The new release of Ubuntu is 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope. A Jackalope for those wondering is a mythical beast, a jack rabbit with the horns of an antelope.
I installed it from the Alternate CD using a USB cdrom drive (the desktop liveCD would also work fine I think). Basically this worked fine and the screen sort of worked. It correctly set the resolution to 1024×600, however it then set the scale of the panel incorrectly and stretched the 1024×600 image out to 1280×1024, thus you can only see the top left portion of the screen. This flummoxed me for quite a while during the beta phase, but with some help from the OpenChrome developers I got it sussed. The OpenChrome driver by default gets a number representing the panel size from the bios and looks this up in a little table of possible resolutions. It gets the number 7 from the bios, and this corresponds to 1280×1024. Either the Bios is wrong or the table is wrong, for what its worth I would bet on the table being right.
Anyhow, a little tweak to the xorg.conf and all is well. Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf in full:
Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “openchrome”
option “PanelSize” “1024×600″
EndSection
so we just give the driver a little hint as to the correct panel size and it is up and running. There is no 3d in the OpenChrome drivers so no Compiz, but at least it works. With that and the latest Wader mobile broadband client (the release today seems to work pretty well) then it all seems to work nicely, it now includes SMS handling, transfer statistics and a warning when you go past a transfer limit you can set.
I won’t be doing much more here, but do keep an eye on http://planet.ubuntu-uk.org and on irc (which you can get to in pidgin) feel free to drop in on the #ubuntu-uk channel http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/IRC
Hey there all was good and well with my webbook, until my charger broke and then my webbook somehow blew a fuse? Well the nice people at elenox replaced it , however it came as a suprise when someone elses username was on it but I rang and all was sorted and they took me through some commands to start from scratch. However when leaving my laptop for 5 mins while I had a shower ( I was installing the updates) my bat went critically low and shut down and since I have been unable to use the mobile broadband connection program (its says opening and then never appears), help (likewise) and the synapatic package manager and software updates please help me as I am unable to get on the internet on it – will I forever be stuck with a £25 a month contract webbook that I can only play sollitaire on atm???
You could contact Elonex, or post a question in the Ubuntu Forums, or on one of the IRC channels such as #ubuntu-uk on Freenode.net
Hi Alan
Thanks for the xorg.conf fix, Worked a treat for me other than the splash screen is huge still but workable. Right, now going to do a USB backup and apt-get me the kubuntu desktop. At least thanks to you I know how to fix it and dont need to deal with Elonex Tech (cough) Support.
Thanks again
just installed 9.10 and tried your xorg.conf, rebooted, and got a “running in low graphics mode” requester. click ok, and it wont even boot.
Is there somthing that has to be done apart from just editing
/etc/X11/xorg.conf?
Thanks.
I don’t think there were any other changes. It is 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope rather than 9.10 Karmic Koala which is the next version out in October, but I am pretty sure you meant 9.04. Did you have a monitor plugged in? Does that make a difference?
sorry, yes i meant 9.04. and, no. i don’t have a monitor plugged in.
I just tried connecting an external monitor, and same problem.
just fixed it!
I was editing the xorg file in gedit, after booting gnome.
but then i tried booting to a recovery console, and using nano, and there were a load of wierd undisplayable charictors in it. removed the said charictors, and now it works perfectly!
Hi Alan,
Have upgraded to 9.04. Tried updating xorg.conf file but am still missing the bottom of the screen on my webbook display (display on external monitor is fine except I get no mouse cursor!?).
I think I may have got a little mixed up with my xorg.conf files after all the compiz updates what with trying to move past the .19 kernal etc. Would it be possible to provide a copy of your xorg.conf file please as I have no confidence in mine!
Thanks
Hi Alan,
I’ve followed your instructions, but it hasn’t worked. The screen is still only showing the top-left corner…
/etc/X11/xorg.conf looks like
Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “openchrome”
option “PanelSize” “1024×600″
EndSection
Not entirely sure what to do now – seeing as I’m not really to sure!
Oh, and on another unrelated note, I think the wi-fi chip in mine has gone kaput – it won’t let me enable or disable from the keyboard, and wireless isn’t showing up in connection manager? Do I need to send my webbook away?
Thanks!
Ah, got it sorted via skype – both issues.
Also, quick update for you – Elonex have emailed me the returns info, so I’ll just image and nuke before I pop it over to them…
Hi,
I was going to reinstall 8.04 onto my webbook and lend it to my nephew for a while, but when I checked your instructions for an initialization setup they said to “wget http://webbookblog.com/buildscript.sh” and the file isn’t there. Probably not copied over when you changed servers. Could you make the file available again please?
Also, since you’re phasing out the blog, is there any chance of an easy way we could download the data as an archive to read on our local machines? In preparation for when it goes altogether!
Cheers,
I very much hope this blog won’t be disappearing altogether!
Well, Alan did say he’d not be very active here now…
Has anyone out there got a copy of ‘buildscript.sh’ for the original install?
AdvTHANKSance
if you are doing a reinstall I would suggest going for 9.04, it really is quite a lot better in terms of the graphics drivers.
Can we set up compiz on 9.04 then? I thought we were still limited to the basic display features with it. I’ll try it over the weekend…
no Compiz (or not that I have been able to get going) but the 2D stuff feels better.
For what it’s worth, I used a USB CD drive to test and install Linux Mint Gloria, used a slightly longer xorg.conf from the Ubuntu forums to fix the display problem, and it all runs perfectly (you can test it in live mode before you install if you are worried). And the latest version of Gnome network manager is – to my mind at any rate – better than Wader and renders it unnecessary. Plug in your dongle; up pops a box; select your operator; and away you go. And all your network connections are now available from the icon in the system tray.
hi i have a webbook that my daughter has plugged the wrong mains adapter into and now it will not come is there a chance she has only blew an internal fuse or has she ruined the webbook completely any advice will be welcomed thanks again
wow, what voltage did you feed it? the webbook takes 18v, I didn’t think there were many adapters higher than that with the same plug size. Either way it sounds like it is knackered. Get in touch with Elonex and see what they say.
ive installed the new ubuntu and it doesnt give me an option to set the display as 1024×600 for the web book so i am missing some of the screen? please help
I am new to ubuntu and have the problem described above, could anyone please tell me how to find the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and exactly what to do when i have found it?? please help, thanks
i am new to ubuntu and i have the problem above (missing screen), could someone please explain how to find the file and what exactly to do with it when i find it? please help
Press alt+F2 to bring up a popup window where you can type in a command. Put in
gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
which will ask you for your user password again (because gksudo means that you are using superuser rights) and will then allow you to edit the file. It seems wordpress mangled the text in the post above, the quotes should all be normal straight double quotes, not the open and close quotes and the character between 1024 and 600 is an x, the letter after w, not a multiplication symbol.
thanks got it sorted!
i have a zen creative sleek phone mp3 device but i cant get any media player to recongise it, i can open it as a folder but not in any mp3 player? does anyone know why
I wanted to know if i can connect a web cam to the web book. If so, how do i do it? And will any web cam be alright?
Hi! First things first: Great website.
Question: I followed the instructions on the Jauntry screen resolution xorg.conf lines, but unfortunately it doesn’t work. At best I can work on the 1270×768 option (or whatever the first default one is) but that’s it.
It pains me cuz the webbook works like a little Terminator under Linux-the signal strength is significantly better than it ws in Windws on my wireless, and it didn’t freeze once. But not seeing sections of the screen is uneccaptable. I am not a linux pro, so some retard-level explanation would be nice,
A ton of thank yous,
Peter
yes, wordpress mangled the quotes, I will see if I can turn that off. the quotes should be straight shift 2 quotes and the 1024×768 should have x, the letter after w inbetween the numbers.
just plug it in and see. Most USB webcams should work, if not google for the camera model and “ubuntu” or ask in the ubuntu forums
as some games won’t work with a 1024×600 resolution i plugged in a seperate monitor but all is does is run on both screens instead of just the external monitor so the games still wont work because it is still running on the web book screen as well, please help me so i can just use the monitor to gain the better resolution
Alan (if you’re still monitoring posts here),
Any idea of whether Ubuntu 9.10 will work on the webbook? I tried the beta and got a hopelessly corrupted display. Whether there was any connection between that and the fact the CPU went the following week and I needed a new motherboard, I don’t know.
And are any of the various netbook/intel atom remixes (UNR, eeebuntu, easypeasy) safe to use?
Just wondering
Paul
just about to do a Karmic update . . .
Just thought people might like to know I abandoned all hope of getting the web book working with network manager and option 225 orange stick under arch linux a while ago – it developed a nasty “ignoring due to lack of broadband capabilities” error and came back to ubuntu where I’ve been using interpid and then jaunty for quite some time, no problems apart from the screen issue which you give the workaround for, until yesterday.
yesterday the update manager seemed to push my webbok from 2.6.28.16-55 to 2.6.28.16-57.
And now the orange stick won’t connect and the daemon.log includes the dreaded “ttyhS2 ignoring due to lack of broadband capabilities”
Arrggh !
ah heck. So this is Jaunty, I have a jaunty box here, not a webbook but that doesn’t matter. I will update and give it a try.