Dell Mini 10/Linux – 2 Days of pain

Nov 19
Posted on November 19, 2009 1:00 in Hardware, Problems & Solutions, Projects

So yesterday my new laptop arrived. I decided to get a little Dell Mini 10 netbook as a companion to my new Mac Mini workstation. At the moment I’m at the point of selling it again though.

dell-mini10

I found a good deal on eBay for a Dell Mini 10 with integrated wireless-n, bluetooth, 3G/HSDPA, TV-tuner, HD screen and a 6 cell battery. Additionally I liked the model because everyone seems to like the Dell Mini 10 for  turning them into hackintoshes. Yeah, that’s where I was wrong.

The Dell Mini 10 has a little brother called the Dell Mini 10v (where the v stands for value). This model rarely comes with all the extras and has a atom N series processor. It turns out that my machines Z-series atom is actually the reason why I can’t run Mac OS X on it. Doh!

Now I promised myself at the beginning of the year to invest some more time in Linux, so I saw this as a good moment to try it out. I started off with Ubuntu 9.10, which is the newest Ubuntu version. After install the wifi didn’t work, neither did the graphics driver, nor the brightness controls, nor the sleep/suspend, nor the wifi, etc. I spend a few hours getting the wifi and screen to work correctly, and a hack gave me hibernation support. But by then the audio started acting up even more so I decided to do the wise thing to switch to Ubuntu 9.04 (the current long-term-support release).

I chose for the Netbook Remix release because I already started to notice that having a UI that’s optimized for a small screen and a small keyboard might be a wise plan. I managed to get everything to work pretty quickly (except for the TV tuner software) but realized that even the netbook remix doesn’t really run that smoothly on my Z530 with 1GB of ram.

Now to be fair, I’m used to machines with 4GB of ram for the least 4 years, so this is quite a step back. But the screen tearing and slow response is just sometimes killing me. So I decided to look into upgrading the RAM in this machine. This is when I realized this machine doesn’t have any upgradable RAM!

So at the moment I’m really contemplating my options. I love the built-in 3G in this machine, and the 6 cell battery is interesting, but the keyboard is crap, the upgradability sucks, and it won’t run Mac OS X.

So, what IS the best netbook out there that can run Mac OS X? Should I stick with this machine for now or maybe go back to Mac? A Macbook Air is starting to look very tempting.

  • http://mogotion.com Sam Machin

    The Mini10v is by far the best netbook for running OSX, of course if your looking for the apple ‘It Just Works’ experience then even with OSX on a 10v you won;t quite get it. However I think its on par with running a reasonably supported Linux Distro, once everything is working your fine until you want to upgrade and even then you just need to tread carefully.
    I guess it comes down to you get what you pay for, for £200 the the Mini10v gives you 95% of the experience you get with a £1000+ Air, Thats the decision you need make really.

  • http://mogotion.com Sam Machin

    The Mini10v is by far the best netbook for running OSX, of course if your looking for the apple ‘It Just Works’ experience then even with OSX on a 10v you won;t quite get it. However I think its on par with running a reasonably supported Linux Distro, once everything is working your fine until you want to upgrade and even then you just need to tread carefully.
    I guess it comes down to you get what you pay for, for £200 the the Mini10v gives you 95% of the experience you get with a £1000+ Air, Thats the decision you need make really.

  • http://twitter.com/haniers Hani

    Linux strikes out again. I think if you are not a dedicated Linux user then it will quickly get on your nerves. Also, the more specialized hardware you use, the more pain you will get. I am surprised though that the performance on Linux is causing you problems. You think that OS X will work smoothly where Ubunto couldn’t??

    The MacBook Air is a complete rip-off. The people here who got theirs from the university are complaining about it’s crappy performance. If you actually pay for yours, I think you will be even more disappointed. IMHO, the MacBook Air is not worth more than a high end netbook (around eur 500).

    If I were you I would go with the Dell Mini 10v or any other netbook with a proven hackintosh path. Another possibility is to wait for the apple tablet. Romors say that it is coming soon. Then again, they have been saying that for a couple of years now.

    • http://www.resumewritingservice.biz/home/premium-resume-writers/ resume writers

      Agreed! I’ve tried using Linux myself, and it really started getting on my nerves very quickly. It’s a pain in the… to find all the drivers it couldn’t identify etc. etc. etc.

  • http://twitter.com/haniers Hani

    Linux strikes out again. I think if you are not a dedicated Linux user then it will quickly get on your nerves. Also, the more specialized hardware you use, the more pain you will get. I am surprised though that the performance on Linux is causing you problems. You think that OS X will work smoothly where Ubunto couldn’t??

    The MacBook Air is a complete rip-off. The people here who got theirs from the university are complaining about it’s crappy performance. If you actually pay for yours, I think you will be even more disappointed. IMHO, the MacBook Air is not worth more than a high end netbook (around eur 500).

    If I were you I would go with the Dell Mini 10v or any other netbook with a proven hackintosh path. Another possibility is to wait for the apple tablet. Romors say that it is coming soon. Then again, they have been saying that for a couple of years now.

  • http://tommorris.org/ Tom Morris

    I’ve been there with netbook remix. It’s not very quick. If you want performance with low RAM, you’ve gotta avoid GNOME altogether. Outside of GNOME and KDE, you’ve got tons of choice. To really get the best out of Linux, you’ve got to be prepared to try a few different things and find one you like.

    A lot of people quite like LXDE. It has a similar look and feel to Windows XP. It’s very lightweight. I didn’t really like it because it feels too much like Windows XP, which in my humble opinion is a bad thing.

    Another option is Xfce, which is similarly lightweight and usable for netbooks. I’ve switched one of my netbooks to Ubuntu 8.04 with the netbook remix panel running on Xfce. The other I’ve got running with Debian Sid on stock Awesome (which is very cool: it works just how I wish all computers would work).

    My desktop PC runs stock Xfce on Ubuntu. (I’m moving them all over to Debian because Debian isn’t all newbie hand-holdy, which I don’t want.)

    If you want to get the best out of Linux, you’ve got to be prepared to do a lot of tweaking and fiddling to get things right.

  • http://tommorris.org/ Tom Morris

    I’ve been there with netbook remix. It’s not very quick. If you want performance with low RAM, you’ve gotta avoid GNOME altogether. Outside of GNOME and KDE, you’ve got tons of choice. To really get the best out of Linux, you’ve got to be prepared to try a few different things and find one you like.

    A lot of people quite like LXDE. It has a similar look and feel to Windows XP. It’s very lightweight. I didn’t really like it because it feels too much like Windows XP, which in my humble opinion is a bad thing.

    Another option is Xfce, which is similarly lightweight and usable for netbooks. I’ve switched one of my netbooks to Ubuntu 8.04 with the netbook remix panel running on Xfce. The other I’ve got running with Debian Sid on stock Awesome (which is very cool: it works just how I wish all computers would work).

    My desktop PC runs stock Xfce on Ubuntu. (I’m moving them all over to Debian because Debian isn’t all newbie hand-holdy, which I don’t want.)

    If you want to get the best out of Linux, you’ve got to be prepared to do a lot of tweaking and fiddling to get things right.

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