[dragonmule]

Testing Karmic Koala right now. Runs much, much snappier than 8.04 Dellbuntu.

Boot: about the same. Not starting some programs on boot using BUM helps a lot for boot speed. (yes, apt-get install bum)

Firefox: way better. Pages load fast. Many more pages can be loaded without slowdown. Flash is slightly better... still has problems, but better.

Wireless: connects much faster, especially after suspend without messing with scripts.

Google earth: much more responsive. I don't know if this is due to updated graphics or just an updated version of google earth.

Terminal Server: Seems to work much better, especially when using gigabit ethernet usb dongle. Transfer is up to 400Mbps instead of 250 or so. I don't know if this will matter to most people, but I use RDP a lot.

mplayer-vaapi/gstreamer: about the same, had to buy fluendo codecs ($30) to get same performance out of gstreamer as dellbuntu.

Installing this was a pain. Firstly, the wireless doesn't work out of the box, so you have to plug in to ethernet which also is flaky.

Do the following in this order:
sudo aptitude update;sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
(reboot)
(possibly reboot again to get ethernet to work)
/System/Administration/Hardware Drivers
Do Broadcom STA

You can also get gigabit usb to work now if you have a compatible device. If you try to install proprietary drivers before the safe-upgrade, all hell breaks loose. At least it did for me.


Video is not accelerated by default, need to follow these instructions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupp...oCardsPoulsbo/

If you do the safe-upgrade, the part about the system not booting and needing to print this out and run single user mode does not apply as it comes up fine and you just need to do the last step after the first one and a reboot. After this compiz is not working, but I don't use that anyway. Other 3d applications such as google earth work very well.

Sound does not work until you install pulse-audio, sudo apt-get remove --purge pulse-audio (or aptitude purge). Someone posted to change the last line of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
#options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N
options snd-hda-intel model=dell

I don't think this is necessary though as it works fine after uninstalling pulse-audio.

The only thing I can't get working is brightness control and I did try appending noapic in /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash noapic"


A bit funky and not as out-of-the-box friendly as dellbuntu, but works better than 8.10 or 9.04. Haven't had a single weird crash or anything and suspend mode has come back every time.

Can hardly wait for 10.4, hopefully there are more improvements.

Also, I am running i386 now instead of lpia as canonical announced they won't release a 10.4 lpia version.

edit: looks like mplayer-vaapi craps out. Need to obtain gstreamer-vadec for h264 videos in totem as well. Still a work in progress at this point.

second edit: I reinstalled and split the disk for now, can't live without HD movie playback. Will keep trying to get 9.10 to work with libvadec, but it doesn't look promising.

[keptang]

Thanks for the post dragonmule, please keep on updating on how you progress.

[teatimest]

I don't know why, but I can't activate broadcom driver. It shows the option, and I can try authorizing activation. But it never activates it.... Oh, going back to Jaunty.

[dragonmule]

I went to a split install of dellbuntu/jolicloud instead of trying to get karmic koala to work to my satisfaction.

On karmic koala, the broadcom STA driver will not install unless you have to CD in and recognized in apt sources. I got it to install with being on ethernet with no CD. It would activate but then not work... unless I was on ethernet when it was booting up again which was strange.

The jolicloud jaunty works fine for now and it updates to a more updated kernel than koala. I do miss it popping me back into wireless immediately as karmic koala did. I am going to wait for 10.4 ubuntu to see if that fixes these inconsistencies and especially if it fixes brightness keys. I have tried to replicate the koala setup for wireless in jaunty with no luck.

Dellbuntu belmont still appears to work fastest with HD video files. I don't understand exactly what is going on with this as I have installed the codecs directly over from dellbuntu to jaunty/jolicloud jaunty/karmic koala and had good results... yet the dellbuntu runs absolutely flawlessly and the others have problems at the beginning of h264-encoded files, even with the 0.31 xorg driver in dellbuntu vs. 0.32 in jaunty/karmic.

I noticed that dellbuntu updates fix flash security errors which is good as well but still do not work with any compiled version of boxee.

I will keep trying. I have a feeling that the next driver release will solve many problems. The new flash version is very promising as well as it does do better video acceleration at least with boxee.

[dragonmule]

Ubuntu Forums - View Single Post - [ubuntu] Installing on the Dell Mini 12

These instructions fixes all of the power and brightness problems in 9.10

Still working on acceleration. Maybe will have to compile a new gstreamer.

[dragonmule]

I now realize that enabling the brightness control disables the 3d. I've found this to be good for stability. I just made another entry in grub called "3D" and dual-boot 3D enabled or brightness enabled. Mostly I do disabled.

Jaunty worked with both brightness and 3d and jolicloud does all with latest kernel. The only upside so far to 9.10 is the wireless connects in 10 seconds instead of 30. I'm hoping eventually I can have hd, brightness, 3d, and quick wireless resume. Maybe in 10.4?

[teatimest]

That will not happen unless Intel buys Imagination Technologies.

[dragonmule]

Do you think? I know this info is proprietary, but the current configuration is almost satisfactory.

On jolicloud I have all of the above working except for quick wireless resume. I've been investigating how to duplicate the wireless settings Karmic has. I'll keep working on it. I've been mostly using karmic koala just for the fact that the wireless comes back on. Sometimes the wireless comes back right when the screen comes back on. Anyone who has used this broadcom sta on hardy-jaunty knows what I'm talking about... it takes up to 30 seconds to reconnect.

[teatimest]

How did you manage to make Boradcom proprietary driver on Karmic? No matter what I do, I could not make it activated. So I went back to Jaunty.

I used it with compiz under Gnome, but it was kind of not so responsive. So I disabled compositing and switched to Xfce.

[dragonmule]

Yes, broadcom STA is not installed by default nor will it enable.

What I did was connect to ethernet, do aptitude update;aptitude safe-upgrade

And then upon reboot, broadcom STA is listed in system-administration-hardware drivers.

I was puzzled by this at first as well.