Install Ubuntu 9.04 on used laptop

My father just sent me a laptop that is a few years old. It has 1gb of ram and a 100gb hard drive with intel graphics.

Almost everything worked OK but I found a few problems that I needed to fix. The flash videos didn't work full screen and the hard drive was spinning down too often.

After installing and fixing those 2 things everything seems to work right. It boots fast and suspend,wireless,web cam,graphics,network and sound all work good.

Here is the step by step guide of how I got it running.

1. Boot from ubuntu 9.04 live usb or cd

Select:
Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer

2. Open terminal windows from Applications-Terminal

type:
sudo passwd root
to setup a root account, then type:
su


3. Create Partitions

start fdisk
fdisk /dev/sda
Press d to delete all partitions
Press n to add a new partition
Press p for primary partition
Partition number 1
Select defaults for First cylinder
Set size to +20G for Ubuntu
Press n to add a new partition
Press p for primary partition
Partition number 2
Set size to +30G for Gentoo
Press n to add a new partition
Press p for primary partition
Set size to +2G for Swap
Press n to add a new partition
Press p for primary partition
Use the rest of drive for data partition
Press t to change partition type
Select partition 3 for swap
change to swap type 82
Press w to write to disk and exit


4. Run Ubuntu Installer

Select defaults until partition screen then select Specify partitions manually

select /dev/sda1 by double clicking on it
set Use as: to ext3
check format the partition:
set mount point as /

select /dev/sda2
set Use as: to ext3
check format the partition:
leave mount point blank

select /dev/sda3
set Use as: to swap area

select /dev/sda4
set Use as: to ext3
check format the partition:
leave mount point blank

click on next to set up username and password then let it finish installing the system



5. Open terminal window and set root password

sudo gpasswd root
then
su

6. Fix drive spin down

edit:
/etc/hdparm.conf

add to end of file
hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda



7. Fix Intel 915 Graphics

I followed the instructions from the website shown below.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/intel-graphics-performance-guide-for-ubuntu-904-jaunty-users.html


wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30-rc2/linux-headers-2.6.30-020630rc2-generic_2.6.30-020630rc2_i386.deb http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30-rc2/linux-headers-2.6.30-020630rc2_2.6.30-020630rc2_all.deb http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30-rc2/linux-image-2.6.30-020630rc2-generic_2.6.30-020630rc2_i386.deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libd/libdrm/libdrm2_2.4.9-1_i386.deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libd/libdrm/libdrm-intel1_2.4.9-1_i386.deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/x/xserver-xorg-video-intel/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.7.0-1_i386.deb


dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.30-020630rc2_2.6.30-020630rc2_all.deb linux-headers-2.6.30-020630rc2-generic_2.6.30-020630rc2_i386.deb linux-image-2.6.30-020630rc2-generic_2.6.30-020630rc2_i386.deb libdrm2_2.4.9-1_i386.deb libdrm-intel1_2.4.9-1_i386.deb xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.7.0-1_i386.deb



edit:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "Intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
VideoRam 261376
Option "FramebufferCompression" "false"
Option "Tiling" "false"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
EndSection

#Enable clt-alt-backspace

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DontZap" "false"
EndSection



8. Install Flash Player

apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-installer


9. Install Java

apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts


10. Install GCC Compiler and other misc software

apt-get install build-essential sensors-applet mplayer bum nautilus-open-terminal abiword xfmedia

11. Reboot