So I wanted to install Mythbuntu on my old Dell C640, I downloaded the CD and started the PC. Things went cool until the installation reached 25%. At that point ubiquity decided that the CD was corrupt and the installation could not continue.

So I tested the CD on both the old computer and a newer one. The newer computer didn’t find any error, but the C640 said the cd was completely broken (19 broken files, but one of them was the squashfs image).

Now what? Boot from USB? Didn’t seem to be an option, since there is no option in the boot menu. After a lot of time I found the following working solution:

• Boot the laptop from the CD (remember only the installation failed)
• Have a copy of the CD on an USB Disk
• Mount the USB Disk (mount /dev/sdb1 /tmp/usb)
• Mount the squashfs filesystem image that is located on the USB Disk (mount -o loop /tmp/usb/casper/filesystem.squashfs /tmp/squashfs)
• And now the big trick: bind the new location (/tmp/squashfs) on the location that is created by the installation CD (/rofs). The command to do that is: mount –bind /tmp/squashfs /rofs.
• Start ubiquity.

Alright, I’ve done it. Have been playing around with Feisty and got it all to work on my precious Dell D830. I had a lot of problems with Feisty (you will find the links on the left) so when Gutsy came out I hoped everything would be fixed (it did have the new intel drivers).

Well I was wrong. The problems with Gutsy on my Dell are just too big. My wireless is failing all the time. Compiz doesn’t really work (applets don’t start, settings are not saved). Too much to tell.

So I did it, I switched to hardy. Better to have an unstable release that kinda works than a stable release that just kinda doesn’t work. At least now I know I can’t blame anyone. So as time will pass I will post some updates about my experiences with Hardy.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new Laptop for work: a Dell D830 with Santa Rosa Chipset. A nice machine, but it couldn’t run Kubuntu with Beryl and all the nice graphics features I use to make Vista look pale.

To solve the issue I backported a couple of packages from gutsy to feisty (all amd64) and stored the debs in a repository. You can read all about it here. The page features a description on how to build the packages. It also has the link to connect to the repository.

Since it might concern some of you, I have switched away from Gentoo. Although it has been great fun, I don’t have the time anymore to build everything from scratch. I came to the point where I want a distribution that “just works”.

For what it is worth, the choice of today seems to be ubuntu and since I’m a KDE fan I went with the kubuntu distro.

This means that I will not be working on the Amarok ebuild anymore. I really feel sorry for that, but porting portage to kubuntu just is too much of a problem for me. I am still willing to host the files here, if needed and they will be around for the months to come. If anyone wants to step in, feel free to contact me.