Introduction

This article describes the steps necessary to install debian 6 “squeeze” on a Samsung N145 Plus netbook, with the following specification:

• Intel Atom processor
• 10.1″ display
• 1GB RAM
• 340GB HDD
• Windows 7 preinstalled

Setting up netboot of the debian installer

DHCP requests in my home LAN network is provided by dnsmasq on a desktop PC running GNU/linux debian stable (which at the time of writing, was Debian 6 squeeze). One nice feature of dnsmasq is that it can provide PXE network boot.

So what I did was to download the i386 network boot image and put the contents in the /var/tftpd/debian-installer/i386 directory of the computer running dnsmasq, and then edit the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file in the following way:

1. Remove the comment in front of the dhcp-boot config line:
   dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0
2. Set the tftp-root pointing to the directory containing the pxelinux.0 file:
   tftp-root=/var/tftpd/debian-installer/i386

Installing debian

Booting from the network

I connected the netbook with to the switch in my home LAN an RJ45  twisted pair cable, and powered on the netbook, and kept the F12 button pressed during boot, and ended up in the debian text based installer.

I set the time zone and location of the install (Oslo, Norway), created an initial user and set the root password.

Partitioning

The netbook came with a 340GB and Windows 7 preinstalled.  The hard disk was partitioned so that the Win7 system had both a C: and a D: drive, with the operating system installed on the C: drive.

The plan was to keep the Windows 7 installation, sans its D: drive and install debian in the part of the hard disk occupied by the D: drive.

The initial partitioning table looked like this:

#1	primary	104.9 MB	B	ntfs
#2	primary	93.4 GB		ntfs
#5	logical	138.3 GB		ntfs
#4	primary	28.2 GB		ntfs

I guessed that partititon #1 was the boot partition, and that partition #2 was the C: drive containing the Windows 7 installation, and that #4 was either some kind of Samsung software (diagnostics possibly) or something belonging to the Windows 7 installation.

I left partition #1, #2 and #4 alone, and deleted the partition containing the D: drive (partition #5), and turned that into free space:

#1	primær	104.9 MB	B	ntfs
#2	primær	93.4 GB		ntfs
	pri/log	138.3 GB		FREE SPACE
#4	primær	18.2 GB		ntfs

I added a swap partition twice the size of the physical memory i.e. 2GB, and added an ext3 partition using the rest of the free space, and ended up with a partitioning table looking like this:

#1	primary	104.9 MB	B		ntfs
#2	primary	93.4 GB			ntfs
#5	logical	136.3 GB	B	f	ext3	/
#6	logical	2.0 GB		f	swap	swap
#4	primary	18.2 GB			ntfs

I saved the partitioning table and continued.

Installing the system

After completing the partitioning, I selected the following items to install:

• SSH server
• Laptop
• Base tools

I let the installer run, using defaults for all questions. I answered YES to the question of whether GRUB should be installed on MBR. The installer found the Windows 7 installation and added it to the GRUB boot menu.  When the time came to reboot, I let the installer reboot.

After the reboot I logged in as root and installed the “KDE Plasma netbook” package:

apt-get install plasma-netbook kde-l10n-nb

I opened the /etc/apt/sources.list in a text editor, and modified it:

• I added the “contrib” and “non-free” sections by modifying
  deb http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
deb-src http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
  to
  deb http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
• I added apt lines for the linux Mint debian edition to get real firefox:
  # Real firefox from the Linux Mint debian repo
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian main upstream import

I then updated the APT database with the new sources and added all updates to the already installed software:

apt-get update
apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

I then installed all software I assumed was necessary:

apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
apt-get install openoffice.org openoffice.org-l10n-nb
apt-get install firefox firefox-l10n-nb

I rebooted the laptop and then logged into the plasma desktop using the user created at the start of the installation process. The desktop was missing network support and other useful software.

I logged in as root using the “failsafe” alternative, and installed missing software in the terminal window:

apt-get install network-manager-kde update-notifier-kde
apt-get install synaptic software-center gdebi

I rebooted and logged into plasma again. I tried to plug in an USB flash memory, and discovered that the desktop had no file manager, konqueror was missing. I installed konqueror (and discovered I should have picked the package “kde-plasma-netbook”, rather than just “plasma-netbook”):

apt-get install konqueror

The plasma desktop looked great, but was way to slow on an atom processor without much in the way of graphical hardware acceleration.

So I decided to try gnome and installed gnome with the command:

apt-get install gnome

I let apt set gdm3 as the default login instead of kdm.

I rebooted and logged into the gnome desktop, and it performed a lot better than the plasma desktop.

I rebooted again chose Windows 7 from the grub menu, and Windows 7 booted and logging into the desktop worked.

Making the Fn keys adjust the display brightness

The Fn keys for the adjusting the brightness didn’t work. I googled, and found two promising web pages:

1. Fixing brightnes control, etc. on a Samsung R510 with Debian Squeeze
2. InstallingDebianOn Samsung Samsung N150

I decided to try the first approach, and downloaded the packages created for Ubuntu Natty from https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa

I then installed the downloaded .deb packages in the following way:

1. Installed the easy-slow-manager:
   1. I let gdebi pull in all depdendencies (gcc, the linux-headers, make, etc)
2. Installed samsung-backlight:
   1. Edited /etc/default/grub changing the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
      to
      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_backlight=vendor"
   2. Ran the command

      update-grub

3. Installed samsung-tools:
   1. Installed the devscripts

      apt-get install devscripts

   2. Unpacked the samsung-tools tarball

      cd /tmp
      tar zxvf samsung-tools_1.4~ppa3~loms~natty.tar.gz
      cd /tmp/samsung-tools_1.4~ppa3~loms~natty
      dch -l sb

      1. Added “Compiled for debian squeeze” as the final comment

    

    

4. Built the deb package

   cd /tmp/samsung-tools-1.4~ppa3~loms~nattysb1
   dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

5. Installed the deb package

   gdebi /tmp/samsung-tools_1.4~ppa3~loms~nattysb1_all.deb

   1. I let gdebi install all of the required dependencies
6. Rebooted

After the reboot I tried the Fn+Up and Fn+Down keys to adjust the display brightness and the keys worked fine.