Mind Storm

So, to waste time today breaking an otherwise perfectly functional OS install, I decided to try the new beta of Ubunto 9.04. Of course, it is beta, and there are some things to work out.

Out of the box I saw the touch screen work a little bit... but it needs calibration.. the wacom tablet isn't configured correctly either. Sound works well.

I was using Ubuntu 8.10, and had trouble with a couple areas. The sound was particularly troublesome. I never managed to get the microphone from the webcam to work. Nor could I get the bluetooth to work with my A2DP headphones... So, I am hoping some of these things will have evolved a bit.

So, I want to track here what I must add to get the parts working.

1) Webcam - works without intervention.
2) Mic - works after setting pulse microphone to ATAPI MIC
3) wacom digitizer - Follow instructions on linuxwacom sites howto.
4) touch screen
5) bluetooth headphones
6) hibernate
7) standby
8) screen rotation
9) special buttons on screen ( rotate, mobile tools, media menu, dvd )
10) IR remote ( including system tray item to disable it!!! )

---
1) Webcam - this just works out of the box... I downloaded the dynamic linked skype binaries. They are 32bit, but oh well... tested the HP webcam in skype... it shows up nice and easy...

2) The array mic on the front finally works, after failing to find information on the internet over repeated days of searching. I finally found a post that includes the tiny information that the mic is the 'ATAPI MIC' that isn't even listed by default.. So to set it as the recording mic, go to the 'volume control', for the 'HDA NVidia (Alsa mixer)' choose 'Preferences', and enable the 'input source' and 'ATAPI MIC' options. After you close that list, an Options tab is added, select it, and then you can change the 'input source' to the 'ATAPI MIC.' Did I mention, you want to change the input source to the ATAPI MIC? How obscure.

3) The digitizer is working without any configuration changes to the xorg.conf... I just had to get the latest, latest, latest sources from linuxwacom, download, install all the different dev packages required ( through synaptic package manager searches ) and build them. Then 'locate wacom.ko' and overwrite it with the newly built one. I updated the initrd a few times too, but I don't think that had anything to do with it... The worst part of this effort is getting the dev packages installed for the first time.

I don't have right-click control from the stylus yet... But there are notes on Linuxwacom to control that... I think it was related to xsetwacom... I'll follow up on that later.

4) The touch screen also works when following the advice in the Linuxwacom howto. I stalled a bit trying to figure out how to specify the regular mouse as well, but that simply wasn't necessary. The HAL system seems to handle adding the stylus and touchpad and mice automatically, but wacomcpl did not show any of the stylus components until I explicitly added them to the xorg.conf. Since HAL takes care of the simple stuff, just leave it out... add the InputDevice sections for the stylus, cursor, eraser, pad, and touch, and include them in a simple ServerLayout section. http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net/index.php/howto/inputdev

5) This is really why I wanted to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu distribution... as I saw some improvement promised for the bluetooth handling... Sadly, it still seems rather complicated to for audio. This will take some research.

6) Hibernate, I should really test after each system change... so I guess now is a good time I'll save the post first. Hey I'm back and you barely missed me. Looks like hibernate worked just fine...

7) I'm not so much a fan of standby... if it isn't instant, then I might as well hibernate... But this is psuedo science, so I'll give it a go... Well, so far standby worked... I'll have to come back later and make the box busy, and then see how well it recovers... In ubuntu 8.10, the digitizer usually wouldn't come back after standby or hibernation.. ( sorry, Ubuntu is using the word 'Suspend', not standby... )

It looks like alot of work has gone into Suspend in Ubuntu 9.04.. Right now, it is working better than it ever did in Windows. So for the last couple days, I've change my power management to suspend after 20 minutes... on or off power... and only hibernate automatically if battery is critical.. It is maybe about 1/2 second slower on resume than my Macbook. So I am quite happy with that. Maybe this weekend, I'll spread the joy to my desktop as well.

8) This should be easy, but I'd like to see it even easier than last time... Previously I chocked up a couple scripts, one to toggle between the hand held mode, and the laptop mode, and a second ruby UI to act as a indicating widget/click and toggle button with pretty picture of rotated monitors... That is still on the other partition, so I'll come back to it..

9) The buttons on the lower right hand side of the screen provided nice access to rotating the screen, or calling up a media menu in windows.. I'd like to hook into them. Right now the quick media launcher activates Rythmbox.

10) I have a media center PC, and a laptop that responds to the media center remote... I've found that the remote just works in previous Ubuntu 8.10 and using Boxee. The one we use for the TV also just works, and when I'm in the middle of typing 'rm aFi' my wife hits 'select' on the remote and my laptop thinks I've hit 'enter'... that is no good... So I really want to be able to turn off the IR for times when I'm not using it on purpose... I have no idea yet... I fear it is just integrated into the keyboard controller.