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.

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.

KDE 4.1 / Gnome (with Compiz) / Netbook Remix?

In a previous post I reported some problems (now mostly resolved) running Compiz – http://nc10ubuntu.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/compiz-enabled-desktop-or-netbook-remix/ – The glitches are starting to irritate. I tried Netbook Remix again (installed on another user account) but find it too limiting. Currently I’m playing with the KDE 4.1 desktop, my first impressions are positive, but I have yet to commit. Please share your experiences…

Problems with ndiswrapper: restart hang-up

Although using ndiswrapper does get the wireless working, it prevents the NC10 from restarting / rebooting. Other problematic issues such as power management and wireless range are also presenting themselves. I therefore decided to uninstall ndiswrapper using the Add/Remove option in the applications menu, disabled the wireless and rebooted successfully(!).

To install the latest Atheros drivers use these instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NC10#Wireless%20Networking%20-%20Atheros

Wireless networking

Latest drivers are needed for Ubuntu 8.10 and can be installed by following these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NC10#Wireless%20Networking%20-%20Atheros

This is an alternative way to get the wireless working… posted by Jon Bradbury – http://netbook-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=57#p276

Compiz enabled desktop or Netbook Remix? (updated)

I’m currently running a Compiz enabled desktop on my NC10 and generally enjoy the ‘eye candy’ that it provides. The Intel GMA 950 graphics card just about copes with Compiz… There are, however, slight glitches when opening new windows as sometimes the window content looks ‘garbled’ to start with (e.g., Firefox). Can the GMA 950 be allocated more RAM to play with? If so, will upgrading to 2GB RAM help?

Matski followed the tried and tested enabling compiz on eee with eeexubuntu at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:compiz_on_eeexubunto – I found this useful especially as it prompted me to check that I was using the Emerald window decorator. I suspect that many of the problems I had with window rendering was because I was using the GTK window decorator… Using Emerald seems to have helped!

I have also tried Netbook Remix https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix – I was not really blown away by it but maybe it is worth another look at some stage (see http://nc10ubuntu.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/kde-41-gnome-with-compiz-netbook-remix/)

Poll

First poll results: poll began on 13th November, closed on 1st December 2008

Have you installed Ubuntu on your NC10?

Yes – Ubuntu dual boot with XP 44% (33 votes)

Yes – Ubuntu only 25% (19 votes)

No – Waiting until I’m brave 20% (15 votes)

No – Not planning to 5% (4 votes)

What I did

I got my Samsung NC10 from Micro Anvika (UK) on Friday 31st October 2008.

It took me one hour from unpacking my NC10 to get Ubuntu 8.10 ‘up & running’. There are obviously things that don’t work or don’t work well but that is not surprising… the point of this blog is to document ways of improving things. I have been using 8.10 for over a week now and generally it has been a good experience.

This is what I did to get Ubuntu working on my Samsung NC10. Please do not use this as a guide. If you intend to rely on your NC10 to do proper work then wait until there is an guide to installing Ubuntu on the NC10 at http://ubuntuforums.org/ (Update: see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NC10) or on a NC10 user forum (when such a thing exists… does anybody know of one?… Update: see http://nc10ubuntu.forumcircle.com/).

1. My NC10 came preloaded with XP. I jumped through the usual hoops to get it Setup. Samsung have preloaded recovery solution software that partitions your hard drive during Setup. I chose to instruct the software to proceed without a partition. However, on completion I discovered a small partition called RECOVERY which I have left alone.

2. Next I found a USB pen drive (1GB) and deleted all files. In XP, I downloaded UNETBOOTIN from http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ and instructed it to download Ubuntu 8.10 (Live) onto my USB pen drive.

3. I left the USB pen drive attached and restarted the NC10. On restart I held down the F2 key and entered the BIOS. I then reconfigured the boot order to ensure that the USB pen drive was given the highest priority.

4. Ubuntu Live launched and I began the hard disk install process. I chose to allocate a 40GB partition to XP and used the rest of the disk (leaving the RECOVERY partition alone) for Ubuntu. The installation was successful and on restart the XP partition was available via the GRUB boot loader.

5. See this post! On the first Ubuntu boot ‘Update Manager’ downloaded and installed various things. The only major thing that does not work ‘out of the box’ using 8.10 is the wireless driver. Apparently Ubuntu does not identify the wireless card correctly. Therefore, I installed a windows driver to get the wireless working by following instructions provided by “formal” on “Atheros AR5007EG (AR242x ) in hardy” http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766169 (first post… NB ignore the other posts about MADWIFI since 8.10 has these drivers as standard.)

Anyhow… that is it for now. There many other things I have done to tweak Ubuntu for use on the NC10. When I get time I will write another post detailing some of them. Please feel free to share some of your experiences.