The most exciting present I received last Christmas is undoubtedly a Dell Mini 9.

A few months later, though it’s been surpassed by more performant and same-priced netbooks, my small Dell is still an outstanding device: some supposed limits, like the 8Gb only built-in memory, turn into valuable features when you notice how silent this computer is.

To be honest, I somehow influenced the way this present has been picked out, because it brings two significant benefits respect to some similar products: embedded Bluetooth 2.0, and Linux Ubuntu operating system. I knew Dell had involved Canonical for the second point, so I expected my Dell Mini to come with the just-released Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Instead, when I switched it on for the first time, I saw something similar to this screenshot.

Yes, pretty nice. But strongly managed by Dell, starting from the strictly selected updates; and based on Ubuntu 8.04, which misses the very good Connection Manager released within the 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. I resisted for one week, because worried about warranty issues, then I decided to pimp my Dell Mini.

The open-source community provided good support as usual, but I especially leveraged the advices from a very good blog named Ubuntu Mini. Here’s the few steps I followed.

1) First, I downloaded the latest Ubuntu release from the official site, and I created a live USB key. It was Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex in my case, but at the moment I’m writing Ubuntu 9.04 is about to be released.

2) Installation on the Dell Mini was quite easy, thanks to an excellent wizard. The only tricky part is perhaps the partition management, whose settings should depend on the way you’re going to use your netbook. You can find here a very detailed step-by-step guide, which includes an important advice to fix a common sound problem with the Dell Mini.

3) Ubuntu Linux is an amazing operating system, but I think the Netbook Remix makes it even more enjoyable, particularly on a 9 inches screen. Installing the Netbook Remix over Ubuntu 9.04 promises to be as easy as typing sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook-remix, but for its 8.10 version I needed a couple of additional expedients from this guide.

Here’s how my Dell Mini desktop looked at the end of this process, which I could perform in about one hour.

These were the must-have steps to get a Netbook-Remix-powered Dell Mini. In my experience, it’s really worth it. One example? The already mentioned built-in Connection Manager not only manages wireline and wi-fi connections seamlessly, but also allowed me to plug-&-play multiple devices: HSDPA dongles from different manufacturers, shared connection from a Windows Mobile smartphone…

The next part of this article (post 2 of 2) will include a few optional settings and tools for further improving your installation and subsequent experience.