Samsung N150 Plus netbook for Windows and Linux

Quick look at the hardware

The N150 Plus comes with 10-inch screen resolution 1024x600, 250 GB disk, Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor, 3 USB ports (one with "permanent" power), Fast Ethernet port, and VGA HD-15 port. Weight with battery (without power-brick): 1.20 kg.

Initial view of the disk

2011-03-25. I first booted into a Linux installation system (it happened to be Fedora 14) and did Ctl-Alt-F2 just to view the layout of the netbook partitions as supplied. Note that Fedora 14 fdisk uses the -u option by default, so Start and End information is in sectors. I then mounted each partition read-only and checked the used space and contents. I then just rebooted without installing a linux system at this stage.

The partitions look like a Recovery Partition on sda1, a boot manager partition of exactly 100 MiB (sometimes called the BitLocker partition I think) on sda2, a Windows C drive on sda3, and a D drive on sda4.

# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1            2048    41945087    20971520   27  Unknown /dev/sda2   *    41945088    42149887      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3        42149888   126035967    41943040    7  HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4       126035968   488392703   181178368    7  HPFS/NTFS 

# df --si Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda1 22G 15G 7.1G 68% /tmp/sda1 /dev/sda2 105M 26M 80M 25% /tmp/sda2 /dev/sda3 43G 17G 27G 39% /tmp/sda3 /dev/sda4 186G 96M 186G 1% /tmp/sda4

# ls -l /tmp/sda1 drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jul 28 2009 EFI drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 15 2010 Restore drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14 2010 System Volume Information drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8192 Aug 3 2010 SystemSoftware drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8192 Aug 3 2010 WinClon -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Apr 24 2007 WinClon.WCL drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jul 28 2009 boot -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 383562 Jul 13 2009 bootmgr -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 481680 Jul 13 2009 imagex.exe -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4292936480 Aug 3 2010 init.w01 -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1835910353 Aug 3 2010 init.w02 -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4292991703 Aug 3 2010 init.wcl -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 25 Aug 3 2010 init.woo drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Sep 21 2009 sources # ls -l /tmp/sda2 drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4096 Aug 3 2010 BOOT drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 2 2010 System Volume Information -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 383562 Jul 14 2009 bootmgr # ls -l /tmp/sda3 drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14 2010 $Recycle.Bin lrwxrwxrwx. 2 root root 60 Jul 14 2009 Documents and Settings -> /tmp/sda3/Users drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14 2010 Intel drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jul 14 2009 PerfLogs drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8192 Aug 14 2010 Program Files drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4096 Aug 14 2010 ProgramData -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 2047 Aug 14 2010 RHDSetup.log drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 16384 Aug 1 2010 System Volume Information drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4096 Jul 14 2009 Users drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 16384 Dec 3 09:20 Windows -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 24 Jun 10 2009 autoexec.bat -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Jun 10 2009 config.sys -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1062518784 Dec 3 09:19 hiberfil.sys -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1073741824 Dec 3 09:19 pagefile.sys -rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 159 Aug 1 2010 setup.log # ls -l /tmp/sda4 drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14 2010 $RECYCLE.BIN drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14 2010 System Volume Information

First Windows boot

I then booted the netbook, without a network. The netbook boots into Windows 7 Starter, asks for a few details: language, localisation, name of primary user and computer, initial Windows Update setting, and then goes into an Install process which takes 20 minutes. Then there's a prompt from Easy Partition Manager to choose relative C and D drive sizes. I chose the minimum C: drive size of 40 GB, making the D: drive 172 GB. This operation took about 1 minute, after which Windows was available. As the partition manager recommended a reboot, I did this straightaway. A process then ran called Easy Speed-Up Manager which took a bit over 15 minutes.

Quick look after first Windows boot

Rebooted into a linux installation system again on CD, to see what's happened. The Easy Partition Manager has converted the C: drive from exactly 40 GiB to exactly 41 GiB, which is an odd thing to do after I asked for 40, and the D: drive is 171 GiB. It has conveniently created an extended partition for us at sda4, which contains just one logical partition sda5: the D: drive (which is empty). At a quick glance, again mounting read-only, partition sda1 appears unchanged, partition sda2 now has a BOOT/BCD.LOG file, and partition sda3 as the C: drive has been updated (maybe to include new programs) by the first-boot installation.

# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1            2048    41945087    20971520   27  Unknown /dev/sda2   *    41945088    42149887      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3        42149888   128133119    42991616    7  HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4       128133120   488394751   180130816    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5       128135168   488394751   180129792    7  HPFS/NTFS 

Installing Linux

Installing Linux was very straightforward. I booted a Fedora 14 CD (using my external CD/DVD drive). This works in GUI mode without problems. I normally do partitioning by hand using fdisk, so I did a Ctl-Alt-F2 and used fdisk to delete the sda5 partition (D: disk, empty anyway), and to give me additional partitions for Linux, as well as a 80 GiB area for a new D: disk. I will try the XFCE window manager at first, and try KDE as well if XFCE is very responsive.

-- LawrenceLowe - created 25 Mar 2011  

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