If you bought an HP Mini-Note hoping to wipe SUSE or Windows Vista and replace the operating system with Ubuntu, you might be disappointed to know that not everything works out of the box. But then, if you’re the sort of person who’s interesting in buying a brand new computer model and installing a brand new operating system on it, you’re probably not afraid to get your hands a little dirty. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like you have to get them too dirty, as some folks at the Ubuntu and MiniNoteUser forums have figured out how to resolve the three major problems that arise when installing Hardy Heron.

Basically, what you’ll need to do is, force the LiveCD to use xvesa when you first boot Ubuntu, download the Open Chrome Drivers to make sure the 3D graphics work properly, and follow a series of steps to get the WiFi drivers working properly. You can find detailed instructions at the MiniNoteUser Wiki.

I won’t have time to try out Ubuntu on my Mini-Note until next week, but I’m certainly looking forward to taking it for a spin. As you may have guessed from my Windows XP install guide, I don’t have a CD-ROM drive, so I’ll probably be using a USB flash drive to load Ubuntu. You can find instructions for doing this at PenDriveLinux.

In other Mini-Note Linux news, if you picked up a Mini-Note running SUSE and wound up wreaking havoc with your system before realizing that HP does not offer any sort of a system restore disc, MiniNoteUser MikeZ has uploaded a zero-day restore method, which basically lets you reset your system to factory default settings.