Installing on the Dell Mini 12

[matthiasak]

I wouldn't bank on it being far below, however this is a processor with HT, so the clock rate will pull more strings in terms of basic performance.

The main thing with the apps I have running is that most are handled by something other than the processor. When FF and evolution arent active, the threads are sleeping. Skype is handled by poulsbo video decoder, and the processor is used by this and little bit by songbird. So the system sees little drag.

Also, it does help to remove pulseaudio... it tends to eat up more cpu cycles. That and other things to help the system, like stop indexing and tracker, stop any extra services you don't need, and editing the swappiness of the virtual memory.

As far as this goes, however, I'm feeling like we finally have a solid footing to work with when installing ubuntu onto not just a Dell Mini but any other new Poulsbo system coming out.

Tis' a good feelin'

[danboid]

Thanks for pointing out the compiz whitelist line! Now compiz is working great on my Mini 10 - I don't know what everyone is complaining about as it seems to run just as well as on the pouslbo as under any intel gfx I've seen really. Its certainly not choppy or jerky w/ normal windows and SD video ie youtube etc.

So, the latest procedure roughly goes:

1) install i386 intrepid via Ubuntu USB creator
1.5 ) Copy xorg.conf if booting desktop CD
2) install updates (dont add backports or proposed sources)
2.5) restart
3) use the repos available at (https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-m...ies_filter=any) to install poulsbo-driver-2d and poulsbo-driver-3d
4) edit /usr/bin/compiz "whitelisted drivers line", add 'psb' to the list
5) Use System -> Admin -> Users and Groups to create a group called 'video' if it doesn't exist already and add your user to that group to enable DRI.
6) restart
7) turn on/off any effects you see fit with CCSM or System > Appearance > Effects

Working compiz is normally a pretty good sign you've got your X drivers setup OK, maybe if not entirely correctly. However, I still don't automatically get any picture out of HDMI like I did under belmont. Matts xorg.conf is just unconfigured so looks like I'm going to have to experiment more with xrandr to try and get a picture.

[dimeified]

fyi, rather than create a video group or add an xorg dri subsection, under privelages there is an option to "enable tv capture and 3d acceleration".

[drb116]

I have a Dell mini 12 shipped with Ubuntu 8.04. I tried to upgrade to 8.10 via the upgrade manager and it said it was upgrading to 8.10, but after 30 minutes and no errors, I did a reboot and found I was still on 8.04.

Is it possible to upgrade the version that was originally shipped to 8.10, then to 9.04?

[dimeified]

unfortunately you can not upgrade that way. You have the Dell Belmont ubuntu image, and dell hasn't released an 8.10 version of it yet. They have their own graphics drivers that only work with 8.04. Your better off just downloading the intrepid alternate installer cd, install the system, and then follow the steps in the last 2 pages to get the system up and running. It's pretty sad honestly to see Dell holding back their customers to 8.04, yet the open source community has us up to 8.10 already. What really sucks about it is if you do upgrade to intrepid as described, you will loose fluendo codecs for video playback since it is dell proprietary software.

[matthiasak]

unfortunately you can not upgrade that way. You have the Dell Belmont ubuntu image, and dell hasn't released an 8.10 version of it yet. They have their own graphics drivers that only work with 8.04. Your better off just downloading the intrepid alternate installer cd, install the system, and then follow the steps in the last 2 pages to get the system up and running. It's pretty sad honestly to see Dell holding back their customers to 8.04, yet the open source community has us up to 8.10 already. What really sucks about it is if you do upgrade to intrepid as described, you will loose fluendo codecs for video playback since it is dell proprietary software.

I wonder if we could extract the fluendo codecs from Belmont

[decahedron]

Is there any advantage to installing the lpia image, since this is for low power intel architectures? Would I be trading battery life for other essentials?

Thanks

[dimeified]

I wonder if we could extract the fluendo codecs from Belmont

im not sure how proprietary the video driver / codecs are, but it would be illegal to do even if it were possible, and because of that it would never make it into a distro or package archive, so it wouldnt really have much support, especially for integrating it into intrepid considering it was written for hardy.

[dimeified]

Is there any advantage to installing the lpia image, since this is for low power intel architectures? Would I be trading battery life for other essentials?

Thanks

I ran hardy lpia then switched to intrepid i386. I havn't noticed any real difference in battery life. What i have noticed is that i dont have to deal with repackaging i386 debs for lpia now, so that has me sold to i386 already.

[decahedron]

im not sure how proprietary the video driver / codecs are, but it would be illegal to do even if it were possible, and because of that it would never make it into a distro or package archive, so it wouldnt really have much support, especially for integrating it into intrepid considering it was written for hardy.

All the codecs needed are already available in the repositories. So, Fluendo is not really required. However, It would be much easier for Dell to just write the drivers and provide them into the standard distribution. They may end up spending some money to develop the drivers that they would prefer to keep proprietary BUT what is the cost of maintaining a completely separate version of Ubuntu independently?