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.
Sunday 11 October 2009, 8:11 AM
Bluetooth USB Nano Dongle
I have a very strong preference for Bluetooth mice on my netbook and notebook systems. Unfortunately, a couple of them don't have bluetooth adapters - most significantly the HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez, which is becoming my current favorite, and one of the HP 2133 Mini-Notes. It occasionally takes a long time for the solution to a problem to filter through my head, and this was one of those cases. I was just about to go out and buy a new Logitech VX Nano, which I consider to be the next best alternative, when suddenly the light finally came on. What I really need is a Nano-sized bluetooth adapter!
A quick web search confirmed that such a thing does exist, from various suppliers. I made a short trip to the local electronic shop, and picked up a Trust Ultra Small Bluetooth 2.1 USB Adapter for 25 Swiss Francs. I plugged it into the 1010ez, booted up Ubuntu Karmic, and the Bluetooth icon appeared on the panel! Things just don't get any easier than that. By the way, you can tell that it is a bluetooth adapter because it glows blue. I tried it with Jaunty, openSuSE 11.1 and 11.2, and Mandriva 20009.1 and 2010.0, and they all worked. I moved it over to the old Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, and it worked just fine there as well. At that point I threw the Windows Driver CD that came with it in the trash, and declared the Mission Accomplished. I can't try it in the HP Mini-Note at the moment, because that system is on temporary duty in Bosnia (on loan to a friend), but I have no doubt that it will work as well.
There are similar dongles available from a number of other companies, I assume that they would work every bit as well. I'll probably pick up one of them this week, so that I can just leave one plugged into each of the bluetoothless systems.
It's so nice when things just work!
jw 11/9/2009
P.S. I just realized that I didn't explain, for those to whom it is not obvious, the reason I wanted a "Nano"-style dongle is the size, it is not much more than a nub protruding from the usb slot, so I can plug it in and leave it, rather than the older "thumb"-sized dongles, which you have to remove when you want to put the computer into a case. In fact, because the capability and compatibility is essentially the same for most such USB/Bluetooth adapters these days, choosing one is likely to come down to a preference on size and shape.
A quick web search confirmed that such a thing does exist, from various suppliers. I made a short trip to the local electronic shop, and picked up a Trust Ultra Small Bluetooth 2.1 USB Adapter for 25 Swiss Francs. I plugged it into the 1010ez, booted up Ubuntu Karmic, and the Bluetooth icon appeared on the panel! Things just don't get any easier than that. By the way, you can tell that it is a bluetooth adapter because it glows blue. I tried it with Jaunty, openSuSE 11.1 and 11.2, and Mandriva 20009.1 and 2010.0, and they all worked. I moved it over to the old Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, and it worked just fine there as well. At that point I threw the Windows Driver CD that came with it in the trash, and declared the Mission Accomplished. I can't try it in the HP Mini-Note at the moment, because that system is on temporary duty in Bosnia (on loan to a friend), but I have no doubt that it will work as well.
There are similar dongles available from a number of other companies, I assume that they would work every bit as well. I'll probably pick up one of them this week, so that I can just leave one plugged into each of the bluetoothless systems.
It's so nice when things just work!
jw 11/9/2009
P.S. I just realized that I didn't explain, for those to whom it is not obvious, the reason I wanted a "Nano"-style dongle is the size, it is not much more than a nub protruding from the usb slot, so I can plug it in and leave it, rather than the older "thumb"-sized dongles, which you have to remove when you want to put the computer into a case. In fact, because the capability and compatibility is essentially the same for most such USB/Bluetooth adapters these days, choosing one is likely to come down to a preference on size and shape.
Friday 9 October 2009, 2:03 PM
Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Beta
I've been installing the Karmic Beta release on everything I have around here, and the news is generally good. Some of this I have mentioned before, and some is new; some is significant, and some is trivial... so here we go!
First, in the category of "mentioned before" and "significant", we have GRUB-PC, also known as Grub 2, which is the standard bootloader with Ubuntu 9.10. The last time I mentioned it, I said that by going to the "Advanced" button in the final installation screen, you could choose to install GRUB to the root partition rather than the MBR, and thus not screw up your existing installation. Alas, things have now changed and even if you do that, it still renders the system disk unbootable, and you have to restore GRUB from a LiveCD, a backup image, or some such. So beware.
Second, in the "not mentioned before" category, I have now installed Karmic Beta on the following systems:
- Fujitsu S6510, Intel Core2 Duo
- ASUS N10J, Intel Atom
- HP db2-1010ez, AMD Athlon Neo
- HP 2133 Mini, VIA C7-M
I'm very pleased to report that it appears to work extremely well on all of them. Other than having to work around the GRUB installation, I have not yet found a single device which doesn't work, including all of the various screens, graphic controllers, wired and wireless network controllers, bluetooth, and so on.
One excellent piece of machine-specific news. CPU Frequency Scaling works on the VIA C7-M CPU (HP 2133 Mini-Note), without having to edit the kernel boot line. This is the first distribution that I have seen manage this.
Another item I have mentioned before - Karmic supports several hardware devices properly out of the box, which either didn't work at all or didn't work properly with previous releases. The most significant of these are the Atheros ath9k wireless adapter (AR9285 in my specific case), and the Logitech Audio Hub USB Speaker system.
It is worth mentioning that even though it has only been a week since the Beta release, there have already been a lot of very significant updates to it. If you choose to install this Beta, make sure that you go through System/Administration/Update Manager and install all of the updates. It will take at least two or three passes to get them all installed, because partial updates will be necessary at first, so make sure you keep going back and clicking "Check" until it reports "Your System is Up-to-Date".
Please remember that this is still a Beta test release, it is not intended to be installed on critical systems, and it could well get broken (and fixed) again before the final release comes out.
First, in the category of "mentioned before" and "significant", we have GRUB-PC, also known as Grub 2, which is the standard bootloader with Ubuntu 9.10. The last time I mentioned it, I said that by going to the "Advanced" button in the final installation screen, you could choose to install GRUB to the root partition rather than the MBR, and thus not screw up your existing installation. Alas, things have now changed and even if you do that, it still renders the system disk unbootable, and you have to restore GRUB from a LiveCD, a backup image, or some such. So beware.
Second, in the "not mentioned before" category, I have now installed Karmic Beta on the following systems:
- Fujitsu S6510, Intel Core2 Duo
- ASUS N10J, Intel Atom
- HP db2-1010ez, AMD Athlon Neo
- HP 2133 Mini, VIA C7-M
I'm very pleased to report that it appears to work extremely well on all of them. Other than having to work around the GRUB installation, I have not yet found a single device which doesn't work, including all of the various screens, graphic controllers, wired and wireless network controllers, bluetooth, and so on.
One excellent piece of machine-specific news. CPU Frequency Scaling works on the VIA C7-M CPU (HP 2133 Mini-Note), without having to edit the kernel boot line. This is the first distribution that I have seen manage this.
Another item I have mentioned before - Karmic supports several hardware devices properly out of the box, which either didn't work at all or didn't work properly with previous releases. The most significant of these are the Atheros ath9k wireless adapter (AR9285 in my specific case), and the Logitech Audio Hub USB Speaker system.
It is worth mentioning that even though it has only been a week since the Beta release, there have already been a lot of very significant updates to it. If you choose to install this Beta, make sure that you go through System/Administration/Update Manager and install all of the updates. It will take at least two or three passes to get them all installed, because partial updates will be necessary at first, so make sure you keep going back and clicking "Check" until it reports "Your System is Up-to-Date".
Please remember that this is still a Beta test release, it is not intended to be installed on critical systems, and it could well get broken (and fixed) again before the final release comes out.
Friday 2 October 2009, 5:03 PM
Intel Atom CPU - 32 or 64 bits?
I've been installing the latest test releases of openSuSE (11.2 Milestone 8) and Ubuntu (9.10, Karmic Koala Beta) on various of my computers. As the new HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez has an Athlon 64 Neo CPU, I started paying a bit more attention to when and where I could install 64-bit versions. The ones that turned out to be interesting were the Atom CPU systems - the ASUS N10J netbook, with an Atom N270, and the desktop mini-server with an Atom 330. It turns out that the desktop versions of the Atom CPU (230 and 330) have the 64-bit x86-64 architecture, while all the rest have the 32-bit x86 architecture.
jw
jw
Tuesday 29 September 2009, 10:11 AM
HP "Entertainment PC" Revisited
I started to write this as a follow-up comment on my new HP dv2-1010ez netbook/notebook. However, as I have been writing I realized that I also want to say a bit about HP netbooks in general. I have now owned, or purchased, configured and passed along, a variety of these, including the following:
- 2133 Mini-Note, low resolution (1024x600), Linux preloaded
- 2133 Mini-Note, high resolution (1280x768), Vista preloaded
- Mini 2140, 1024x576, Linux preloaded
- dv2-1010ez, 1280x800, Vista preloaded
Of course, regardless of what operating system came preloaded, I have always loaded various Linux distributions on them. It goes without saying that the ones which came with Vista were more or less useless when running that operating system. The two which had Linux preloaded were both rather old SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) systems, which worked reasonably well, but were nowhere near as complete or pleasant as the newer Linux distributions that I loaded. All of them worked with one or more of Ubuntu, Mandriva, openSuSE, Fedora and other distributions - and most often with all of them.
They also have a variety of hardware configurations. The 2133 has a VIA C7-M CPU and VIA Chrome 9 graphic controller; the 2140 was a very standard Intel Atom based system, and the new 1010ez has an AMD Athlon Neo CPU and ATI Radeon graphic controller. Screen sizes range from 8.9" on the 2133 to 10.1" on the 2140 and 12.1" on the 1010ez. The one thing that is more or less constant on all of them is the excellent keyboard - large and comfortable to use.
The point is, in my opinion, HP is producing an excellent line of innovative and useful netbooks. I wish that they would offer Linux preloaded on a few more of them, and Windows preloaded on a few less, but only the market is going to convince them to do that. As it is, though, at least it is generally easy to load the desktop Linux of your choice onto them.
Ok, having said that I will get back to the original point. It has been an interesting two weeks since I bought the HP dv2-1010ez "Entertainment PC". Overall, I could hardly be more pleased with it. The 12.1" 1280x800 display is wonderful - although I am able to work with the typical 1024x600 netbook displays, it is really much nicer to have the higher resolution. The AMD Athlon Neo processor is noticeably faster than the typical Intel Atom netbook CPU, and of course the ATI Mobility Radeon 3410 graphic controller is so much faster than the usual Intel 945/950 GME that there is no comparison. Contrary to what I had read in some of the technical specifications, the Aheros AR9285 WiFi adapter does draft-N connection in addition to the standard B/G wireless connection, and the throughput is good - typically 750 KB/sec with my Linksys WRT350N router.
The thing you have to be aware of, and careful about, is that some of the components of this system are so new that driver support for them is included only in the newest distributions (the most common problem is the Atheros WiFi adapter, but some also have trouble with the audio). So don't expect to load Ubuntu 9.04 or Mandriva 2009.1, for example, and have everything "just work" as it usually does. In fact, the only current "final" distribution which I have found that works out of the box is Zenwalk Linux 6.2. The test distributions of a number of upcoming releases also work, though, including Ubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010 and openSuSE 11.2. So it won't be long before you should be able to use the Linux distribution of your choice.
The only thing I would change or add to this system is Bluetooth support. However, the 1010ez is part of the much large dv2-1000 "family" from HP, and other models do have Bluetooth, but mine was chosen on the basis of price and availability, not features, so I can't complain much about that. It might also be nice to have a PC-Card (PCMCIA) or Express Card slot, but I honestly don't know where they could squeeze one in. Finally, if it had a FireWire/IEE1394 connection I could probably convince several of my golf professional friends that this is an ideal combination of size and performance.
Last minute update: I have just installed the latest daily build (29 Sep) for amd64 processors on the 1010ez, and it looks extremely good. Installation was amazingly fast, and as far as I can tell at first glance, everything works. This bodes very well for the Karmic Beta release that is due out on Thursday.
jw 29/9/2009
- 2133 Mini-Note, low resolution (1024x600), Linux preloaded
- 2133 Mini-Note, high resolution (1280x768), Vista preloaded
- Mini 2140, 1024x576, Linux preloaded
- dv2-1010ez, 1280x800, Vista preloaded
Of course, regardless of what operating system came preloaded, I have always loaded various Linux distributions on them. It goes without saying that the ones which came with Vista were more or less useless when running that operating system. The two which had Linux preloaded were both rather old SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) systems, which worked reasonably well, but were nowhere near as complete or pleasant as the newer Linux distributions that I loaded. All of them worked with one or more of Ubuntu, Mandriva, openSuSE, Fedora and other distributions - and most often with all of them.
They also have a variety of hardware configurations. The 2133 has a VIA C7-M CPU and VIA Chrome 9 graphic controller; the 2140 was a very standard Intel Atom based system, and the new 1010ez has an AMD Athlon Neo CPU and ATI Radeon graphic controller. Screen sizes range from 8.9" on the 2133 to 10.1" on the 2140 and 12.1" on the 1010ez. The one thing that is more or less constant on all of them is the excellent keyboard - large and comfortable to use.
The point is, in my opinion, HP is producing an excellent line of innovative and useful netbooks. I wish that they would offer Linux preloaded on a few more of them, and Windows preloaded on a few less, but only the market is going to convince them to do that. As it is, though, at least it is generally easy to load the desktop Linux of your choice onto them.
Ok, having said that I will get back to the original point. It has been an interesting two weeks since I bought the HP dv2-1010ez "Entertainment PC". Overall, I could hardly be more pleased with it. The 12.1" 1280x800 display is wonderful - although I am able to work with the typical 1024x600 netbook displays, it is really much nicer to have the higher resolution. The AMD Athlon Neo processor is noticeably faster than the typical Intel Atom netbook CPU, and of course the ATI Mobility Radeon 3410 graphic controller is so much faster than the usual Intel 945/950 GME that there is no comparison. Contrary to what I had read in some of the technical specifications, the Aheros AR9285 WiFi adapter does draft-N connection in addition to the standard B/G wireless connection, and the throughput is good - typically 750 KB/sec with my Linksys WRT350N router.
The thing you have to be aware of, and careful about, is that some of the components of this system are so new that driver support for them is included only in the newest distributions (the most common problem is the Atheros WiFi adapter, but some also have trouble with the audio). So don't expect to load Ubuntu 9.04 or Mandriva 2009.1, for example, and have everything "just work" as it usually does. In fact, the only current "final" distribution which I have found that works out of the box is Zenwalk Linux 6.2. The test distributions of a number of upcoming releases also work, though, including Ubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010 and openSuSE 11.2. So it won't be long before you should be able to use the Linux distribution of your choice.
The only thing I would change or add to this system is Bluetooth support. However, the 1010ez is part of the much large dv2-1000 "family" from HP, and other models do have Bluetooth, but mine was chosen on the basis of price and availability, not features, so I can't complain much about that. It might also be nice to have a PC-Card (PCMCIA) or Express Card slot, but I honestly don't know where they could squeeze one in. Finally, if it had a FireWire/IEE1394 connection I could probably convince several of my golf professional friends that this is an ideal combination of size and performance.
Last minute update: I have just installed the latest daily build (29 Sep) for amd64 processors on the 1010ez, and it looks extremely good. Installation was amazingly fast, and as far as I can tell at first glance, everything works. This bodes very well for the Karmic Beta release that is due out on Thursday.
jw 29/9/2009
Sunday 27 September 2009, 9:46 PM
Moblin 2.0 Released
As has been mentioned in the comments to one of my earlier blog entries, the final release of Moblin 2.0 is now available. I have installed it on my ASUS N10J, and I am still surprised and baffled by it.
Still baffled because I just don't get the desktop / user interface. I'm ready to write this off as being just me, because "social networking" is not the focus of my internet experience (or any other part of my internet experience, for that matter). But still, I would love to hear one person, just one, stand up and say "I love the Moblin desktop, I use it every day and it is significantly better than other desktops" - and then explain what it is that makes it better for them. Until that happens, I am going to be stuck with this sneaking suspicion that Moblin is getting a lot of attention, and a fair amount of acceptance in such distributions as Fedora and Ubuntu, primarily because of the heavyweights behind it (Intel et. al.).
Still surprised because of the number and magnitude of problems it seems to have on my computers. As I said, I have installed it on my ASUS N10J, and guess what? It still hangs on boot, just like almost every Moblin Beta release did. I had assumed that this would be taken care of by the time the final release came out, but obviously it hasn't, so I did a bit more digging this weekend to see what is really going on. It appears that the problem is my multi-boot setup - it chokes on the root file system check (fsck). I suspected that it doesn't like being installed in /dev/sda13, so I installed again, this time into /dev/sda6, and it boots just fine from there. I agree that the overwhelming majority of Moblin users will not have so many disk paritions, or be installing into a two-digit partition, but still...
The other problem is in the "relatively minor but extremely irritating" category, there doesn't seem to be a keymap for Switzerland in the installation selection, and after installation when I try to change the keymap, the Gnome keyboard applet crashes.
I hope that others are having better experiences with Moblin than I am.
jw 27/9/2009
Still baffled because I just don't get the desktop / user interface. I'm ready to write this off as being just me, because "social networking" is not the focus of my internet experience (or any other part of my internet experience, for that matter). But still, I would love to hear one person, just one, stand up and say "I love the Moblin desktop, I use it every day and it is significantly better than other desktops" - and then explain what it is that makes it better for them. Until that happens, I am going to be stuck with this sneaking suspicion that Moblin is getting a lot of attention, and a fair amount of acceptance in such distributions as Fedora and Ubuntu, primarily because of the heavyweights behind it (Intel et. al.).
Still surprised because of the number and magnitude of problems it seems to have on my computers. As I said, I have installed it on my ASUS N10J, and guess what? It still hangs on boot, just like almost every Moblin Beta release did. I had assumed that this would be taken care of by the time the final release came out, but obviously it hasn't, so I did a bit more digging this weekend to see what is really going on. It appears that the problem is my multi-boot setup - it chokes on the root file system check (fsck). I suspected that it doesn't like being installed in /dev/sda13, so I installed again, this time into /dev/sda6, and it boots just fine from there. I agree that the overwhelming majority of Moblin users will not have so many disk paritions, or be installing into a two-digit partition, but still...
The other problem is in the "relatively minor but extremely irritating" category, there doesn't seem to be a keymap for Switzerland in the installation selection, and after installation when I try to change the keymap, the Gnome keyboard applet crashes.
I hope that others are having better experiences with Moblin than I am.
jw 27/9/2009
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