Installing Kubuntu on the MSI Wind U100
Of course the very first thing I had to do with my new laptop was disinfect it from the non-free OS installed by default. Fortunately, it’s incredibly easy to do. The 160GB drive came already partitioned into a 2gb, a 40gb, and a 110gb piece. The 2gb piece contains a recovery partition that can install a fresh copy of windows onto the laptop. The first time the laptop boots, Windows gets installed to the 40gb partition, which is formatted as NTFS. The third, large partition is free to install your favorite alternative OS.
Although I’ve been a long-time SuSEaholic, I decided to give Ubuntu a try on the MSI Wind, or rather Kubuntu since I’m not ready to give up my KDE 
Even though the MSI Wind lacks a CD or DVD drive, Kubuntu is dead easy to install. You simply download and run the Unetbootin program in windows, select Kubuntu netboot and target the C: drive, and reboot. voila! The kubuntu installer will start on reboot. As for partitioning, I chose to delete the 110gb partition and create a 2gb swap partition and use the remaining for /. Since the installer downloads all packages during the install, be sure to have a reliable network connection and choose a fast, local mirror site (Use the option to manually specify a URL, located at the top of the mirror selection list). The full list of official ubuntu mirrors is here.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Aaron,
looks like you’re on the same road as I am with the MSI U100
I am, too, a long-time SuSE user and decided to give Kubuntu Intrepid a try when I bought the U100 just a few weeks ago. I’ve got some comments and experiences listed in my own blog, and if you’ve got problems getting the web cam going, there’s a driver for download that might help.
Have fun with the new toy
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Interesting. My U100 has a Acer BisonCam, which is different to yours (your blog mentions an Asus BearCam, must be a new species of animalCams). The BisonCam did require a recompile of the UVC driver to work, but instructions were on the msiwind.net wiki so it was easy. The most difficult part for me was the wifi driver… My U100 came with a RT2700E Ralink wifi card. It didn’t work well at all in windows with either the MSI or the Ralink drivers, and after a week of trying different linux drivers I only saw it work momentarily to an unsecured network. It never worked with WPA in Linux for me. In the end I just swapped in a Dell 1490 wireless miniPCI card, which worked great once I covered an unfortunately placed screw header with tape so it wouldn’t short the card.
Oh, and bluetooth is a mess that I still haven’t figured out. As you know, KDE bluetooth is fux0r3d but I’ll post here if I get gnome working with my nokia phone.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Actually, the camera is the same as yours, a “BisonCam NB”, I simply made a mistake when writing the blog entry. This and the fact that you had a Ralink card instead of the previously advertised Realtek (which is what the wiki talks about) makes me think you’ve also got the so called “Luxury Edition” of the U100. Well, at least that’s what it was called here in Germany. In that case, you’ll probably also have a Synaptics touchpad instead of the Sentelic one.
The problem you describe about WPA not working has been fixed at some point, not in an official Kubuntu update, though. I fixed it by installing the driver (source package) from the following link:
https://launchpad.net/~stgraber/+archive/+files/rt2860-source_1.8.0.0-0ubuntu1~ppa2_all.deb