Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Monday 2 March 2009, 12:42 PM
HP 2133 Mini-Note: Lessons Learned
On the first boot, the Mini-Note went through a setup procedure for SuSE Linux, which ended up producing a disk layout with a 1 GB swap area on sda1, a 10 GB root partition on sda2, a 97 GB home partition on sda3, and a 1.8 GB recovery partition on sda4. That is not the way I would have done the layout, but it certainly works. The lower screen resolution is noticeable, compared to my original Mini-Note, but it is not a significant disadvantage, and in fact a lot of people might consider this one easier to read. It uses the "wl" wireless driver for the Broadcom 4312 adapter, so it is able to see and connect to both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless networks.
The SLED 10 installation looks quite nice. It includes most of the packages that you would expect with a good Linux desktop, such as Firefox (browser), Evolution (email and organizer), OpenOffice, F-Spot Photo Manager, Banshee (media player), and even Real Player 10. As I said last week when looking at SLED 11 on my other HP 2133, it is a good, solid Linux implementation; this particular version is well suited to the HP Mini-Note, so it doesn't require a lot of effort to install and configure, and you don't have to do a lot of running around gathering bits and pieces from other places to make it all work. This is, in my opinion, a very nice "open the box and use it" Linux netbook.
However...
If you want more flexibility, if you want or need a more modern Linux installation (SLED 10 is rather long in the tooth...), or if you just don't like the SuSE Enterprise business model, the obvious thing to do is to put one of the other free Linux distributions on the Mini-Note. I said obvious, not necessarily easy. I expected it to be easy, at least for me, because I have spent so much time the past couple of weeks loading and configuring my first 2133. I was, for the most part, wrong about that... but in the end it was the knowledge that I had gained on that first 2133 which eventually paid off.
The problem when trying to load the other Linux distributions is the combination of the VIA Chrome 9 graphic controller and the lower resolution display (1024x600). I tried Ubuntu 9.04, Mandriva 2009.0, openSuSE 11, MEPIS 8.0, VectorLinux 6.0 and PCLinuxOS 2009, and every one of them failed. Most of them wouldn't even start a useable installer, they either produced nothing (a blank screen), or an installer window that was significantly larger than the screen, so various crucial controls and buttons were inaccessible. The one which came the closest was Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 5; it would install and appeared to be ok at first, but after rebooting the screen was just blank. I could at least get to a text console, but I couldn't get the graphic screen working.
My previous success with Ubuntu 8.10 on my first Mini-Note gave me hope to try that again. Of course, it still had the same problem with the Live CD not booting properly, but as before, I simply went back to the "Alternate Installer" CD and used the text-mode installation. After the installation completed, I chose a "recovery mode" boot, and then went into a root shell where I copied over the latest openchrome drivers. If you don't have them handy, as I did on the other 2133, you can follow the Ubuntu Community Documentation instructions to download, compile and install them. The xorg.conf file is also empty at this point, but after exiting the recovery mode shell, there is an "X Fix" option in the recovery menu which will take care of that. Then you can continue with a normal boot and you're ready to go!
Now comes the big test - I will give the new Mini-Note to my partner this evening. It will be interesting to see how she gets on with it. I have left both Ubuntu and SuSE on it for the time being, but it is set to boot Ubuntu by default. If it turns out that she isn't happy with it, or isn't able to use it for some reason, I have promised to put XP on it for her. I hope it doesn't come to that, though, and at the moment I honestly don't think it will.
jw 2/3/2009
PreviousComments on this post
Jamie, I so totally understand your frustration which comes out of the article. I just received today Monday my new Asus Eee Pc 901 with Intel Atom and an SSD drive, actually two SSD drives - one fast and a slower one.
As of today I would tell you one thing: Do NOT get any devices with VIA chipset / graphics. It's just not worth spending money and time in getting something to work in GNU/Linux which is absolutely no issue when using an Intel counterpart.
I gave up - well, I will see once 9.04 will be in beta stage or close to release - on the UMPC 704 roverpc with the same VIA chipset and graphics. I've tried so many tweaks and also what you told me to do and it's so frustrating that you cannot get over these installation/configuration issues to actually use the device. With the Asus it...just works and you'll see GNU/Linux in a different way!
FYI: With Linux, whenever an application or configuration window is larger than the visible display, you may hold down the ALT key and mouse-drag on any part of the window to bring its off-screen controls into view and accessible.
:-)
FYI: While it is generally possible to move windows in that way, for some reason it doesn't work when booted from the Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 5 CD on the HP 2133.
:-)
@fancollo: Thanks for reading and commenting. You're right, it is very frustrating, in particular because I expected the installation on the new Mini-Note to be so easy, and the different screen took me completely by surprise. Obviously that is my own fault, I should have read the specifications more carefully.
I would phrase your advice about sticking to well-known and well-supported processors and associated chip sets slightly differently. If your intention is to put the Linux distribution of your choice on the system yourself, and you want it to install quickly and easily, then yes your best bet is to be conservative in the system you choose. But if you are willing to stay with whatever Linux is pre-installed when you purchase the system, I think the VIA (and other) systems are equally viable alternatives. As I said, the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 that was preloaded on the Mini-Note works perfectly, and would be just fine for a "typical user".
Thanks again.
jw
@gnothi:i did that too, although it does not always work and you really need to tweak the font size and resolution.
@Jamie: You're right, since you purchased a device which came preloaded with a linux distro, we would suppose it shouldn't be a problem with others as well. I never actually had a typical device with widespread hardware. All my laptops were or are very specific in hardware (as you might expect with the hp tablet tx2120 with amd cpu, nvidia drivers and touchscreen and quicklaunch buttons just to mention some) and I'm really used to tweak a lot when running a GNU/Linux distro. But I'm really astonished on how it is easy to install a linux distro on a device which is supported out of the box. Sometimes it just like the sugar in the coffee...
Not sure if you will be able to help, but I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 using the alternative CD on my Mini Note 2133 (same version as the one you have above, Opensuse SLED 10). I have now rebooted and am trying to follow your advice to download, compile and install the latest Openchrome drivers but I am having issues getting the instructions on the Ubuntu forum to work from the Recovery -> Root menu.
Have you got any ideas what I need to do to get this to work? Do I need to alter the instructions because I am running from the recovery console as opposed to from within Ubuntu itself?
Thanks in advance.
You don't specifically say what is not working when you try to compile and install the openchrome drivers, so I'll look at a couple of different possibilities. I just went through the Ubuntu 8.10 installation from the alternate install CD, to check that this was right:
- When you make a "recovery mode" boot after the installation is complete, and then you choose "root" from the Recovery Menu, networking is not enabled so the apt-get and svn commands fail.
If you have a typical wired ethernet connection, using DHCP, all you need to do is run the dhclient command first in the root shell. This will produce a lot of error messages pertaining to the wireless network connection, but it will configure and activate the wired connection, which is what you need. After that, you can use the commands from the Ubuntu Community Documentation to install the dependencies and compile and install the 2D driver. You do not need to edit the X server configuration file, as Ubuntu will take care of this for you later. I have not tried anything with the 3D driver described on that page.
- The X server configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) is empty.
This is a result of using the Ubuntu Alternate Installation CD, I believe. It's actually quite easy to fix, all you have to do is return to the Recovery Menu after compiling and installing the openchrome driver, by typing ctrl-D (or exit), and then choose "xfix". This will produce quite a bit of "help" text, but it will then also create an xorg.conf file with default configured Device, Monitor and Screen, which is just what you need.
After xfix has completed, choose "resume" from the Recovery Menu, and Ubuntu 8.10 should come up with a beautiful graphic display, at 1280x768 resolution.
- On the Ubuntu login screen, your login name and password use a font which is much too large for the input fields.
In the X server configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf), you can add a line to the "Monitor" section, after the "Identifier" line:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
DisplaySize 290 175
EndSection
- After logging in, the fonts in the Gnome panels and applications are too small.
Go to System / Preferences / Appearance / Fonts and choose a larger default font size for any or all of the font groups.
If this does not solve your problem, please let me know, and tell me exactly what is going wrong. I'll try to help.
jw 9/2/2009
P.S. One more thing... the vbetool command fouls up the text console mode on the 2133, so if you want to be able to use ctrl-alt-f1 (or whichever) to get a text console login, you need to delete the vbesave startup scripts:
sudo rm /etc/rc?.d/S05vbesave
If you are extra cautious (or paranoid) you could of course just rename or move them.
Thanks for the response, especially seeings as I didn't give you all the info, I have now got it working perfectly and Ubuntu looks great on the screen.
After I initially gave up on Ubuntu I did manage to get OpenSuse 11.1 up and running on it with very little amendments. I just had to fix the Wireless and the change the default resolution. I did leave it running on the vesa drivers but that still allowed me to watch BBC iPlayer and the like which is all I really wanted, the main thing I use it for is connecting to work via Citrix which is thankfully easy to get up and running under Opensuse and Ubuntu.
Thanks again!!
I'm very pleased to hear that Ubuntu is working for you now.
Like you, the first Linux that I was able to successfully install on the HP 2133 was openSuSE 11.1. I don't recall that I was ever able to get the display resolution exactly right when using the vesa driver on openSuSE, though. It might interest you to know that openSuSE 11.1 uses the same X server version as Ubuntu 8.10, which means that you can just copy the openchrome driver files over (/usr/lib/libchrome* and /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/openchrome*), and change the "Driver" specification in /etc/X11/xorg.conf from "vesa" to "openchrome", and it will all work perfectly.
I also use the Citrix ICA client for work. Have you noticed that Citrix has finally released a version 11.0 client for Linux? I have also started to run into problems because the Sun java Linux installations seem to be changing to the new libnpjp2.so browser plugin. I don't know yet if this is a general problem, or is specific to my situation and the Citrix server I have to connect to.
Have fun with your Mini-Note!
jw
