This is a guide to running Linux on the MSI Wind U120 laptop. The U120 is a netbook, with a 10” wide screen that runs at a maximum resolution of 1024×600. My U120 came preinstalled with Microsoft Windows XP and I initially installed Kubuntu 8.10 on a 16GB pen drive that I would boot off of periodically. After installing and configuring the Realtek wireless drivers on the pen drive, I installed Xubuntu using Wubi on the XP partition. This test was less than satisfactory and I still have issues to try to work out in terms of getting the system to boot fully. This should not be an issue with a standard hard disk installation as proven by the ability to boot from a pen drive.
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the MSI Wind U120. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the MSI Wind U120 page on LapWik.
If you would like to edit this page please first view our Editing Guidelines.
For full specifications see the MSI Wind U120 specifications page.
| Name | MSI Wind U120 |
| Processor | Intel® Atom™ N270 1.6GHz Processor |
| Screen | 10” WSVGA Widescreen |
| RAM | 1GB |
| HDD | 80GB to 160GB |
| Optical Drive | None |
| Graphics | Intel GMA 950 |
| Network | 10/100 Ethernet Realtek RTL8187 802.11b/g WLAN Card |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| HDD | Yes | |
| Graphics | Yes | direct rendering works |
| Sound | Yes | |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | Requires installation of rtl8187se_linux-04.tar.bz2 drivers. See instructions at: http://code.google.com/p/msi-wind-linux/ |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | |
| Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Card Reader | Not Tested | |
| Webcam | Yes | you have to mess around with the webcam fn key a little before it works |
The Realtek driver installation comes with an executable installer that will automatically compile using your kernel sources. It is very convenient and should be easy for a novice to install.
You can enter a summary of how well the MSI Wind U120 works with Linux here.
Discussion
Installed Arch from a usb drive (they have convenient usb images that work really well). Everything is working fine and is quite responsive with the openbox desktop. I wanted to add webcam does work, you just have to play with the fn button a little. Also, the sound works great.