Handtops, UMPC - Linux

11/24/04 + cyberface

Hi - first post here.

I've put an order in for a Flybook from laptops.nl (I am in the UK, no UK distributor as yet so the Dutch will do!) - should receive it in a week or so.

I am planning to get a fully working install of Linux, along with a vodafone 3G card which will either work as GPRS with the sim card in the slot, or 3G via the PCMCIA slot. Should be an awesome little machine.

On the Linux front, it appears that Lycoris (www.lycoris.com) have teamed up with Dialogue to provide a full Tablet-type Linux environment. Their website has details of their 'Desktop/LX Tablet' product. I mailed Lycoris and they replied that it ain't ready yet!!

Has anyone used a Lycoris distro before? Is it any good? Until this is available, I'll have a shot at getting a couple of other distros installed, but as I usually use OS X, I'm not really a Linux expert. I had a fair amount of aggro trying to get both Redhat and SuSE working on a Sony C1 picturebook, but that was due to Sony having loads of undocumented / proprietary chipsets - the Flybook should be much better from the specs I've read.

More when I get the flybook

cheeers
cyberface

12/01/04 + cyberface

My Flybook arrived today - exactly on schedule. It's incredibly small and performs a hell of a lot better than my previous Sony baby laptop (C1MGP picturebook) which also used a Transmeta CPU. Half a gig of RAM helps, obviously.

Very impressed with the build quality of the Flybook - not quite up to Apple standards but definitely better than many of the PC laptops I've seen. The small size also gives it an advantage in rigidity. Not sure how long the red lacquered finish will last though, so it's good that Dialogue supply a neoprene case along with the unit.

Just updating the XP install with patches etc. - once this is done I will move partitions around and get on with installing Linux...

12/01/04 + americhan

I was also impressed with how solid the machine feels. My kid does not like any PC laptops (he is Powerbook and iBook type of guy), and even he is considering the Flybook. It is also one of the quiestest and cooler (it's warm but not really hot comparing with all the other laptops I had before) machine around.

The only problem I have is the USB does not supply enough power to work with USB powered external drives.

12/05/04 + cyberface

Quick update before I post detail...

1. The CEO of Lycoris confirmed that their Tablet Linux distro isn't ready for release yet, but they are still working on it for the Flybook.

2. I've got Gentoo Linux working with support for most of the built in devices using a 2.6.9 kernel. Still in process, I will post greater detail once I've ironed out all issues and get a step-by-step plan worked out. Unlike the Sony baby laptops, which are irritatingly proprietary, the Flybook seems remarkably happy with Linux. 8 hours of messing around has got power management, PCMCIA, USB, bluetooth, Ethernet, Firewire, sound, screen and dual/triple boot working. The WiFi, Bluetooth and Siemens GPRS are all hanging off an internal USB bus, and the Fn keys are BIOS-controlled to give power to the relevant devices. So if you've got USB hotplugging working in Linux (which appears to work on my build) then the Fn keys will turn off and on the devices. This is great to hear as the Fn keys aren't controlled by a Windows driver, which would be a pain in the arse with Linux.

3. All these internal devices raise merry hell with IRQ allocation, it took me many different combinations of built-into-kernel and/or module drivers to get the drivers to load in the right order to prevent IRQ conflicts.

More later. My goal is to get a working Linux with support for: ethernet, Wifi, GPRS, power management. These are the most important devices for me in an ultraportable, I'm not bothered about a 56k winmodem when I've got GPRS and 3G phone via PCMCIA. Anyone else doing this? I'm a complete beginner when it comes to Linux (I'm an Apple 'fan' and know OS X well so the unix side isn't a problem, just the devices / install procedure / etc.) so all advice is welcome!!!

12/14/04 + ped

I would love to run linux on something like this. I've been running it on the Toshiba Portege m200 tablet. It runs pretty hot and linux can't turn off the screen's backlight.

I'm interested to know how hot it runs and if you get decent battery life... will the backlight turn off when the screensaver sends it into DPMI, etc. I'd love to hear that it can run cool enough to fold it up and put it in a backpack while it streams mp3 audio to a bluetooth headset. That would rock.

Where did you guys buy yours?

12/14/04 + Chekote

@ cyberface:

Submit a review when you get the chance. =0)

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12/14/04 + americhan

I am running Windows, not Linux, but I figure that I can give you some general observation. Machine runs warm but not hot, and is actually one of the cooler Laptops. When brightness is turned to the lowest (which is still brighter than IBM T41P at medium setting) the battery life is close to 3 hours. Speed of the machine is pretty decent until you have resource killers like McAfee or Norton on it. USB port is tight in power, you may have problem with hard drive that is USB powered. Things that are small or have rechargeable battery should not matter: my memory stick, USB rechargeable PDA, Blackberry, and iPod mini all worked fine and recharged fine on it.

12/14/04 + bkervaski

You're using your flybook to sync your blackberry? That's funny. Almost insestial.

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12/14/04 + americhan

You really like to play with words... Simple fact is I hate to waste time, so I make sure I have all my little gadgets ready to go and never get stuck with carrying a big laptop with bad battery life.

WiFi is meaningless on the road unless you are the type that waste time looking for a Starbuck all the time. GPRS is usable but not really that fast for retrieving email that has to go through VPN. Blackberry handles corporate email so I am stuck with it whether I like it or not, and it is the most efficient when I am in meetings and such (I average about 50 business related emails a day). These days I am carrying two phones: Flybook and Blackberry. Truth is the Flybook phone card is mainly for GPRS so I can work without being close to Network Cable or WiFi Hotspot.

Multiple gadgets for multiple means.

12/14/04 + cyberface

@ped - the Crusoe power management is buildable into the kernel. The battery lasts around 3 hours so far just testing, I've managed to get all the devices, ACPI etc. all detected and supported except the touchscreen so far.

It doesn't seem to run particularly hot, but there is no thermal zone ACPI so I can't tell how hot the components are actually getting.

The kernel's pretty much configured now, all I need to do is to cook up some scripts to automatically switch between network devices (like my powerbook) and have a go at getting that touchscreen working. Windows sees the touchscreen as a mouse by the looks of things, so it may not be impossible...

Having said all this, the XP install on the Flybook is actually very clean and everything works smoothly, which surprised me.

I bought mine from link in the Netherlands...

12/14/04 + ped

The wacom (active) touchscreen shows up as a serial device (with wacky io/irq settings) on my Toshiba. The passive screen is probably a different story. I think strongarm has touchscreen handling integrated so it won't help to look at how iPaq etc do it under Linux. What does 'lspci -v' show you?

I have my m200 connect through my motorola v710 to go online. I'm on an unlimited data plan with Verizon. It's much better than plain gprs (t-mobile) which is what I used to use. gprs was about 45kbps best case but 1xrtt is commonly around 128kbps. Even 1xrtt was not quite good enough to do voip when I tried it though...

The flybook will be a sweet machine to use with bluetooth.

I'm with the team working on the bluetooth audio driver in linux. We have it doing basic streaming (harder than you'd think) and we're working on making it work seamlessly for stuff like voip and playing mp3 audio. (see bluetooth-alsa.sf.net .

12/14/04 + cyberface

cool!

Didn't see anything on the lspci output that related to the touchscreen. However, the Flybook appears to be built all out of standard parts - no silly proprietary crap a la Sony, for example. As I said, I'm a complete Linux beginner so currently relying on common sense...

For wireless internet, the built in GPRS is pretty handy here in the UK: it's not massively fast but fine for general browsing and email. I also have the Vodafone 3G card (not a cellular expert so not really sure what technology the UK 3G actually is, but I think it's some type of CDMA). I'm currently using a 75 MB/month plan which is pretty cheap (£20/month) but this is the UK, I'm sure the states have it cheaper. Unlimited data on the Vodafone network is around £100 IIRC...

As to bluetooth - I haven't had much reason to use it so far. My phone is a Treo 600 which hasn't got BT, and the Flybook has a phone built in. I don't own a bluetooth headset either. I'm presuming here your driver allows mixer output to a BT headset? I ought to try out VoIP, that would be cool

My main angle on the Linux install is to get the machine working smoothly and quickly. The Flybook is an awesomely portable machine and the important thing is to be able to start using it quickly whereever you are - hopefully I can get the Linux install scripted up so, for example, getting online via GPRS when on the train doesn't involve 20 commands in the terminal!!! Ideally it will be as easy as with the default XP i.e. a couple of mouse clicks.

12/15/04 + ped

@cyberface

yeah, the BT headset is what we're shooting for supporting. bluetooth-alsa makes the bluetooth headset show up as if it's another sound card. alsa is good about making multiple cards reasonable.

Since the flybook does everything else the 'right' way I wouldn't be surprised if the touchscreen is a usb device. I wonder if running something like usbview would show it (if it's in /proc/bus/usb/devices)

I use the gnome applet "modem lights" to launch and monitor my internet connection. In debian, it just runs pon/poff by default. You can make it run other things. If you put yourself in group "ppp" then you should be able to launch ppp as a regular user.

I have also played around with putting my laptop's wifi card into access point mode to make my laptop's cdma internet connection available over wifi. It does work and it's a pretty cool trick. Of course *that's* something you don't want to do unless you get unlimited data

12/15/04 + americhan

Since the machine runs pretty slow when all the Windows crap is installed (the biggest performance hit seems to happen when either McAfee or Norton gets on, I tried both) I am seriously considering installing a dual boot of Linux on it.

I need Power Management, WiFi, GPRS, and Blue Tooth to work properly. I don't really need or care about Touch Screen too much (although that is a welcomed bonus). Can I do that through a standard distribution (like Mandrake), or should I take a Debian distribution and add on what I need from that. Do you guys have a list of things that I can grab to speed the installation up.

BTW, I have played with Blue Tooth headset on my Flybook under Windows. It works on everything except with the GPRS phone.

Thanks in advance.

12/15/04 + ped

@americhan

It is unlikely you'll find some kind of linux that runs out of the box. From your list, GPRS support is probably the most iffy (cyberface only says he sees it connect on usb, not that he is able to use it)

In debian, modules are loaded in the order they appear in /etc/modules. I wonder if we could use a stock vendor kernel (with everything in modules) and specify the magical load order there...