tin_the_fatty weblog

Ubuntu encrypted partition is very good. All data strongly encrypted. Bootloader asks for password when booting or waking from hibernation then it all works transparently.

Performance of X30 with 768MB RAM running Ubunto 8.04 was a bit slow but still quite usable. I even wrote a long paper on it using the excellent Kile (LaTeX editor) and put the project on git (source code control/versioning). Backing up to USB thumbdrives was slow ‘cos it’s USB v1. Try to avoid USB wifi adaptors ‘cos they tend to overheat after ~20 minutes (at least for my ASUS and Buffalo). Avoid the latest greatest MIMO adaptors ‘cos they probably don’t have OSS drivers and may have difficulty running under OSS OSes. The old Linksys 802.11g PCMCIA works okay but YMWV, ‘cos manufacturers keep changing the chipset and the latest may not be OSS-friendly.

The Lady needs a Chinese Windows laptop so she could go work in the library, so I tried installing Windows XP on the X30 with the install CD. The machine would just hang. After a couple of days of fiddling, it turned out that for some reasons Windows doesn’t want to touch those Ubuntu encrypted partitions, and failed because there was no partition to install on. So I had to boot into a Ubuntu rescue shell and blasted away those encrypted partitions. It stops Windows from installing. A truly great side effect.