Linux on Dell XPS

I remember the days when installing an operating system like Linux on a computer required: building a custom kernel, getting that kernel to boot, hacking device drivers, building another kernel, messing with settings and if you were lucky you might get X to run....

Today, I cannot believe just how easy it was to get Ubuntu to install on my (finally repaired) Dell XPS M1330. For future reference, here's what I did.

I used a Ubuntu CD, version 8.10 (October 2008).

1. Test that the Ubuntu Live CD boots and recognises enough devices (it does).
2. Use Vista's partition manager to shrink the Vista partition to about half of the disk. Note that this is primary partition 3.
3. Boot the Ubuntu Live CD.
4. Partition the disk. The Ubuntu partitioner didn't seem to get it right, so I used gparted. Delete sda4 (this is media direct). Add extended partition to fill the disk (there is a small 2MB unallocated bit left). Add logical partitions inside sda4: 4GB for swap and the rest for ext3.
5. Start installer. Select manual partitioning and configure the partitions as / and swap as above.
6. The rest is automatic. Grub was successfully installed; Vista and Ubuntu are detected and boot correctly. Vista did some automatic reinstalling device drivers, but all seemed ok after that.

The only remaining thing to do is disable the media direct button. Apparently if you press this to turn on the computer, it trashes the partition table.