Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny) Released

Hello Jamie, would you say that installing debian lenny (5.0) is way easier than ubuntu 8.10 on the HP Mini with VIA chip?

Might give this a try.

cheers,
fab

Updated by fancollo on Feb 17, 2009 1:53 PM

Hello Fab, Hmmm. That's an interesting question, and it brings an interesting possibility to mind. Yes, initial installation of Debian lenny is considerably easier than Ubuntu 8.10, because it is a completely routine installation up to the point where it makes the first boot. The screen then comes up at the wrong resolution, but that is relatively easy to fix.

If you want the details of how I did both of those installations, send me an message on here and I will give them to you.

I should also mention that the easiest of all the Linux Distributions to install and configure on the 2133 was Mandriva 2009.0. It installs from the LiveCD with no problem other than a minor glitch in the screen resolution (not as serious as with lenny), and you can then download and install the latest openchrome driver from AdamW's web page, which will get the screen working perfectly. If you install either Debian or Ubuntu, you'll have to compile the latest openchrome yourself, which is not difficult and there are excellent instructions on how to do it in the Ubuntu wiki. Not a big difference, but for inexperienced users and those who are reluctant to compile, Mandriva can be easier, and it works great on the Mini-Note.

jw

Updated by J.A. Watson on Feb 17, 2009 5:09 PM

thanks a lot for the info. actually i'm not using the 2133, but a UMPC with the same chipset. i only managed to install jaunty j. 9.04 alpha 4 but resolution is not correct and compiling openchrome did not work too. i'm not a big fan or RPM, so basically Mandriva and Suse are not my "terrain"..also because i don't have the knowledge. currently i'm downloading the netinstall booted with a USB stick. Btw, creating a bootable USB stick with Debian is not exactly easy. i just used unetbootin in windows to create the bootable USB and it's very easy. it's interesting though that when the installer started, the 7 inch touchscreen immediately worked! i'm sort of amazed. but if debian 5.0 will work without further issues on the UMPC, i will install it also on my HP tablet. Debian just is better in testing out all the features than Ubuntu.

Updated by fancollo on Feb 18, 2009 10:25 AM

This comment has been deleted at the users request

Updated by fancollo on Feb 17, 2009 6:18 PM

Sounds good. Please let us know how it works out for you, I'm very interested in hearing.

Posted by J.A. Watson on Feb 17, 2009 6:37 PM

alright, after installing Debian 5.0 via netinstall (booted from a USB stick) on a UMPC Roverpc A700Q (which is the same as the gigabyte M704) i had a rather "basic" graphics experience. resolution was 800x600 and the colors..well, something like 2 bit. So i recompiled openchrome from scratch and had absolutely the exact same problem as i had in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 alpha 4. The resolutions were there but the actual screen size of 7inch was not displayed correctly.

debian might be more stable and better tested than Ubuntu, although at this stage i will have the exact same tuning to do in Debian as I have to do in Ubuntu and since Debian is not using the latest software stacks, I think I will stick to Ubuntu. The chances that the features for VIA based devices will be updated earlier in Ubuntu are higher...

Although I might install Debian on my tablet to see how it performs. my tablet has the problem in ubuntu with the touchscreen (usb wacom based), which is compiled against kernel so everytime the kernel is updated, the driver is broken and so the touchscreen does not work anymore with xorg configuration. i suppose in debian it will be the same as ubuntu is based on debian...

how's debian performing on your devices?

Updated by fancollo on Feb 18, 2009 12:32 PM

Debian is performing ok on all three of my laptops, but it is not my Linux distribution of choice, because as you said, they tend to be very conservative about including and updating other packages, so they are often well behind many of the other distributions.

I had a problem with both Debian lenny and Ubuntu Jaunty, were the default font sizes were much too large for the display on the HP 2133, causing the panels and windows to be much too large. Is this what you meant by the actual screen size was not displayed correctly? I got around it by going to System/Preferences/Appearance, Fonts, then choose something between 6 and 8 rather than the default 10.

I have only seen this large font problem on the 2133 with Ubuntu Jaunty and Debian lenny; in particular, once I got Ubuntu 8.10 to install, the display was just fine. I'm still looking into why this is happening.

jw

Updated by J.A. Watson on Feb 18, 2009 10:14 AM

Alright, so if that's the workaround...i will try it later on.

Basically I could not see the end of the panel on the top panel and i could not see the lower panel at all. i will try to set the font size to something lower and check if that works.

i wanted to install 8.10 but it does not work at all. tried all possible ways including xforcevesa parameter, but nothing. even crunchbang linux which has this parameter as boot choice does not work. i start to think it's the wrong device :-)

Posted by fancollo on Feb 18, 2009 11:08 AM

I tried all the same things you did to install Ubuntu 8.10, also with no success. What I finally ended up doing was installing it from the alternate-install CD, which uses the text mode installer. Once that is done, you can boot to "Recovery Mode", drop to a root shell and then compile and install the openchrome driver as you have previously done.

As I said, this works extremely well for me, once I got the latest openchrome driver installed 8.10 is pretty much perfect on the HP 2133, it definitely does NOT have the graphic problems that Ubuntu 9.04 and Debian 5.0 have. I hope that would be the same for your system, but of course your mileage may vary...

jw

Posted by J.A. Watson on Feb 18, 2009 2:21 PM

@fancollo - I have found a way around the problem with X size (font size in my case) on the 2133. It seems that there is some problem with the interpretation of monitor size and resolution; if I add a DisplaySize specification to the Monitor section of xorg.conf, and give it a value that is 50%-100% larger than the actual size, the X display becomes much more reasonable.

Please check your personal messages here on ZDNet for an additional note.

jw

Posted by J.A. Watson on Feb 19, 2009 1:19 PM