MSI Wind U100 and Ubuntu Linux

The MSI Wind  U100 is a fantastic ultraportable, but for some reason in Australia is only available pre-installed with WinXP preinstalled.  Now I’m definitely not a windows hater, but I really did want linux on my ultraportable so I installed Ubuntu 8.10.  The process itself was quite painless, but did require a few little tricks to get started and then complete with a fully functional ultraportable under linux.

Installing Ubuntu 8.10

Installation of linux on the wind can be done in one of two ways:

• By using an external DVD/CD drive to install the OS (very simple)
• By using a bootable USB key.  This is the method I used, and these instructions proved invaluable to complete the process.

Getting the Inbuilt Wifi device working

My recommendation is to download the appropriate drivers and compile the new required modules for the current kernel version.  Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found on the wind wiki.

Installing the touchpad driver installed

Now apparently there are two different versions of touchpads, so depending on which one you have your experience may vary to mine.  My wind shipped with the synaptic touchpad, and apparently I’m quite lucky as it worked out of the box.  I believe MSI have changed touchpad vendor and the experience isn’t quite as pleasant for that variant.  

Once I have figured out how to configure the touchpad (currently investigating tpconfig) I will update this post.

Card Reader Configuration

The following blog post has some excellent pointers:

http://kd-signofthetimes.blogspot.com/2008/09/advent-4211-sd-cardsolved.html

Summary

All the information is out there for anyone to install linux on their wind, and personally I recommend it. In the ultraportable space I believe linux kills the competition.  I would highly recommend the msiwind.net site, as the forums and wiki are invaluable for all things windy.