The Monomagician

Introduction

A few months ago I decided to get hold of an ultra portable PC.  I originally wanted to get an Asus EEE PC with a 9″ screen.  Various on-line dealers had other ideas though.  Try as I might, I ended up being sent versions that ran Windows XP rather than Linux.  I eventually gave up on the EEE PCand noticed that HP had released their offering into the ultra portable space, the Mininote 2133.

The first one I ordered came with (you’ve guessed it) Windows XP.  The second, from Misco, had Linux installed.

Off to a poor start…

The default operating system with the 2133 is Suse Linux Enterprise Edition (SLED) version 10.  All worked well for a while, then I started to have problems getting software updates.  Then after one set of updates that DID come through, the wireless LAN connection failed and resolutely refused to come back up.

Since the Mininote didn’t come with an installation disk, I tried to get one off the HP website.  Sadly, the site was rather lacking in content.  It was possible to get the individual files that make up the distribution, but nobody at HP had bothered to create a proper distribution disk that could be used to take the PC back to its factory configuration.  Research on the Internet indicated that I wasn’t the only one with problems and as I tried to resolve the growing list of problems using SLED, it became clear to me just what an appalling botch-up job HP had done with the operating system.  I suspect the reason was that they felt they had to get something to market to compete with the EEE PC, but at the expense of quality.

Ubuntu beckons

I finally decided to ditch SLED and installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ‘Hardy Heron’.  There was even a helpful ‘how to guide’ in the Ubuntu Wiki to help me get the various proprietary components to work properly.  It was a great success, though the wireless LAN could be a bit temperamental. It would often take several attempts to get a connection established. On a couple of occasions, the wireless networks would refuse to come up after software updates had been applied, so I became very reluctant to keep the system up to date.

My wireless problems came to a head when I migrated our internet connection from a Linksys WRT54G router to a BT Home Hub 2.  No matter what I tried, the darned laptop wouldn’t talk to it.

Everything pointed to a problem with the WLAN driver in the laptop as both of the Windows laptops we own and a Palm TX connected first time.  So it was back to the forums and google to search out a solution to the problem.

The 2133 uses a Broadcom chip for the wireless network and it had been necessary to use ndiswrapper to get the chip to use a driver originally meant for a Windows device.  According to the forums, the latest incarnation of Ubuntu, 8.10 ‘Intrepid Ibex’ supported the Broadcom chip natively.

8.10 - a leap of faith

It so happened that I had a CD with 8.10 on it courtesey of Linux Format Magazine, so I loaded it.  Waddya know?  No wireless!  Some head scratching and yet more searching on the web and I had the Broadcom STA driver and managed to get the 2133 to connect to the network.  The problem was, that every time I restarted the laptop, I had to reinstall the 802.11 crypto module for TKIP and the driver.  Whilst this isn’t insurmountable (all I did was write a two line script), it was inconvenient.  But at least I had a laptop that could connect wirelessly to the Internet.

When I started to look through the operating system, I could see that Linux Format had put all sorts of packages in the distribution that were, frankly, a waste of time.  So I decided to download the distribution from the Ubuntu website and give that a go.  After all, I figured I had nothing to lose.

What a revelation!  I loaded the liverun version and it immediately detected my wireless network.  As soon as I entered the WPA key, it was up and running!  No mucking about with STA drivers or anything!  Half an hour later, after having double-clicked the ‘install’ icon on the desktop, I had a brand spanking new system.

I’ve carried out a couple of mods, courtesy of Erik Hess who has done a great job in sorting out the tweaks needed to get the 2133 to work with this OS.

Now, as a I write this, I have installed Unison so I can keep documents in sync with my main Ubuntu desktop machine.  The browser has the same favourites as my main machine and the email accounts are set up (I have an IMAP server which means I can view email from a number of different machines).

All that is left is to import my email address book and I’m pretty much sorted.  Whilst I would love to have an LDAP directory, this is a step too far for my rather simple mind at this stage…though it does look very interesting!

Conclusion

So, to conclude: once I finally downloaded the proper version of Ubuntu 8.10 and installed it, there were a few minor tweaks required to get the HP Mininote 2133 working.  The main bugbear that I had, namely with WiFi performance seems to have been fixed and the system just works.

The laptop seems to load more quickly and the BEST thing is that the wireless network just comes up!

I really do hope this operating system version works well, otherwise, y relationship with what is a very good hardware platform could well be over and I will be looking to replace it with something else.

Following on from my earlier printer woes, we decided to get hold of a cheap printer that would tide us over until the Epson 2400 is either repaired or replaced.  The 2400 was our only printer, so was used for printing not only photographs, but bank statements, letters, code listings and so on.

I wanted a printer that would work satisfactorily on WIndows XP and Linux (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron).  After a quick trawl of what was out there that met our criteria for cheapness, it was on to the open printing site to see whether any of them worked with Linux.  According to the site, the ML-1640 “worked perfectly”.  A quick call to our local branch of Staples revealed a display model that was missing its box - they were willing to part with it for £59.99 - £10 off list price for something that would either languish in the loft or get flattened and put out for recycling.

The construction of the Samsung ML-1640 is quite flimsy, which given the price point isn’t really surprising. Anyway, within a few minutes of getting the machine home, I hooked it up to our Windows XP box and within a couple of minutes had printed my first test page.  The quality of the output was very good indeed, easily rivalling the quality obtained from (much) more expensive networked printers from the likes of HP and Kyocera.

On the subject of networking, I wanted to make sure it was possible to access the printer from any machine on our home network.  Since the Windows machine isn’t on all of the time, it wasn’t really feasible to use it as a print server.  I do however, have an old PC running Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon), which I use for testing new websites, file sharing, backups and as an IMAP server.  Since this machine is on for a good 16 hours a day, it made perfectly good sense to connect the printer to it.

I was not expecting the installation to be as straightforward as it was.  The OS detected the printer and loaded the right drivers in seconds.  A test print showed that everything was hunky dory, at least from the server itself.  Now, it was time to network the machine, so it was out with my copy of the Linux cookbook to make sure CUPS was set up correctly.  I was able to connect from my Ubuntu workstation and laptop in seconds.  This was all going too well!

Now all that was left was the Windows PC that I had previously used for testing the printer and an old Dell laptop.  Both machines are running XP (professional and home edition respectively).  I originally thought it would be necessary to make some changes to my Samba configuration.  However, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the printer appear in the Network Neighbourhood.  A quick google and I had the answer at my finger tips.  In the end, it wasn’t necessary to use Samba.  I used HTTP!  The add printer dialogue gives you the option of using a URL which goes something like
http://hostname:631/printers/<printername>

Full details of how to do this can be found here. So no need to mess around with Samba!

Everything works absolutely brilliantly - the only other thing I had to do was to load the printer drivers on to the laptop, which was easily accomplished by means of a USB pen.