installation process, and Voilà! partition manager was loading (second screenshot).

Blank partition manager when local partitions mounted
10. The next wizard step is to identify who you are, the login name you want to use, the computer name, etc.

11. If you have a partition with a Windows installation on it, then you will be asked if you want to import the user settings into your new Ubuntu installation. I do not bother doing it so I just skipped.
12. You are now ready to install!
13. After about 30-40 minutes the system should ask you if you want to reboot on your fresh installation…  Yeah!

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1 comment

1 Comment so far

  1. andy mac April 23rd, 2009 2:30 pm

    nice one mate, desperate for a lappie but getting any distro (even ubuntu) to run perfect on one is rare, and from what i have read ibm seems the safest option, very few problems compared to some.

    I go back to ebay with confidence ;-) ta

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