Mandriva 2009.1 on Dell Mini 9 - More tweeking required

Only while trying to play a video did I realise that there was no sound coming from the speakers. So a quick search revealed the solution.
I had to add the following line into /etc/modprobe.conf
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=dell

Reboot, open the mixer and turn up the volume for the channel Speaker. There will be a loud buzzing noise after you do this. To stop it, disable the channel Capture 2 (untick the checkbox).

So far, I've tested the boot speed versus Ubuntu MID, It is actually quite fast to boot & only ends up being < 10 secs slower due KDE4's longer startup time.

Power consumption has also been quite good, averaging about 3 hours. I could get 3.5 hours from Ubuntu MID, so I'll definitely have to see what I can tweek to make this better.

Mandriva 2009.1 on Dell Mini 9

I got my hands on a Vostro A90 (Black clone of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9) from a friend in the states. It came with Ubuntu MID 8.04.1 preinstalled with the custom Dell launcher. I've been using it for a while now, it works perfectly as expected since the distro was heavily customized.

Lately I decided to try out something else on it. Since I've always loved Mandriva, I decided to give it a go, I knew it wouldn't be so simple.

From the LiveCD boot, it was already clear that WiFi and Bluetooth both did not work. I installed it anyway into an SD card & proceeded to try various things to try to make it work.

But whatever I did, nothing worked. I booted back into Ubuntu MID to check the setting there, nothing much helped. I rebooted into Mandriva again, but this time everything magically worked.

Bluetooth & WiFi was detected & worked nicely. The only thing I couldn't do was use my Bluetooth stereo headset. This is mainly down to kdebluetooth4 being still quite new. It had worked in Ubuntu, but it's no big loss.

Most of the important shortcut keys worked, namely brightness & volume control. Keys that didn't work are, Sleep, Wifi toggle, Battery Status & Toggle VGA. Of these, I only cared for the Wifi toggle.

To make Wifi toggle work, I needed to install aircraft-manager. Unfortunately, this was only available as a deb. I extracted the files out the deb & tried to figure it out.

It was basically written in python, so it wasn't too hard. This is roughly what I needed to do:

1. Extract the data.tar.gz out of the deb

2. Extract the data.tar.gz into /

3. Move portio.so from /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages to /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages

4. Install (through rpmdrake) python-dbus, pygtk2.0-libglade and gksu.

That's it, after that you can simply use KDE's System Settings -> Input Actions to configure a shortcut for running aircraft-manager.

You might see this message when booting the system:

Configuring wireless regulatory domain nl80211 not found. [FAILED]

This can be fixed by commenting out the line CRDA_DOMAIN=XX in /etc/sysconfig/network

The intel driver will exhibit some artifacts especially if you are using kwin effects. This can be solved by adding the line:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

to the Device section of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

That's as far as I got for now. I'll update as I go along.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Mobile Edition

I got my hands on a brand new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 a few weeks ago & couldn't wait to test out the pre-loaded Ubuntu on it. What it came with surprised me somewhat & it certainly will surprise anyone expecting it to be the stock Ubuntu with some minor Dell tweaks.

The Ubuntu pre-loaded was very far from the standard Desktop edition. It is actually a heavily customized version of Ubuntu Mobile Edition (ume).

What does that mean exactly? It does not use standard Ubuntu packages, all the packages are compiled for the Low Power Intel Architecture (lpia). This also means that it does not utilize the standard Ubuntu repositories for packages. Dell provides a custom repository for updates & software. This means adding any 3rd party Ubuntu repositories is not possible. This is not a big issue as the Dell repository proved to be quite complete in providing all the packages I usually use.

The advantage you gain from using ume is the incredible speed. From power button press to a fully loaded desktop took just under 40 seconds. The desktop was also very responsive & application performance was great. The battery life is also quite good at about 3 hrs 20 mins. (in comparison, my EeePC 701 running Eeebuntu Netbook Edition took over 70 seconds to boot & only managed 2 hrs 40 mins despite having double the capacity)

Dell has designed a nice looking 'Easy Mode' style interface to run on their desktop. It's surprisingly customizable & looks awesome with it's flowing animated transitions. This is nice, but may annoy those who prefer a more traditional Ubuntu desktop. So they have thoughtfully provided an easy way to switch back to the standard desktop.

There are a few other notes that I'll simply list out:
- It uses a squashed root. Which reduced the footprint to just over 2GB.
- Compiz has been removed completely. It's not even possible to install it. (trust me, this is a good thing)
- Fluendo Codecs & Codeina provides for all your media playback needs. Java & Flash pre-installed.
- Incredibly good Bluetooth support. Even works perfectly with A2DP headsets.
- The 8GB SSD version I got certainly isn't enough for me. Invest in a 16GB Class 6 SDHC card.
- The SSD is pretty slow at 15Mbps write. Checkout RunCore's SSD for an upgrade.

Finally, what do I think about the Dell Inspiron Mini 9? Recommended. But I'd wait for the 32GB version. ;)

Dell offerring PCs with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed

It's all over the news these days, u can't read any linux blog or news without seeing this piece of news plastered everywhere. Here in Malaysia, no one's really jumping with excitement about this news, not really because nobody's interested in Linux, more of the fact that all us Linux users know pretty much for sure that this won't ever reach our shores.

As expected, just a few days after the announcement, they added that this will only be offered in the states, much to the dismay of many users in the UK. Dell's official position now is that they will offer it in the US first, then will look into the markets for UK & Asia.

This is not the first time Dell has dabbled in Linux, a few years ago Dell did offer preinstalled Redhat 9 on some models of Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks. This was also offered only in the US and it did not last long, very soon they were quietly removed from the websites.

Whether this time will be any different depends on many factors & I really can't speculate too much on it. Success will depend primarily on 4 main factors.
1:Hardware - Will they get it right? Will everything work out of the box?
2:Volume - Can they sell enough to justify the cost?
3:Marketing - Will the right people be buying these PCs? (You don't want to be selling them to n00bs)
4:Support - Will the support provided (Online/Phone) by Canonical be up to the expected standards?

I do hope that Dell gets it right & delivers on their promise. This is a win for Linux no matter what the outcome. Ubuntu was an obvious choice for Dell considering the target market, as I'm sure u know by now I'm not much a fan of Ubuntu (I think it's overrated), this is just my personal, everybody has their preference when it comes to distros.

If they start selling them here in this region, this is what will happen (I've seen it with my own eyes). People will buy the PCs pre-installed with Ubuntu (to save a few bucks), they will run down to the nearest shopping mall & grab a lanun* copy of Windows Vista & install it. Dell will think they sold a lot of Linux boxes, but it fact they will be promoting more software piracy. *(lanun = pirated)

Well, this is how it's gonna be for a long long time somemore....