The obvious first choice in loading Linux on my new Samsung netbook is the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. This should be particularly well-suited, because UNE was originally developed specifically for Intel Atom based netbook, and although it has been improved over the past couple of releases so that it works on others (such as my HP 2133 Mini-Note), I believe that it still works "best" on Atom-based systems.
Rather than drag through the complete installation procedure, I will give a summary of the results first. However, as there have been some comments recently about "everyone says installing Linux is easy, but then it sounds difficult", I will include the installation procedure at the end. It really is very, very easy.
Installing UNE on the N150 took about 30 minutes, from start to finish, including downloading the ISO image, converting it to a bootable USB drive, and installing it into a dual-boot configuration with the existing Win7. Everything went very smoothly, there were absolutely no surprises or problems, and it runs extremely well. The first indication of the difference in performance comes when you reboot after installation. UNE boots in less than 30 seconds, from power-on to a ready-to-use desktop. Windows 7 takes over 90 seconds. This kind of differential is evident everywhere you look, as well. Programs start faster and run faster. Shutdown is faster. Suspend/Resume is faster. All of the N150 Plus hardware works just fine - graphics, wired and wireless netwrking, Bluetooth, USB ports, and so on. The driver for the WiFi adapter has to be installed separately, the procedure for that is given below. Battery life seems amazingly good to me - I can't say exactly what it is yet, because I haven't yet run the battery all the way down and had to recharge! It looks like it is going to be somewhere in the range of 4-5 hours. It is very quickly becomes clear that Ubuntu Netbook Edition is an operating system that is well-suited to this netbook, while Windows 7 is an overbearing, resource-eating pig that has been shoehorned onto it.
This is not, however, the end of the journey, it is only the beginning. Over the next few days I will load various other Linux distributions on the Samsung N150 Plus, and see how they perform. I'm planning at least openSuSE 11.3, Fedora 13, Mandriva 2010.1 and SimplyMEPIS 8.5. Also, the Beta release of Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 is due out this week, and it has a completely redesigned desktop, so I'll give that a run as well. It should be interesting.
jw 31/8/2010
Installation Procedure:
The ISO can be downloaded from the Ubuntu Netbook Edition Download Page, and there are also instructions on that page for creating a bootable USB drive from the ISO image. If you have another system running a recent Ubuntu version, you can simply use the "Startup Disk Creator" utility.
Plug the USB drive into the Samsung, turn on power and press when the initial boot/diagnostic screen is displayed. Select the USB drive from the boot menu, and follow the prompts and instructions in the UNE installation procedure. The only slightly tricky part of the installation is what to do about disk partitioning. One very good option would be to just tell Ubuntu to wipe Windows and install UNE to the entire disk drive. If you want to preserve Windows and have a multi-boot configuration, there are a couple more easy options. If you accepted the default disk configuration while installing Windows 7 Sstarter on the first boot of the Samsung, and thus you have a D: drive, you can simply delete that drive and let Ubuntu install into the resulting free space. If you installed with only a C: drive, or you want to preserve both C: and D: drives, the Ubuntu installer offers you the option of reducing the size of Windows to make room for Ubuntu. Whatever method you choose, you only need to allocate a minimum of 8 GB to install UNE; of course, you are likely to want a lot more if you are going to be working a lot with it, or using it as your default operating system, but to install for testing you can give it 8 GB and you'll still have a couple Gig free to work with.
Once the installation procedure finishes, reboot the netbook and you'll see the multi-boot selection menu. If you don't select anything, it will automatically boot UNE after a few seconds. It will then come up to the UNE desktop.
Because the N150 Plus has a Broadcom bcm4727 WiFi adapter, which uses a proprietary driver under Linux, the driver is not installed by default with UNE. To get it installed, simply connect a wired network cable, and then go to System / Hardware Drivers. After searching for a short time, UNE will tell you that a driver is available, and you simply select "Activate". it takes less than 5 minutes to download and install the driver, and your wireless networking will then be working.
Good Luck!
jw
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Great writeup. I don't have a netbook although I think I will be looking at buying one soon for various uses. I would never ever ever leave Windows 7 on it. I have heard nothing but the same thing that you mention, that they tried to cram Windows 7 on it, even though Windows was never designed to run on lighter weight hardware. Windows 7 Starter Edition was supposed to fill in this void, but then users are basically running limited software at that point. They will argue that netbooks were never intended for advanced usage, however today is a mobile world, and having all full functional apps on a netbook is important. Thankfully Linux is much more efficient and can easily run on a netbook.
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A friend of mine recently bought a N150, and whilst its a nice little computer windows 7 starter that is bundled with it makes it run horribly slowly. The 1Gb of RAM it comes with is pretty much used up by the OS before any applications are running and there are nag shortcuts to get you to 'upgrade' to win7 home. I advised him to return it for a refund, as it is bordering on unusable in the state it is supplied in. I bought a compaq 311c about a month before my friends purchase which has almost the same spec, and I installed ubuntu lucid after rejecting the win XP EULA - its works really well, the nvidia ion coping with 1080i h.264 playback effortlessly under VDPAU (I use a mythtv box at home to record tv that I play back when travelling). I don't recall any issues installing ubuntu beyond persuading it to boot off the external CD initially. The only flaw with the computer was HP flipping me the bird when I asked for a refund of the XP license. Ho hum, thats the last HP hardware I'll be buying then.
sherbey : 1 GB of RAM to run Windows 7 is a guaranteed failure waiting to happen, just as you mention. Windows 7 is in no way going to run, especially once you start opening up apps, even a simple web browser. Even with regular Windows 7 editions, at least 2 GB of RAM is needed in order to get any use out of the PC. Linux is the best suited OS to run on netbooks. It can easily be scaled to run on them (as in Ubuntu netbook edition), however most distributions run efficiently enough right out of the box. The problem we face is that people don't have the patience to learn Linux, even though it is very simple once people know how to use it.
I have just bought a Samsung N150 Plus, which I love, but which came loaded with Windows 7 starter. I might have loaded XP which I like, but found I'd lost the activation code or whatever it's called, so one useless XP CD! I therefore chose Ubuntu and since I have a machine running XP went the whole hog and ditched Windows.
Love Ubuntu, love it to pieces, love its elegant colours not least after crudity of MS! Total simplicity to install with one note. Not everyone has a 2 Gb stick lying around so burn to a DVD. Didn't even have to mess with the BIOS, installed on restart. Love the software repository included as I'm studying and have found gems there. Ubuntu accepted happily my Three MiFi. It is unhappy with my external drive and with my Vodafone mobile broadband dongle. They show up but won't run. I'm working on it but since I can get on the Net and work in Open Office, which I use anyhow in XP, and since text and spreadsheet files can be transferred by the trick of sending them to oneself from a hotmail email account which can of course be accessed from any PC, I#m a happy bunny.
@cantilip - Thanks for the comments. It's nice to hear that you like the N150 Plus with Ubuntu.
What are the symptoms of your mobile broadband dongle not working? Do you know what the real make and model of it are (Huawei, Option, Sierra Wireless, other?)
jw
Yay! I have an N 150 plus, as well! Also have similar probs as you, @cantilip :( I have been all over the web to try and find out how I can fix it, to no avail! Did you find a fix? Mine is a Huawei vodafone dongle, if thats any help, JW. The N150 is a great little machine, and it would be brilliant if I didnt have to switch over to that dreadful other os (it has a 7 in it...but I just cant bring myself to write the name in public) to get on the net! Any help would be much appreciated! Thankxs :)
Cool, just got given one of these as a present, didn't even bother looking at win 7 starter, the thought of it makes me feel sick so instantly upgraded to win 7 ultimate (as a software dev my company supplies with with an msdn subscription so this didn't cost me) but with 1Gb RAM?!
Straight away thought I'd search for info on installing a linux distro, sounds incredibly straightforward so I'm downloading the distro now. Thanks for the confirmation that it's so simple.
Hello,
I bought a Samsung N150-JPB2 over Christmas as a present to myself, largely on the recommendation of your review here and here: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jamies-mostly-linux-stuff-10006480/samsung-n150-plus-netbook-fedora-mandriva-ubuntu-maverick-and-jolicloud-10018571/. Mostly it's brilliant and runs beautifully, but...
The wireless won't work.
When I open the Hardware Drivers and start a search, it tells me that "no proprietary drivers are in use on this system."
:/
The wired connection works fine, so it's not my internet that's causing the fuss. Has something changed since you wrote this review, or were you using a different archive? Please let me know; I'd hate to think I got this lovely machine specifically to access the internet while traveling, and now can't use it at all!
Q
@qthewetsprocket - Getting the wireless to work on the N150 Plus depends on what Linux distribution you are using. If you have installed Ubuntu or one of its derivatives such as Linux Mint, the simple procedure is described above - just use the "Additional Hardware Drivers" utility, with a wired network connection, to download and install the Broadcom STA drivers. For other Linux distributions, the procedure will vary, let me know what you are using and I will try to help.
jw
@J.A. Watson - I'm running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04. The iso included the suffix i386, if that makes any difference. Here's hoping there's an easy fix!
Q
@qthewetsprocket - You should be able to get Ubuntu to install the driver for you without much problem. Boot the netbook with a wired internet connection on; go to System/Administration/Additional Drivers, and it should put up a "Searching for Available Drivers" window. When the search is complete, it should offer to install the "Broadcom STA wireless driver", which is just what you want. Click "enable" or "install" (can't remember which it is called), and after a few minutes it should tell you that installation is complete and you need to reboot to activate the driver. Disconnect the wired network cable, reboot, and you should be good.
The only fly in the ointment here is that you are running Ubuntu Netbook Edition, with the wonderful/detested (depending on which side of the fence you are on) Unity desktop. So you won't find "System/Administration" as I described above. I am firmly on the "detested" side of the fence, so I don't have UNE running on anything right now that I could look at and tell you exactly what/where to click, you'll have to find the "Additional Drivers" utility yourself. If I recall correctly there is an icon, near the bottom of the stack, which you can click and get a window which is roughly equivalent to the ordinary Gnome menus, and in there you should find Administration and then Additional Drivers. Alternatively, I think you can click the symbol at the extreme top left of the screen and get a list of every utility and application available, so you might find Additional Drivers in there.
jw
If all else fails and you can't find Additional Drivers, or it doesn't work for you (I have seen a few rare cases where it didn't seem to offer the right drivers, and I had to try several times), you can always go directly to Synaptic and select the package for installation yourself. Of course, this requires that you find Synaptic in the UNE menus, but if you manage that, then the package you want to install is bcmwl-kernel-source.
Good luck. Let us know how it works.
jw
@jw - Is the 'Additional Hardware Drivers' utility different from the regular 'Hardware Drivers' utility? I already tried the 'Hardware Drivers' method you described, and it didn't work. (For clarity's sake: I clicked the System menu bar at the bottom of the list on the left side of the screen, then scrolled down to the last available window and clicked on the 'Hardware Drivers' icon. It searched for available drivers, and told me that "no proprietary drivers are in use on this system.")
I did download bcmwl-kernel-source from Synaptic Package Manager pretty easily, though (many thanks for the suggestion). Now I just can't seem to get it to work. It doesn't automatically search for a wireless device / network when I open an internet application, and I'm not entirely sure what to do to make it look for one. Hints? (Sorry if this is relative baby stuff here, but I'm a total Ubuntu n00b, so many thanks for your patience.)
Also, out of curiosity - what's your beef with 10.04's layout? I'm actually finding it very user friendly (the only hitch is that it's difficult to search for things / implement changes when you find them), but I'm a lifelong Mac user, and I'm told that Ubuntu is the closest Linux has ever come to a Mac's relative ease of use for non-programmers.
Many thanks for your quick responses, btw...hopefully a solution will appear without too much more sturm and drang; I'd really love to start exploring this new Ubuntu system once I've got its wireless up and running.
Q
@qthewetsprocket - Hmm. It really shouldn't be very difficult, I'm sorry that you are having so much trouble. I just went back and looked at the notes I wrote about this netbook on www.linlap.com, and I did install Ubuntu 10.04 on it, and the Broadcom adapter did come up after going through "Hardware Drivers". However, I know that it can be confusing, and I know from experience that the Ubuntu driver utility doesn't always report correctly after searching.
First, yes, you are right, the currently correct name is "Hardware Drivers". I have trouble keeping that straight because Ubuntu has changed the name (but not the utility) a couple of times over the past few years. Second, in my experience the automatic notification only comes up once after you install and reboot, and if you don't pay attention to it or you don't understand the significance of what it is on about, it's easy to miss it or disregard it, and then you never get prompted again, which I find unfortunate. Third, when you manually run the Hardware Drivers utility, I have seen it give a completely incorrect response, just as you said - saying simply "no proprietary drivers are in use", rather than offering to install the driver for the Broadcom wireless adapter. I don't know why this happens, but I have had to get around it a few times by running the utility repeatedly, or by first running Synaptic, choose "Refresh", and then run Hardware Drivers again. I don't know if there is really a connection between Synaptic Refresh and Hardware Drivers, or if it is just that some time passes while I am fiddling with Synaptic, during which Hardware Drivers has figured out what it needs to do.
By the way, I have no problems with the UNE 10.04 user interface, I think it is the best that they have done so far. It was a significant improvement over the 9.04/9.10 layout, which consumed too much screen space with columns down both sides, and I really don't like the 10.10/Unity desktop, although some others do - that was what I was referring to in the "wonderful/detested" comment above.
More to follow...
jw
Q - Honestly, if you are in a position to do so at this point, I would try reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch and making an extra effort to be sure that the Hardware Drivers utility sees the Broadcom adapter and installs the driver for it. In fact, you can test this theory first, because it will actually do so when you are running the Live Image, so if you still have the USB stick (or CD) that you installed from, just make sure that you have a wired network connection and then boot the Live Image. Choose "Try Ubuntu", not "Install Ubuntu", and then when it is up and running just wait a minute or two and you should see an icon pop into the top Panel indicating that Hardware Drivers found something interesting. Click that, and let it install the driver, then you can verify that wireless is working before you even redo the installation. If that is ok, and you then go ahead and install (using the icon on the Live desktop), it will also install the Broadcom driver, and the whole thing will work when you reboot without having to repeat the Hardware Drivers installation.
If you are not able or willing to reinstall, or you can't get the wireless working in a Live boot, let me know and I will try to help you poke around a bit more.
Good Luck,
jw
@jw - Well, crap. Still no joy...the USB stick won't give me the live image; it just goes straight to the desktop. I even reconfigured the BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive first, but all of the available options take me right to the desktop and not the 'try/install' menu (except for the 'Boot From First Drive' option at the bluescreen startup, which takes me to exactly the same place as the 'Help' option). Maybe you can only get the live image if the disk detects that you haven't already got Ubuntu installed on your hard drive? Or am I not doing something important? Do I need to hit 'Esc' or 'F1' or some button I don't know about during bootup to get to the live image from the USB drive?
Anyway, throughout all of that, I kept checking Hardware Drivers intermittently in the vain hopes that it would recognize the software that Synaptic Package Manager downloaded, but no such luck.* (and it is downloaded; when I re-checked the same package in SPM it asked if I wanted to mark it for re-installation, not installation. So it's definitely on the computer somewhere.)
No icon ever popped up saying that Hardware Drivers had found something, either...the closest thing to that was the Update Manager showing me a metric buttload of system/security upgrades. I have no idea what most of them were, but I tried the full upgrade anyway on the offchance that one of the mystery elements was the missing link to getting the OS to recognize the new driver.
It wasn't. After an hour of waiting for it to finish, I checked the Hardware Drivers utility again, and it was STILL insisting that no proprietary drivers were in use on this system.
Grrrrr.
(To Be Continued...)
@jw - (Continued from above)
Is there a simple command line I can type in a Terminal window and FORCE the damn system to install it? I've never seen an OS that blatantly refused to recognize something its own utility downloaded before...I certainly hope the rest of Ubuntu isn't this buggy.
* Btw, I've experienced something similar to what you described re: running a utility several times before it recognized new software: I downloaded Gimp through the Ubuntu Software Center, but then couldn't find it anywhere on the computer...and then, a few days later, its icon suddenly appeared in the graphics window as if by magic. Weird. A bug peculiar to 10.04, maybe?
Anyway, please tell me there is another way to fix this @#$%!! thing before I throw it out the window and start looking for a way to Hackintosh OS X onto it. I'm willing to try the USB stick again if there's a way to retrieve the live image that I don't know about, but a command line solution would be great to have as well - and remember, Ubuntu n00b here, so 'Command Lines for Dummies' would definitely be the most helpful option.
Many thanks for your ongoing help and patience,
Q
The Very Frustrated Animal
@jw - UPDATE - success!
I was fiddling around with something else on the laptop when I suddenly noticed the 'network connections' icon in the top panel didn't have the little red exclamation point on it, even though the wired connection wasn't plugged in. I clicked on the icon, and al of a sudden it was offering me a bunch of connection options that it had never listed before. I chose the one for my home account, and hooray! Connection.
The only slightly unsettling thing is that I have absolutely no idea what I did to make this work. My guess is that some mystery element within the metric buttload of Update Manager upgrades allowed the system to read the driver...because the Hardware Drivers utility STILL denies its existence. The mind boggles.
Anyway, many million thanks again for your patience and support...fingers crossed that the netbook and the OS both come to the conclusion that they thoroughly enjoy working correctly from now on.
Q
Ubuntu 10.4 installed the Broadcom STA driver when connected by ethernet and I've found that it works OK if the wireless signal is strong, but when using my neighbour's weakish signal (with his permission!) the connection will only work from time to time. Unfortunately I have to admit that on the same machine, in the same circumstances, it works every time with Windoze7. So maybe the Broadcom driver is inefficient, which could perhaps explain some of the problems mentioned above. Kaspin
Thanks for the write up, I just got an N150+ and want to switch to Ubuntu as quick as possible. I have downloaded Ubuntu onto a USB stick but need to get the wireless driver before installing it as I have a mobile modem with no way of being able to get onto a wired internet connection. I have tried searching online but sites I have found offering the driver have either seemed to be riddled with viruses or expect me to pay $5 to download it :/ Any idea how to go about getting it? Thanks in advance.
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@cakey - Sorry to be a bit slow in replying to this, I wanted to test it again to be sure that I was remembering correctly. The N150+ has a Broadcom 4313 WiFi adapter (I got the number wrong in the original review, 4727 is some sort of model number below the 4313), which uses the brcm80211 driver. That driver is included in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), so you don't need to do anything extra to get WiFi working. In the original review above, I was loading Ubuntu 10.10, which did not include the brcm80211 driver, so I had to let it install the STA driver to get the WiFi working. You do NOT want to do that now, though, because the STA driver has serious performance and reliability problems compared to the brcm80211 driver.
I just reloaded Ubuntu 11.04 on my N150+ from scratch, to be sure that this was correct, and it all worked just fine. After installing and rebooting the WiFi just works. Be careful, because Ubuntu will still bring up the Hardware Drivers dialog and offer to install the STA driver for you, but DO NOT accept that, you don't need or want that driver because the correct one is already installed.
jw
Hi guys, i saw a different solution, but what can i do to installa the driver manually. for example i want to download the driver and after that i want to installa manually on ubuntu? i havent a wired connection
I have installed UNE on mu N150 and all is well except the wireless connection.
I can access the additional drivers section and search but no additional drovers are found. The wireless adaptor seems to be working though as the netbook can see my sky router and it trys to connect with the password but just keeps failing.
I dont know what to try next.
Do you have to have UNE actually installed? As I am running it from the USB drive.
@jonnegri - I have Ubuntu 11.10 installed on my Samsung N150 Plus, and in fact I just booted it up to write this comment, so I could be sure that I wasn't misstating anything. It works just fine, including support for the Broadcom 4313 wireless network adapter, out of the box.
It is not clear to me exactl what you mean when you say that you have loaded UNE. If you are refering to the Ubuntu Netbook Edition, that was folded back into the main Ubuntu distribution starting with the 11.04 release; if you are still trying to run Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 (or older), then the problem you are having is that the Broadcom 43xx adapters were not supported in those older releases. You might be able to get it to work by installing either the "STA" driver (also known as "wl" in distributions other than Ubuntu) or the "b43" driver. But I would advise you to update to a newer distribution, whether it be Ubuntu or some other, to get the latest Broadcom bcmsmac driver.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
P.S. I know that upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 or later means giving up the rather nice UNE desktop and going to Ubuntu Unity. That is why I specifically said "Ubuntu or some other". The KDE Netbook desktop is quite nice on the N150, so just about any of the KDE distributions might be good for you, such as Mint 12 KDE, openSuSE, PCLinuxOS, or even KUbuntu if you want to stay within the Ubuntu family.
Hey J.A.! May I ask you a question? A friend of mine want to switch to Linux, he has a Samsung N150 Plus, as you know it comes with a HD with many partitions (recovery, etc.) is it there a risk to break the computer if HD is erased and created new partitions (/, /home & /swap) for a Linux installation? I have Fedora 16, Kororaa (based on Fedora 16), Ubuntu, Chakra Linux & a couple more of distros, what you would recommend to install? he is a complete newbie with Linux. thanks in advance!
@JoshArg.
It does not harm the computer to erase the whole disk, *but* it might be unwise to remove Windows entirely in case it may be wanted or needed in the future. Also, if relevant, the warranty might be adversely affected.
My advice would be to create an image of his hard disk before you start so that you can restore the computer to it's present state, if necessary, and then either shrink the 'C' drive, create an extended partition for as many logical partitions as you choose. Grub will cope with this when you install Linux. Alternative, you could erase the whole disk after you've created the disk image. Do you need advice on disk imaging?
What I sometimes do is to remove and set aside the original hard drive and replace it with a new one, thus the old set-up is preserved.
@joshArg - Moley has pretty well covered the necessary information as far as the disk drive is concerned. If you are sure that your friend won't want to go back to Windows you can wipe the disk clean and load only Linux - that is exactly what I just did to my Acer Aspire One 522. If you want to retain the possibility of going back to Windows, then either make sure you have a good set of Recovery disks, or an image of the disk. As for the partitions that are preallocated on the disk, you may decide to delete just one of them, create an Extended partition in its place, and then put your Linux /, /home, /boot, swap and whatever in that Extended partition.
As for what Linux distribution to use, pretty much all of the major ones work very well on the N150 Plus now. If you are already familiar with Fedora and Kororaa, either of them would work just fine and you might be in a better position to help. On my N150 Plus I also have Linux Mint Debian 201204, Linux Mint 12, openSuSE 12.1, Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 6.0.5, all of which work just fine.
jw
Thank you very much Moley & J.A. Watson, let me tell you that My friend does not want Windows anymore (He hate to deal with fragmentation, virus & and other annoying stuff plus OS degradation) I have read about Fedora 16 (it is one of the ones who can cope with brightness controls issue) so I can erase the entire disk without worrying about messing up anything right? great! I think I will install something "easy" for new users, as Ubuntu or deb based distros. I have ready about a ppa to solve the brightness control issue, by the way this model comes with an Atheros WiFi card, do you think that installing Ubuntu will be right? I mean about software and help disponibility? thanks once again for your kind help!
@JoshArg - Yes, you can erase the entire disk without worrying about messing up anything. In fact it can be even easier than that - your idea of installing Ubuntu could be a very good one, as one of the options during installation is to let Ubuntu take over the entire disk, so you don't have to worry about erasing existing partitions or creating new ones yourself. The problems with brightness control on the N150 Plus seems to have been solved with the latest distributions as well, including Ubuntu 12.04, so you probably won't have to worry about finding and loading a special ppa for that.
I am writing this on my N150 Plus running Ubuntu 12.04, and I have just been testing a few other things on it. The Fn-keys work for volume up/down/mute, brightness up/down, touchpad off/on and sleep (suspend). Wired and wireless networking and Bluetooth all work just fine. By the way, mine has a Broadcom 4313 wireless adapter, but I believe you are right there have been several different models of the N150 Plus made, some with Atheros wireless adapters, but that should not be a problem as Atheros is also well supported in current distributions.
jw
Thanks once again! I have installed Linux Mint 13 (Maya) everything runs well but.. bluetooh is not present, "there is no blueetooth adapter" do this model comes with a bluetooh adapter?, now I am wondering thanks!
@JoshArg - Well, I am writing this from my N150 Plus, running Ubuntu 12.04 and using a Bluetooth mouse (well, to be totally correct it is a Kensington Slimblade Trackball/Mouse), and I didn't do anything at all special to get this to work. However, there are two things that can have a bearing on this. First, I know from other correspondence, and from posts on the LinLap Wiki, that Samsung really did make the N150 in a lot of different configurations, both with and without a variety of options, at different times and for different markets. Second, I believe that you mentioned earlier that the one your friend has includes an Atheros WiFi adapter, whereas mine has a Broadcom 4313. This kind of difference can indicate that it also has a different Bluetooth adapter, or no Bluetooth adapter at all, so that could explain it.
I suppose the first important question would be, are you sure that Bluetooth was present and working under Windows before the upgrade? If so, then perhaps you could find some more information with the command "sudo lspci -v", and look for some mention of a bluetooth adapter in there. If you find one, then you could check around to see if anyone knows of problems with that specific adapter and Ubuntu in particular, or Linux in general.
Good luck.
jw