Installing on the Dell Mini 12

[R_U_Q_R_U]

See this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...t=Dell+Mini+10

Great news! The Dell Mini 10 now runs on Ubuntu 9.04 at full nominal resolution of 1024 x 576!


What has happened is that the Ubuntu Mobile Team has compiled and packaged kernel modules, X.org drivers, libraries to interface to kernel DRM services, etc. etc. for the Poulsbo chipset and made them available on their PPA.

[danboid]

3D?

HDMI?

Otherwise, good news, thanks!

[woodhouse]

In my case,
- No 3D (!!!)
- Yes HDMI

[danboid]

I've just installed jaunty alternate i386 onto my mini 10 without a hitch, although the psb driver still needs a lot of work.

There will be people on here who have very minimal video requirements who will basically only require that they can get the full res out of their screen- well for those jaunty has arrived as all is working fine 'cept advanced graphics features in that atm there is no Xv (Video accel.- full screen youtube etc. is too jerky to be watchable), glxinfo does say Direct Rendering is available but there is no 3D working 3D accel yet as far as I can see as compiz doesn't work, even after adding psb to the Whitelist and enabling 3D accel privs for your user and some simple 3D games (foobillard, gunroar) that I've tested have verified that there is no 3D accel at present.

The good news, as has already been hinted at, is that HDMI is now working better than ever before on the mini 10 in that I get a 1280x720 image on my TV as soon as X starts (I need to log out if already logged in for the HDMI picture to come up). Unfortunately, this still has problems:

* No sound! I've checked both alsamixer and paman but both only see an analogue HDA intel alsa device. I can get sound coming out of my mini 10 but not via HDMI cable through the TV.

* Picture doesn't fit. I've not tried experimenting with the various config options xrandr offers to resize and reposition the HDMI display yet but I cannot see the full desktop on my TV, I'd guess that about 10-20 pixels round the edge of the screen are being obscured. I was hoping my TV would offer an 'auto-zoom/ position' function but it doesn't sadly. Can you see your full desktop on your HDMI screen without any manual adjustment woodhouse, anyone else?

There are basically no configuration options available for adjusting displays available under GNOMEs screen config tool. I know suse have a good graphical display config tool as part of YasT that does what I require but is there not a better xrandr GUI available to Ubuntu/Debian/GNOME users?

Playing with external displays under Jaunty/GNOME has only highlighted to me that GNOME still doesn't handle the whole deal too well as it normally results in your GNOME panel icons getting moved about and their order messed up. I hope GNOME 3 will solve this problem.

[subslug]

I haven't used my mini 10 in a couple of weeks now - I'd take it back if I could but I bought it with XP pre-installed so saying that it "doesn't work well with Linux" sadly isn't a good enough reason to return it

We ordered ours from Dell With XP and got sent a model with Vista, I would be dancing if I could get XP to install happily on this thing for her. Vista is just too damn slow. I can get Xp all done except for the video drivers, something is terribly wrong with the drivers for this device under XP.

I had the same experience you had with installing the poulsbo drivers on Intrepid. It hangs at the same screen mentioned in your earlier post. So, I was able to fix Intrepid with the partition editor, amazing what that tool can fix.
NOW..I'm going to follow the steps and give Jaunty a try, I really hope this is the fix because I've spent far too much time trying to make joy out of this Dell crap.

For anyone interested, at the same time she bought this Mini 12 I bought the Asus 1000HE and I've not jumped through any hoops installing Linux on that system. It's so easy it's funny. Not to mention it runs as if Linux was meant to be on it. Installs easy, sound works, graphics work, wireless works, Nic works, resume/suspend works.
It even gets a lot more battery life, sure the screen is a little smaller but I would return this Dell for another ASUS in a second if could.

[danboid]

HDMI audio works!!

For those few programs that actually care about what setting you've chosen under System -> Preferences -> Sound then you've got to choose

HDA Intel MID INTEL HDMI (ALSA)

For all your sound settings, that will then make at least Totem/'Movie Player' use your HDMI screen to output the sound.

Totem, like Flash, gets really jerky when you try playing any videos full screen with the current jaunty psb driver, so instead I'm using smplayer to play video files on my hdmi screen as smplayer lets you select the alsa hdmi audio output, which firefox and vlc can't see. To get hmdi audio output working under smplayer, push CTRL+P for the prefs., click on the 'Audio' tab and then choose

alsa ( 0.3 - HDA Intel MID )

For the 'Output driver' option then choose Apply / OK

So I have actually seen every bit of hardware (at least almost fully) working under Linux on my Mini 10 now, just not all at once and under the same version. I have seen 3D and accelerated video working under belmont/Hardy, compiz working under intrepid and now I've seen a nigh on 100% working HDMI under Jaunty- someone just needs to pull the right strings now and we cold have a fully working driver under Jaunty soon, I'd hope!

Can anyone tell me how I might be able to get the sound output by flash under FF to be redirected to the alsa HDMI output and if there is a better tool for Ubuntu users wanting to calibrate their displays via gui than the one that comes with GNOME?

[subslug]

I pretty much got everything working on Jaunty on the Dell Mini 12, with the one exception of Youtube videos but, honestly...life was probably better before Youtube anyway.

I was a little surprised that suspend even works. Usually that's like a unicorn on anything Dell makes, there's rumors but no-one's ever really seen it.

Note to anyone reading through this epic thread....skip the Intrepid install and just go straight to Jaunty. It runs much better anyway.

[danboid]

I've just been testing a few SD ie DVD res MP4 files under smplayer with the current jaunty psb driver and I was surprised to see it played them very smoothly, despite xvinfo insisting there is no video accel to speak of yet. Not tried playing any HD clips yet but us Mini 10 owners are limited to 1280x720 anyway- I'll have to track down some footage encoded at that res and see how it handles playback of that.

OK, so I still can't see all of my screen atm the mo and theres no 3D accel yet but my Mini 10 has now vastly improved its worth as a Linux media playback device as most of the vids I have are only SD res or below anyway.

I've tried using the intrepid xpsb-glx with jaunty- X still works and it doesn't seem to choke on the x 1.5 compiled xpsb module. It does have the positive effect of getting rid of the 'xpsb module missing' or whatever error message you get every time you hibernate if you install and xvinfo does then report that xv accel is working but trying flash would suggest otherwise and 3D accel certainly doesn't work using the intrepid xpsb.so.

So the question is when are we going to see an X 1.6.x friendly Xpsb blob arrive as I hear Dell are sticking with Hardy for a while yet, maybe until the next LTS release of buntu?

[tyroeternal]

Dell sticking with LTS releases would not be surprising. Their focus seems to be on providing a simple, stable system for the preinstalls. Given the wait and test nature of even security updates to Hardy they seem to indicate that they are more focused on simplicity than new features. Obviously, upgrading seems to be an "at your own risk" kind of endeavor around here.

[tyroeternal]

Is there anyone using Jaunty + Ubuntu-Mobile PPA with the proposed packages turned on? I recently re-installed my system with lpia and tried using the proposed packages, but x would not start properly. Anyone else have that issue?