Finally got my mininote 2133 2 days ago, and spent a very enjoyable day yesterday getting it just-so.

Since my post on having dual boot Vista/Ubuntu hardy on a compaq tc4400 5 months ago, I’ve had a chance to play with Intrepid on several desktop and notebook PCs (as well as OpenSUSE 11) as part of the school IT lab project I wrote about a few weeks back.  Between 8.04 and 8.1, the installation has gotten so much easier.

Setting up broadcom wireless had been a little tricky in Hardy.  With Intrepid, there’s an alert on the taskbar, with a popup window offering the Broadcom STA wireless driver via a simple ACTIVATE button.  Google Toolbar’s bookmarks installed correctly without the need for installing pre-req packages.

There were two little things on the mininote 2133 specifically that needed special knowledge that was very readily available on the excellent Ubuntu hardware wiki page for this model.

The first was to select the “Safe Graphics Mode” option (press F4 at the opening screen after language selection) before selecting the “Install Ubuntu” option.  Failure to do this resulted in the windowed installation screen being unusable when it appeared.

The second was to modify the default xorg.conf file to provide the proper native resolution (1280 x 768 ) that the mininote’s display required.

I had previously shrunk the Vista partition, and deleted the recovery partition from the harddisk, leaving a very healthy 70G for Ubuntu to use.  In the partitioning options section of the install, I asked Ubuntu to use all the unpartitioned space it could find.

I’ve pretty much set into a routine with Ubuntu installs, and for the hp mininote, it went like this:

1. Install Ubuntu from CDROM (I had the hp external optical drive)
2. Connect to LAN (wired) to get and install updates
3. Accept the Broadcomm wireless proprietary driver, after which I disconnected the lan cable and worked wirelessly
4. Modify the xorg.conf file and set the correct screen resolution
5. Turn on subpixel smoothing for a better display (right click desktop, select “Change Desktop Background”, Select FONTS tab, then the subpixel smoothing option.
6. Install Google Toolbar from Firefox, and set my google ig page as home.
7. Install VLC (via Add/Remove Programs) and test this with files from my collection of songs and video.  To make VLC the default application for these media types, right click a media file, select properties, click on the “open with” tab, then configure for VLC.
8. Install OpenOffice 3.0 (using Marius Nestors excellent instructions)
9. Using the Add/Remove Programs, install Flash, Microsoft Core Fonts, Sun Java 6 runtime and browser plugin.  Test that these work by playing a video on Youtube (tests flash and java) and logging into internet banking sites that requre the Java plugin.
10. Open Places/Computer, and right click the drive representing the Vista partition.  Select MOUNT, and check that the files in my vista folders can be seen.
11. Download some nice wallpaer (I chose something from the Watchmen movie site) with Scaled Style, black background (to match the wallpaper), and set the top and bottom taskbars semi transparent so the wallpaper shows through slightly.
12. The final step was to look for a good cbr/cbz comic viewer, and I settled on comix, which is available in the add/remove programs (synaptic) package manager.  There was an error about needing an unrar module the first time I tried opening a cbr file, but this was fixed by running terminal and executing sudo apt-get install unrar

That’s it!  This is going to be my main Linux machine from now on, and I’ll do my personal work (writing, internet banking, eBook and eComic reading) on this (photo and music work is on the family mac!).  That will free up my reliance on my old tc4400 tablet, so I can upgrade it to Intrepid and finally work to get the tablet features working on that machine.

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve tested startup and shutdown times (fast compared to vista, which I’ve already stripped unessential services and eye candy from to improve performance), and suspend works very well.

The keyboard, which I’ve heard complaints about, is excellent, my only complaint being the loss of the independent Pg UP/DOWN keys.  These keys are available, but require the Function key to be pressed before hand.  This will force me to learn other keyboard shortcuts to navigate webpages, pdfs and comix.  So perhaps it’s a something I can live with.

Battery life seems decent – I ran for an hour off battery this evening, reading a PDF magazine, and still had a half-tank of battery life after that.

Also heard complaints about heat – the bottom getting really hot.  I did not find this machine any hotter than other laptops I’ve used.  Was careful to keep the ventilation holes (at the bottom) clear, though.

In the past, I would have set vista to be the default OS in Grub, but since I’m not going to do any office work on this laptop, I”m leaving Ubuntu as default, and Vista is there as a nice-to-have in case I need something Ubuntu won’t give me.  Which seems unlikely at this time as all my writing, communications and entertainment needs seem to be ably met by Intrepid Ibex.

The hp 2140 has already been announced, and I supposed I could have waited a little longer to get that machine and the improvements that come with it.  But I’m plenty happy with the performance I’m getting from Ubuntu on the 2133 and will stay with this for quite  a while.

>>Part 2 (bios & video tips)
>>Part 3 (audio tips)
>>Photos here and here