Linux On My Samsung

Hi,

Sorry if I'm repeating something that is already covered in another thread, but if this has been discussed already I couldn't find it.

My wife bought a Samsung NF208 a week ago. The specs are the same as NF210, but it ships without an OS. I was hoping to get Ubuntu up and running on it without any hassle (done that before on a Dell Mini) but this time it wasn't as easy.

The first install (ubuntu 10.10) went bad on audio (no sound at all), wireless (loses the network connection after a short bit of inactivity and then takes 5-10 minutes to reconnect), display brightness (dimmed down) etc. Thinking that the installation was bad, I simply repaved the machine and reinstalled the same thing. After that, audio started working but wifi and display brightness are still messed up.

Using the brightness shortcut buttons (fn+up of fn+down) is detected by the OS, because a little brightness popup shows up in the upper right corner of the screen. However, it doesn't change the brightness and after doing that all keyboard input hangs. (Only option after that is to hit the power button and click on shutdown with the mouse pointer).

I installed samsung-tools as per the instructions in the pinned topic in this forum. That added a "samsung tools preferences" menu under system/preferences, but other than that nothing changed.

So... what can I do? Is this netbook a no-no with ubuntu, or are there proper drivers available somewhere? Heeelp..?

(failover plan is to go and buy Win7 for it, but I'd really prefer to have ubuntu running on it)

Yes, it works but it's a little "bleeding edge" right now, meaning that it's not totally working right.

First, you have to install; you can't run off the thumb drive.

Once that's done, add the repository and download the samsung-tools and samsung-backlight, then edit the two configuration files as shown in this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10105497

Now you have to decide:
1. Do I want wireless to work after sleep OR
2. Do I want backlight control?

Choose only one.

If you want wireless to work after sleep then you should update the kernel. The downside is that the ubuntu devs pooched up the backlight controls with the new kernel and they don't work; that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. The solution might be in another tab, I don't know.

You can also force reconnection by typing in:
sudo rmmod ath9k
sudo modprobe ath9k

That will get your internet connection back. You can press ctrl-alt-t to bring up a command window.

Note that it looks like only ubuntu will work; kubuntu controls aren't compatible with xbindkeys, which is one of the dependencies.

themagni wrote:Now you have to decide:
1. Do I want wireless to work after sleep OR
2. Do I want backlight control?

Choose only one.

I have both working on my NF210 with UNR 10.10.

After spending many hours on this issue I'm ready to give up and go and buy Win7 instead.

I was able to get the backlight to work for a short while, but without warning it stopped working. No idea what changed, I didn't install anything between when it worked and when it stopped working. Hitting the backlight keys now brings up the backlight indicator on the screen and sends it into an eternal loop (flashing repeatedly). After that, all keyboard input is dead, so the system has to be rebooted before it can be used again.

As for the wireless, status quo: if the network is idle for a minute or two the wireless goes down and it takes a long time for it to get back online (with network key dialogs popping up in between etc). If I start ping in a bash terminal right after booting, the wireless stays up but as this is my wife's notebook that is not really practical. (She said "Do I really have to do that all the time?!")

Anyways, I just wanted to follow up with this status update. I also want to extend a big thanks to all volunteers who spend their time, money, blood, sweat and tears on running this forum and on trying to get Ubuntu to work on all systems.

I will definitely try installing Ubuntu on that system again later. Right now however I just need to get it up and running before my wife strangle me... (She asked me this morning: "I have had that computer for two weeks now, why does it still don't work?", so I guess that is a hint that it is time to fall back on Windows... ).

I followed the steps above and was able to get my wireless working and resume after suspend;however, there is one interesting fact.

The wireless only works if I am plugged into the wall, not on battery.

The driver I installed was from package manager, the bcmwl-kernel-source

Any suggestions as to how to fix this, sorry I'm a linux noob, just got this netbook.

EricDP wrote:

themagni wrote:Now you have to decide:
1. Do I want wireless to work after sleep OR
2. Do I want backlight control?

Choose only one.

I have both working on my NF210 with UNR 10.10.

How did you manage that? I'd really like to know.

themagni wrote:

EricDP wrote:

themagni wrote:Now you have to decide:
1. Do I want wireless to work after sleep OR
2. Do I want backlight control?

Choose only one.

I have both working on my NF210 with UNR 10.10.

How did you manage that? I'd really like to know.

First, my model is NP-NF210-A01CA. If you have a different sub-model, then YMMV.

I installed Ubuntu Netbook 10.10. I followed the instructions in the Ubuntu forums, starting here. Basically, get the drivers from voria/ppa (I assume you already have them if you're posting here), then edit those two files and reboot. After that the function keys have worked. I've never had any problems with wireless, so I haven't done anything to "fix" it.

One last thing: sometimes the screen would flash between two brightnesses. Just go to power controls and disable auto-dim. It gets into a strange loop.

I don't recall doing anything other than that...

All that being said, my outstanding driver issue is the trackpad being detected as a mouse. Therefore no trackpad controls, and super-sensitive tap to click. There is an ubuntu bug opened and a kernel bug too, but so far nobody seems to be working on it. If anybody else has the same problem, please post your info into the bug reports to let others know that is a problem.