Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix – Karmic Koala

Wow! Loving the new Netbook Remix redesigned desktop launcher. A considerable improvement in usability and aesthetics. 9.10 Karmic Koala has some great new features such as Software Centre and Ubuntu One (although I prefer Dropbox). I’m not entirely sure what has changed under the hood but my NC10 seems to be running everything faster (possibly due to the new Linux Kernel?). I’m also getting improved battery life, significantly up from a measly 2 hours of heavy use with 9.04. I will report how long I actually get later.

I decided to install 9.10 using the ‘distribution upgrade button’ found in Update Manager. I considered a clean install but decided to take the risk, and have only lost a few KDE applications.

Overall very happy so far. I found that I had to install the new Bios: 11CA available from the Samsung Website to get those problematic brightness function keys working.

Time to upgrade?

My NC10 is nearly one year old now – purchased late October 2008. Initial problems with getting Ubuntu running well, using 8.10, were mostly resolved by applying a series of tweaks and workarounds (detailed within this blog). After around two months of attempts to resolve issues, I decided to abandon further attempts since I was generally happy. The blog then spawned a forum and a Wiki, which after a promising start, are no longer used. I’m sure this is due to the availability of better sources of information. The welcome arrival of 9.04 eliminated most of the problematic issues associated with 8.10. The arrival of 9.10 – Karmic Koala – later this month will hopefully be a welcome one.

Overall I have been satisfied with my NC10 running Ubuntu (despite poor battery life), but maybe the time has come to upgrade? I think my next Netbook purchase will probably involve an Atom Ion (don’t want to wait for Pineview – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/352093/ion-will-grow-with-new-atom-cpus-promises-nvidia). The new Samsung N510 could fit the bill – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/352012/samsung-n510. But I think I might wait for ASUS 1201n http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/20/asus-ion-infused-eee-pc-1201n-netbook-emerges-overseas/. I hope that Ubuntu 9.10 will work well on the ASUS 1201n, and that I don’t have to start another blog!

Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 9.04 is an improvement

After backing up my documents, I used the UNR live (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR#The%20Easy%20(recommended)%20way) to do a fresh install. Using the manual partition setup option I removed all my existing EXT3 partitions (where I had various Linux distros installed) and created a new EXT4 partition which I used as a mount point for UNR (I still dual boot with XP but have a small NTFS partition). I also created a new Linux Swap partition.

Anyhow, first impressions are great, much faster and looks better than my previous UNR on 8.10. The touchpad is still not quite right and see some of the comments on my last post…

Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04

For the last few months I have mainly been using my NC10 for lightweight work; so I have been using Netbook Remix on 8.10 – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR#Ubuntu%208.10%20(Intrepid)%20UNR%20Package%20Installation

Now that 9.04 is out, it is now possible to install the easy way – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR#The%20Easy%20(recommended)%20way

Ubuntu have classified the Samsung NC10 as having Tier 2 compatibility.

These are netbooks that work somewhat, but have problems that may interfere with typical activities at the moment, or many smaller issues.

It is suggested that the Samsung NC10 fails suspend/Resume tests and the Sound recorder does not work on the Samsung NC10 using Jaunty (9.04). I will be installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 at some time in the near future. Let us hope workarounds can be found for the above…

My Setup

Other than applying the workarounds and tweaks detailed on this blog, I’m still running: Ubuntu 8.10 (Gnome 2.24.1), Kernel 2.6.27-7, Samsung BIOS 02CA.
I have been running the above setup since 31st October 2008 on my NC10.

I guess that if I had decided to keep up with the latest versions then I would be running: Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha, Kernel 2.6.27-11, Samsung BIOS 04CA.

I have found little evidence that suggests 9.04 offers anything useful, while the latest 2.6.27-11 kernel does not resolve any of the NC10’s hardware issues. I am considering the BIOS update since reports suggest that this improves battery life. However, I am disappointed that not more is known about what this BIOS update actually does.

I have played around with KDE (graphics card too slow) and Netbook Remix (too basic), but have decided to stick with Gnome as my prefered desktop environment.

Overall, not much has happened over the last two months or so to suggest to me that changing my setup is worth doing.

2009 — Ubuntu on the NC10 Poll

Second poll results: poll began on 8th Jan 2008, closed on 31st Jan 2008

Are you happy with Ubuntu on the NC10?
Yes – Does exactly what I need 24% (84 votes)
Yes – But does not do everything 49% (170 votes)
No – Frustrating hardware issues 19% (65 votes)
No – Not my preferred OS 8% (26 votes)

Based on these results it seems that Ubuntu is a reasonably good OS for the NC10. I was hoping that future kernel updates would help to resolve some of the hardware issues. Unfortunately, comments on the forum suggest that this is not the case.

Progress on Unresolved Issues (1)

1. Hard drive – Excessive load cycling?

Unfortunately, there is now some evidence which suggests that using Ubuntu may reduce hard drive life due to excessive load cycling. However since this is not a new problem for Ubuntu laptop users, an appropriate solution probably already exists.

There is now a forum thread discussing the load cycling problem. The original blog post with useful comments should also be read.

2. Touchpad

The NC10’s touchpad does not work well using Ubuntu. Although some progress has been made on resolving some of the reported problems with the touchpad, this is still an annoying problem.

The original blog post outlines some touchpad problems. There is a useful forum thread on the topic.

3. Hotkeys

A number of workarounds for adjusting brightness have been discussed at length on this blog.

Considerable progress has now been reported on this forum thread which discusses the root of the hotkey problem.

A blog worth looking at

I see the role of this blog as a report of my own experiences rather than a ‘howto’. I have not reported much on this blog recently because i’m happy with my Ubuntu setup; I decided not to use the latest Kernel and still use 2.6.77-7. At the present time the effort of tweaking to improve things further does not seem to be worth the effort since things are working well. I’m still a bit disappointed about the lack of quality documentation for the NC10…

Just thought I should draw reader attention to this blog:

http://nc10linux.wordpress.com/

carneades says:

[this] blog is about writeups, not news and updates. For that reason this page will always be the front page and will be kept up to date with a beginning-to-end writeup of how to set up the NC10 for Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10.

Seems like a nice approach to take (but I’m not interested in authoring howto guides)

Updated Forum

Jon Bradbury has made some changes to the forum layout in an attempt to improve usability / utility. I would like to thank him for helping me out.

It would be great if issues could be discussed in the forum before they are added as workarounds / tricks / tweaks on the NC10 Ubuntu help page. It is essential that the information on this page is accurate and avoids speculative ideas that should be tried out by the community before being proposed as solutions.

This blog’s forum is located at:

http://nc10ubuntu.forumcircle.com/

Blog clean-up and new information on the Wiki

I have made some edits to the posts on this blog in an attempt to clarify some issues for new users. If anything confusing remains then please let me know.

The Wiki page at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NC10 has quite a lot of new information on it. Some of the proposed workarounds on the Wiki have not been discussed on this blog or in the forum – We need to ensure that the information on this page is accurate, so can people confirm that these workarounds actually work?