Comments on: Samsung N150 Netbook and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

By: Windows 7 Bites Your Files? | Software Cooperative News

Windows 7 Bites Your Files? | Software Cooperative News — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:48:06 +0000

[...] new comment on the Samsung N150 Ubuntu Netbook Remix reminded me that maybe I should post this [...]

By: ss

ss — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:38 +0000

Mine came with XP Home. At first I was a little hesitant to play with other OSs since I have this genuine Windows thingy On my desktop I have format-install showdown. Then I installed UNR (dual boot). Upgraded to 11.04 alpha. Buggy. Formatted the UNR partition and screwed the whole thing. Know what? F Windows.
I formatted the whole harddisk, set boot to Other is BIOS. Installed Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit desktop full blown system. Wow!
Now I’m running 64 bit on ULCPC. In my opinion its awesome system.
Btw I miss the Easy resolution manager functionality and the Function key mapping.
Sound key works. For brightness, you can control it during the boot before the OS loads. I set it to previous settings in BIOS.

By: Daniel Coughlin

Daniel Coughlin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:01:15 +0000

That’s exactly where you want to be. Forget Windows, and forget lamed-down ‘netbook’ systems. The N150 is strong enough to run a full-strength Linux installation. I use Slackware 13.1 and it is great. Simple straightforward installer, full install, everything works (except volume and brightness buttons. They didn’t work in XP either.) I compile software, edit audio and video, land men on the moon. Don’t look back.

By: sejal

sejal — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:50:33 +0000

Hi, my samsung N150 came with Windows XP. While installing ubuntu netbook 10 edition, i removed windows partition (kept recovery partition though). But my installation failed. ubuntu dint work on my comp. Later I tried recovery with F4, it said C drive not found. I restarted, and since then it’s neither going to recovery by F4, nor going to bios by F2. It only shows ‘_’ sign after booting.

However, I tried to boot again thru USB drive where I had ubuntu installed, and since my earlier bios settings had boot from USB option, I am able to use ubuntu netbook edition thru USB.

Any idea how to go back to windows now?

By: Crispy

Crispy — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:14:13 +0000

No new bios since May. Only samsung would release a bios fix without release notes to tell you what has changed!

To be honest I will never buy a samsung product again after this and Galaxy S mobile phone. Just installed the 2.2 update for android on it and has so many bugs. Very very obvious bugs. Have you guys ever heard of TESTING.

By: Daniel Coughlin

Daniel Coughlin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:02:59 +0000

One good thing about Samsung is that they aren’t averse to providing firmware updates on the web. http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads/global
I just got an update for the N150 and flashed. Haven’t noticed any changes yet…

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:25:18 +0000

Still no insight as to why the reboot issue happens? It even happens on a Wubi install!

By: Crispy

Crispy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:30:16 +0000

I own a samsung n150 and I always setup multiple operating systems.

Usually as a min:
Win7,
Xp,
Test XP (mucking around with a few things which can break windows hence 2 XPs).
Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook
Browser Linux

I use grub4dos as my boot loader (hiding each win partition from each other) as I can fiddle with the settings from any os by just editing a text file.

I’ve done this on alot of pcs however the rebooting on the samsung really annoyed me.

Now to be clear about whats happens:
Start with Win7; ok.
Now chose Ubuntu; No Problem
Chose XP; Reboots just after xp starts loading.
Chose different XP; No Problem.
Chose Win7 or Ubuntu; Reboots again.

Ok to make this less annoying I’ve set grub4dos to remember the last chosen os so on a reboot it just loads it again.
Win7 is annoying as in case of boot interupt it default to a menu with repair where xp defaults continue.

Now I foolishy installed the XPs not in AHCI mode so I suspected anytime a OS tried to probe for old fasion ide the bios rebooted switching the controller to some sort of compatibility mode. This means any installer probing the system could reboot multiple times. Looking in the bios I confirmed this as there are related options for “xp detection”. Ok so I chose manual now rather than auto hoping it would fix the problem; it did not.
I managed to switch xp over AHCI post install suprisingly easily with a few registry additions and drivers.
Ok so now ALL the operating systems as in AHCI mode, my problems should be over.

Sadely it did not. Which means the Bios actually detects XP rather than the hd access method ?

I have also recently aquired another netbook of compaq make with the same chipset. I have no problems at all with rebooting so I think its Samsung’s crappy bios.

Another bios quirk on the samsung is usb booting. If you boot off a usb stick / harddrive most bios’s will set that drive to be hd0 (in grub terms) however the samsung will ALWAYS make your onboard hd hd0 and the usb hd1. This caused me alot of problems as grub4dos was picking up on the onboard hd config not my rescue stick. I had to rename the gdlr in the end to something else to get it to find the right thing.

I hope this has helped others with this netbook.

I can only hope for a bios fix…..

By: Ali Kara

Ali Kara — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:52:30 +0000

I supposed I’m the only person that faced the boot problem. I have tried OpenSuse, Mint and Ubuntu 10.04, 9.04 and remix. All of them worked same, crashed I mean.

I even asked help in Ubuntu forums. But no way.

I think it’s cause of BIOS software. Any clue?

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:58:14 +0000

I’ve not fixed it yet. First boot still fails. Reboot and it’s fine, though.