Handtops, UMPC - OQO Linux Installation & Configurati

02/13/05 + jarango

This topic is intended to serve as an information repository about Linux installation and configuration on the OQO. I start by reporting my experiences and sharing my configuration. The idea is that we share installation and configuration information, report issues and provide solutions. Also important is that we limit the discussion on installation/configuration issues and solutions and not stray to other things.

Jesus Arango
jarango at cs dot arizona dot edu

---------------- Summary ---------------------

I have installed debian with good results. Other people would have you believe that "it just works" out of the box but this is not true. Here is a summary:

- kernel version >= 2.6.10 highly recommended. Trackstick will not work with previous versions.

- trackstick: works. you need kernel >= 2.6.10 and use the 'i8042.noloop' kernel parameter. Will not work with kernels < 2.6.10. The credit here goes to "Milan" ... Thanks.

- X11 works with a little tweaking. My XF86Config-4 is posted below. Resolution needs to be 800x480 and a corresponding modeline needs to be added to the Monitor section. Video device is "siliconmotion" but I am using "vesa" because I could not come up with a modeline that would work properly with the "siliconmotion" driver. If you have a working modeline for the "siliconmotion" please share it with us.

- cosole output: works but you need the vga=0xf05 kernel parameter. Without this parameter the bottom of the display will be blank.

- WiFi: Works, buggy, only works exporadically, could not reproduce working results. If you have this working reliably than please let us know how. This is an Atmel AT76C505A USB WiFi. There are two third party drivers available. The kernel source also has an Atmel drivers but it seems to me that it does not support USB devices. I would recommend first trying the driver at link Before compiling add the vendor/product ID of the OQO wifi device to the file ~/src/includes/usb/config.h. "lsusb" will report that the vendor/product ID is 0x1557/0x0002. The driver's site says that if you are running a 2.6 kernel than you need to apply a pacth (available on the website) to the kernel source before compiling the driver. I would like to add that as of version 2.6.7 this patch is no longer needed. There is another driver available at link To use this driver you also need to install the firmware from link Before compiling you need to add the vendor/product ID to ~/at76c505a-rfmd2958.c.

- stylus: I suspect this works but I have put minimal effort into this. Here is what I know: It is a wacom device accesible through /dev/ttyS0 (serial port) and you need an "InputDevice" section for it in your XF86Config-4. See link Milan reported on another topic that he has the wacom working and perhaps he could share the configuration with us.

---------------- Notes on Debian Installation -----------------

I installed Debian by first doing a minimal install with the netinstall CD then compiling and installing the WiFi driver to do the rest of the installation through my wireless network.

You should get the latest copy of the netinstall CD from link I first tried to use a few-months old netinstall CD and the installation program would not even complete the booting sequence. You will also need the first full CD of the debian distro (sarge-i386-1.iso) to install gcc, make, patch, wireless-tools, bzip2. You need bzip2 to untar the kernel sources that you will need to compile the WiFi driver. Be aware that some external CD drives will not boot. I used a Plextor PX-716UF. I used a USB jumpdrive to copy the WiFI and kernel sources to the OQO. Just plug it in and "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt"

------------ XF86Config-4 ------------------

Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server
# if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "keyboard1"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
# Driver "siliconmotion"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
HorizSync 30-92
VertRefresh 50-85
Option "DPMS"
Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509 +HSync
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
Screen "screen1"
InputDevice "keyboard1"
InputDevice "mouse1"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

02/14/05 + Milan

- Ethernet (USB): you need to patch linux/drivers/usb/net/rtl8150.c driver. Add 1557/8150 as VendorId/ProductId to the devices table in the driver

- stylus under X: download Wacom for Linux driver (http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net ) or install rpm under fedora. The add the following to xorg.conf:

ServerLayout
InputDevice "pen0" "AlwaysCore"

InputDevice
Identifier "pen0"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"

You need to compile the calibartion utility as well. It's not a part of the rpm, you have to compile it yourself from the source package.

02/14/05 + jarango

More on WiFi: I just noticed that the sourceforge WiFi driver (http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net, see instructions above) works if first go into Windows and reboot into Linux without physically shutting down the OQO. I just repeated this experiment 4 times. Once it is working in Linux you can reboot directtly into Linux, again, without shutting down. This probably means that there is a bug in the part of the driver that loads the firmware so we have to rely on Windows to do it for us. In deed a very ungly work-around but at least it works.

Jesus Arango

02/14/05 + jarango

Here is a picture of the OQO Running Debian GNU/Linux 3.0, KDE Desktop Environment, mplayer playing Toy Story, and gkrellm performance monitor. link

02/14/05 + jarango

Before installing I tried to resize the NTFS partition using Linux parted but to do that you need a livecd such as Knoppix. The problem is Knoppix 3.7 would not even boot on my OQO. I then decided to try non-free software such as Partition Magic but resizing failed during the boot script. Fortunally nothing happed to Windows. Finally I tried Paragon's partition manager (see link ) and it worked perfectly.

You would have insane to overwrite Windows on the OQO !!

03/15/05 + jarango

GRUB overwrite problem

You will notice that grub gets overwritten every time you boot into windows. This is because windows overwrites the master boot record (MBR) every time it boots. Several people have reported this behavior when running Tablet PC. To work around this problem you will need to install GRUB on your linux partition (i.e. /dev/hda2 alias (hd0,1)) and invoke grub from Windows boot manager.

1. After installing grub to the linux partition make a copy of the boot sector using this command:
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=grub.bin bs=512 count=1

2. copy grub.bin to C: on your windows partition

3. Add the following line to C:boot.ini
c:grub.bin="Linux"

03/15/05 + jarango

CPU Frequency and Power Throttling

CPU Throttling works without having to configure or install anything. This a a feature of the Crusoe CPU that changes frequency and voltage based on how much time it's spending in idle state and does not need OS support at all. However, you might want to change the CPU frequency and voltage to a fix value. To do this from the command line you need to install longrun. In debian just type:

apt-get install longrun
man longrun

If you use gkrellm you can also change your CPU settings by installing gkrellongrun. The debian package did not work for me at the time of this writing. There was a problem loading the plugin into gkrellm. To fix this, download the source from link You need to compile the source by executing "exec CFLAGS=-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 make" otherwise you get the same error as in the package.

longrun and gkrellongrun require the cpuid and msr modules to be loaded, but these modules are usually loaded by default.

If for some reason you load the processor.ko acpi module you will notice that the cpu will run at max speed, the OQO will get really hot and longrun will not work.

03/15/05 + jarango

Battery Management:

If you are using KDE/Gnome and would like to have a battery meter on your system tray you will need to load the battery module (modeprobe battery). On debian you can have this done automatically every time you boot by adding the line "battery" to the /etc/modules file.

03/15/05 + dmz

OQO & Grub

I looked at this for a bit before it dawned on me what the problem was. Here is my grub/menu.1st for my XP partition:

title Windows XP
map (hd0,0) (hd0,2)
map (hd0,2) (hd0,0)
norootverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

This is with the following partition setup:
hda0 = linux
hda1 = swap
hda2 = XP
with XP & linux both as close to 10Gig as possible (yes I found it easier to just boot from cd and redo the entire beast than to change partition sizes

I removed the makeactive line as that seems to be part of the problem in that it set the second partition as the boot partition making the next boot go to XP instead of grub.

I also found a few references to changing the map settings so that when it gets into XP it will have everything where XP wants them.

03/15/05 + dmz

Anyone successful with 2.6.10, docking cable & usb keyboard/mouse? So far I've got it working great with 2.4.27-386 (debian), but when I build my own kernel or use the debian 2.6.10 kernel the OQO works great, except for the usb devices!

Thoughts?

03/15/05 + dmz

Also, for those who have commercial installers...what sound settings did your installation setup for you?

03/21/05 + victorgv

Ther is GRUB for windows wich i used to load RIP 11.8 .It allowed me to resize NTFS. It also can boot KANOTIX just create directory KANOTIX on c: drive and kopy KANOTIX file there. You can download my boot directory with RIP and kernel with initrd for Kanotix from
link

04/19/05 + nuoqo

Can someone create an image of their oqo with Windows/Linux running? If prefer True Image but Ghost is fine. Thanks.

04/19/05 + fil

I don't think people can share their Windows images (since Windows is licensed), but as I get comfortable with mine I plan on doing a Linux install and when I do I'll make a Ghost image for you.

Windows 2003 is very light, almost as light as win2k so I plan on trying it out on the OQO as well.

OS planned installs after I play with the OQO for a while:
win2k
win xp tablet 2005
win2k3
Fedora, Debian, or Suse

Recent Blog: Apple iPhone Switch

04/20/05 + nuoqo

How is the performance with Linux compared to Windows?

I've read from the forum that some users managed to get their Windows footprint down to about 61 MB. I've only gotten it down to about 91 MB with Windows XP SP 2. Are you using a different release of Windows?

I plan to install Linux over the weekend and will create an image to share if it works well.