Long time, no post...

I've found a neat little script, called GetWacom.

It automates the download, building and installing of the latest linuxwacom driver.

Unfortunately, the latest version didn't solve the rotate/suspend bug -- I think the fix is in the experimental version, which this doesn't support.

Also, if you use the "install all' option, you lose the ability to control the stylus -- it will have the wrong names for the devices, etc.

I had to restore the original Ubuntu driver. But I also had to edit the 10-linuxwacom.fdi file, so I think it may be possible to find the proper fix, but I'm going to wait until the experimental version migrates to stable before I try to do it.

If anyone knows what to do, please educate me!

m a r

First attempt at compiling the latest wacom driver...

... didn't go so well.

It compiled all right, I think. But the guide I was using said to simply copy the .ko file to the modules folder.

And almost immediately after that there was a new kernel available (which means recompiling it...)

Anyhow, stuck with the kernel I had compiled for, and NO difference in rotate/suspend behavior. I may have a buggy script, or it may not have worked.

I'll take another swing at it this weekend. For now, I'm playing with dockapps.

m a r

Trying to get organized!

Well, now that I know that there is likely a fix for the wacom suspend bug (compiling the latest driver somehow) I thought I should probably put together a skeleton of a To Do/Accomplished list. I started by taking the hardware list from the TC1100 LQWiki (see the sidebar.)

Graphics card and accelerated graphics

• Card works out of the box on Ubuntu 9.10
• Accelerated graphics and a nice control utility come with installing the nvidia-glx-96 package
• Had to change xorg.conf
  
• DONE

Pen: stylus and eraser

• working with the repository driver
• required a change to a HAL .fdi file
  
• wacomcpl can modify settings and calibrate the screen (wacom-tools package)
  
• DONE (but may be influenced by digitizer)

Digitizer

• working with the repository driver
• loses calibration if rotated then suspended (known bug)
• calibration script functions after xhost local:root entry in .bashrc
• TODO: compile new driver and install -- this should fix the rotate/suspend problem
• TODO: running .xinitrc at every boot seems dangerous

Sound

• works out of the box (ALSA drivers)
• TODO: Headphone Jack (sensing), Microphone, Line Out -- test

Ports

• USB: working out of the box
• Ethernet: working out of the box
• TODO: VGA, Modem, IR -- test
  
• TODO: Test PCMCIA -- buy a card, either GPS or a 32-bit card reader.
• TODO: rip firmware and compile driver for SD card-reader.
  

ACPI

• Added tc1100-wmi to /etc/modules
  
• Power Button: working out of the box.
• Battery Status: working out of the box.
  
• Temperature: working out of the box.
  
• Suspend to RAM: working out of the box.
• TODO: Hibernate doesn't, even though there is a swap partition
  
• TODO: Brightness: need control script for the jog-dial
• TODO: Fan control works, but trip points are hard-coded. Can this be hacked? There is a fancontrol daemon running.
  

Wireless

• Wireless Card: works out of the box
• Bluetooth Card: works out of the box
• TODO: Bluetooth Toggle: works from system tray, needs a script/hotkey
  
• TODO: Wireless Toggle: needs script, hotkey and indicator

Buttons

• Work out of the box, require keygrabber (as in fluxbox) to translate into actions
  
• TODO: Video switch: write/find a script/program to switch modes or add screens -- nvidia-settings?
  
• TODO: CTRL/ALT/DELETE button: needs either an action or a function -- script to kill X?
  
• TODO: Jog button:
• TODO: Q-Button: Assign Q or Tabatha? Or is there a better use?
  
• TODO: Penabled buttons: Xournal and Cellwriter are the standards -- but Cellwriter has a tray icon that's almost always accessible. Something else? Must be ink/pen app.
  

Other

• TODO: Keyboard orientation: Is there a way to recognize when the keyboard is attached? Might be useful for fan control, too (if that's possible)
  
• TODO: fix cellwriter/gksu grab so that CW can input passwords -- gconf tool
  
• TODO: xcompmgr or another compositing tool for pretty, pretty baubles!
  
• TODO: hard drive indicator -- There is no LED for the hard drive, but maybe we can use the charging LED. Just invert whatever it's displaying (blink off while charging, blink on when full) Or perhaps the rotate switch LED.
• TODO: build a custom slimline case for travel -- waiting on brackets/covers from an eBay auction. Will use a nifty leather binder I found at Office Max.

More updates and additions later,

m a r

Working a little screen magic

Another long day of scripting and learning things about scripting.

Now that we can log in without too much ugliness, let's set things up a little more personally. There are a combination of bits of software that I like that require a few PPAs (Personal Package Archives) to be set up as repositories.

I've already installed CellWriter, but we also need EasyStroke, WacomRotate (a little daemon that auto-rotates the pen input when any app rotates the screen orientation) and the patched versions of Xournal and CellWriter -- and no matter how nicely set up it is, I don't care for Network Manager. I want WICD.

• EasyStroke
• Useful packages for (wacom) Tablet PCs
• WICD

All three of those links have instructions for how to add the repositories. After the repositories were set up, I updated the list, then upgraded CellWriter, installed WacomRotate, Xournal, WICD and (I'll explain later) aumix-gtk. Installing WICD will cause Network Manager to be uninstalled -- yay!

I'm going to keep very short something that actually took a while -- I also installed build-essential, intltool, checkinstall and libgtk2.0-dev (and all their dependencies) so I could build gvolwheel which you can find here. GvolWheel is a replacement for volwheel which doesn't react well to the pen -- its window closes too quickly for use. GvolWheel is virtually identical, but more stable and has some nice, simple preferences. It pairs really well with aumix-gtk, above, as it's mixer.

Briefly, to build:

1. Extract the archive.
2. Open a terminal in the folder.
3. Type ./configure --prefix=/usr and let it run its course. If anything borks, look to see what it was looking for, then use Synaptic to install it.
4. Once it configures properly, type make
5. After it makes, close any Synaptic windows and type sudo checkinstall
6. Answer the questions: yes to make the docs, and describe GvolWheel
7. Once it installs the application, copy the newly-created DEB file (in the folder you unarchived) somewhere you won't lose it. You can then delete the folder and the archive. You will probably need to delete them as root.
   
8. Done

Checkinstall makes the DEB file, one that registers with Synaptic, apt-get, etc. Very convenient. It can also be used with python installers, very sweet.

I also uninstalled evince and installed epdfview. Virtually identical, the latter doesn't require Gnome libraries. I also have wacom-tools installed, may have done it at the same time -- and it's necessary, to run wacomcpl for configuring the pen.

You're going to need to restart, so that WICD settles in (if you're doing this too, that is -- otherwise, well, no, you won't.) You'll likely see Network Manager complain. But before you do restart, let's fix up Fluxbox's startup file so things will be congruent, and we'll be starting some good stuff.

Open ~/.fluxbox/startup with Mousepad and change the following:

• Find the words "kill apps to prevent 2 instances running in case of FB crash" -- on the next line change nm-applet to wicd-client and change volwheel to gvolwheel.

There is a big heading starting "ADD APPLICATIONS YOU WISH TO LAUNCH..." -- below that change the following:

• Find nm-applet & and change it to wicd-client &
• Find and change volwheel & to gvolwheel &
• Add wacomrotate &
• Add sh ~/.xinitrc & (I'll explain in a minute.)
• Add cellwriter --hide-window & (for pen input, minimized to tray)
• Add easystroke & (it will start in tray)
  

Now you can reboot.

While it's rebooting, here's what's up with sh ~/.xinitrc: that file is where wacomcpl writes the configuration data. It needs to be re-run on every log in, or you have to reset it. You may not have one until you run the configurator, so do so. While you're in wacomcpl, you can calibrate the digitizer, and if you have an eraser pen like me, (did I mention that finally arrived?) you can change your button settings to the following:

• Stylus | Button 1: Left, Button 2: Middle, Button 3: Right
• Eraser | Button 1: Right

This makes your pen-tip left-click, your button+pen-tip middle-click and your eraser-tip right-click. Pretty convenient in Fluxbox -- I find the button a bit awkward for right-click -- and it will make gesturing with easystroke work with the button when we set it up later.

We'll save easystroke and Xournal for later. CellWriter is pretty straightforward -- just train each symbol 5 times, middle-click will wipe out your training on a particular letter, or you can right-click for a popup menu. I did a basic training, but I think I'm going to go back and convert it to graffitti strokes, just for simplicity.

Most of my time today was spent with scripting. There are instructions here for using xbindkeys to convert the silk-screened pen-activated buttons (Rotate, Journal and Text Input) into something that Xorg will understand. Fortunately we don't have to do that as Fluxbox has its own keybinder built in.

Edit ~/.fluxbox/keys and add the following to the bottom:

# Mouse actions for the pen-activated buttons
#
# Rotate Button (right)
Mouse30 :ExecCommand /usr/bin/flip
#
# Tablet Input Panel (middle)
#Mouse31 :ExecCommand
#
# Journal (left)
#Mouse32 :ExecCommand

# Key configs for side buttons
#
# Q Button
#XF86Launch1 :ExecCommand
#
# External Monitor Button
#XF86Launch2 :ExecCommand

These are all the codes for the various buttons. The only one we're going to work with in this post is Mouse30, the pen-activated Rotate button on the front. All the rest are commented out by placing a # in front, keeping them from being used. Later I'll add more programs to them -- I've found two different Q-Menu programs, and we've already installed both CellWriter and Xournal, so they'll be easy to set up. I expect the complicated one to be the External Monitor Button -- but you never know, it might not be too bad.

The Rotate button should do exactly what it's name describes. There are a lot of scripts out there for this; most either fail to deal with rotating the pen input so that it matches the screen orientation (it's very hard to match your pen to the screen when they are misaligned by 90 degrees) or they do deal with it by sending xsetwacom commands.

The wacomrotate package we installed from Tom Jaeger's PPA, that we set Fluxbox to start for us will watch for any change in rotation and match the pen input to that change -- whether it's the script attached to that button, the nVidia Setting program, a command-line instruction or that horrible, horrible Gnome applet that you insist on using. Pretty nifty.

I've adapted some scripts, (I think mostly from here) and come up with two versions: flip, and rotate. Copy them both to your /usr/bin directory and make them executable. In the ~/.fluxbox/keys file above, pick either /usr/bin/flip or /usr/bin/rotate as your command. flip swaps back and forth between rotating left 90 degrees and normal rotation. rotate will migrate through all four possible rotations.

I may write a simple button-pushing popup script later. xmessage makes that pretty simple, and it's a default installed package. I may even make a script to choose which of the three you want to use, too, if I can get my sed skills up to snuff. Fluxbox is inspiring that way.

Here are the scripts. As always, check for Blogspot-induced errors. First, flip:

#!/bin/sh

ORIENTATION=`xrandr | grep "default connected"`

case $ORIENTATION in
"default connected 768x1024+0+0 left"*)
xrandr -o normal
;;
"default connected 1024x768+0+0 inverted"*)
xrandr -o normal
;;
"default connected 768x1024+0+0 right"*)
xrandr -o normal
;;
*)
xrandr -o left
;;
esac

And rotate:

#!/bin/sh

ORIENTATION=`xrandr | grep "default connected"`

case $ORIENTATION in
"default connected 768x1024+0+0 left"*)
xrandr -o inverted
;;
"default connected 1024x768+0+0 inverted"*)
xrandr -o right
;;
"default connected 768x1024+0+0 right"*)
xrandr -o normal
;;
*)
xrandr -o left
;;
esac

On the desktop, right-click and select System|Fluxbox|Reload Config and your pen should now be able to flip or rotate the orientation. Pretty easy, huh?

The last thing we have to take care of is the fact that when we suspend while rotated, all our wacomcpl settings will disappear. The script from here wasn't working at first, nor the adaptation I made, nor the script it originally was adapted from. But it will work, if you add the secret sauce.

As root create /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_calibrate.sh, make it executable and add the following to it:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# file locations
FILE=/tmp/suspend_wacom_calibration_data
XSETWACOM=/usr/bin/xsetwacom

# standard display
DISPLAY=:0.0

# get the list of pen devices (stylus, eraser, etc.)
DEVS=`su $USER -c "xsetwacom --display $DISPLAY list dev |\ sed -e 's/ *$//g' -e 's/\(.*\) .*/\1/g' -e 's/ *$//g'"`

# Get the current calibration data
# and write the restore command for it
# to the temp file
function store_value()
{
value=`$XSETWACOM --display :0.0 get $1 $2`
echo "$XSETWACOM --display :0.0 set $1 $2 $value" >> $FILE
}

# Store current calibration of all devices
function store_devices_calibration()
{
>$FILE
for DEV in $DEVS; do
store_value $DEV "topx"
store_value $DEV "topy"
store_value $DEV "bottomx"
store_value $DEV "bottomy"
done
}

# Restore calibration of all devices
function restore_devices_calibration()
{
if [[ -e $FILE ]]
then
( sleep 1; $FILE )&
fi
}

MODE=$1

case "$MODE" in
hibernate|suspend)
store_devices_calibration
;;
thaw|resume)
restore_devices_calibration
;;
*) exit $NA
;;
esac

That script is a mix of the first and second link, with a minor tweak or two from me. One of the problems is that root cannot access the display that xsetwacom is working on. Here's how to fix that:

• Open ~/.bashrc and add: xhost local:root
• Save it, log out and log back in
• Now root has access to the display when you're logged in

The other problem is that for some reason the numbers for topx and topy are being set wrongly. One is off by 52 pixels and the other is off by 8. That may or may not be consistent.

So I'm going to come up with a method of configuring in all four orientations, then saving back the proper one. This will probably involve wrapping wacomcpl in a script, then brute-copying the right settings. Next post, I think. It's tired, and I'm late.

m a r

PS: it turns out that this is a known bug with the wacom driver.

Fresh, Minty Taste!

Linux Mint Fluxbox CE seems to just rock. I haven't actually done much practical work with it, but it behaves nicely and has an aesthetic and a beautiful organization to it. There aren't too many services started, and what are seem to be right out in the open. More later as I play with it, but I've always wanted to use Fluxbox, and here is a modern distribution that just works.

So, for the "reboot" of this howto blog, here are the steps I've taken, and you can too!

1. Download the Fluxbox CE iso. Use the torrent, it's faster and cheaper.
2. Use UnetBootin to make a bootable Live USB thumbdrive. It's available in any recent Ubuntu distribution.
3. Boot the thumbdrive and play with it for a while - stuff just works, including bluetooth, sound, suspend/hibernate, touchscreen (basic) and wireless.
4. Commit! and install the OS. Use three partitions, as I described in an earlier post.
5. Reboot to the installed OS. Update the OS with Synaptic.
6. Use Jockey (called Hardware Drivers in the menu) to install the video driver. Or use Synaptic to install the nvidia-glx-96 driver. You can uninstall Jockey after this, as your hardware is unlikely to change. (jockey-gtk, jockey-common and fglrx-modaliases)
   
7. Use this page to update your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-linuxwacom.fdi files, and to add tc1100-wmi to your /etc/modules file. There's more on that page, and I'll be using some of it.
   
8. Reboot. Pen should work now (button will be right-click instead of middle-click) and rotation will work -- use the nVidia X Server Settings utility in the System|System Tools menu to test it.

And that basically will catch you up to where I was yesterday morning. This still leaves fun tweaks, like screen-orientation and screen-pen-buttons and the like. I'll get to all that, maybe later today.

What I spent most of yesterday on, though, was getting a login screen with a virtual keyboard, so you don't have to login with the keyboard attached to the TC1100.

It's pretty easy to do with GDM, the standard Gnome Desktop Manager that comes with standard Ubuntu. And I could just install GDM and maybe the Accessibility menu would update with the proper utility to enable it at boot. And maybe not. And it would also drag in a lot of Gnome dependencies, which we all hate with a vigorous and manly passion, right?

Linux Mint comes with SLiM, the Slim Login Manager. Which is great, and I use it on my other machines -- it's themeable, which has been done beautifully on LMFCE. But I spent hours trying to get a virtual keyboard to launch, and just couldn't do it. You can laugh at my struggles, and desperate pleas for help here. I am not sure what stopped the windows from opening, but it has to do with getting access to the local display.

I finally settled on learning how to get XDM to do it, and then on how to get a basic, not ugly, login screen that fit the Mint theme. The guys on the Mint forum were supportive.

Now that I've managed to get that very modern virtual keyboard with this most ancient of DMs, and spent hours doing so -- I've learned that WDM is a somewhat updated, slightly less ugly and a little more capable login manager based on XDM. Also from the Paleolithic Age of Linux, it nonetheless has abilities like choosing sessions and users that XDM doesn't. It should work pretty well with what I've done, and adapt easily. Future Post™. XDM will do for now; Mint has only a Fluxbox session at default install, and most TC1100s have only one user.

Here's how to make XDM work with CellWriter:

1. Install XDM, ImageMagick and Cellwriter from the repository. When XDM installs, you need to look at the terminal output (the little drop-down arrow in the Synaptic dialog) and hit OK and select XDM. Use your keyboard, not the mouse. Arrows, tab and enter key. (Easier to see/recognize if you do sudo apt-get install xdm imagemagick cellwriter from the command line.)
   
2. Find or make a PNG background image at 1024x768 pixels (for this machine's resolution). Name it background.png. Find or make an XPM logo no bigger than 128x128 (for this theme's layout). Name it logo.xpm. You might want these to be in the green color scheme to match Mint, and the login screen settings in the files below.
3. As root, copy/paste the following content to their appropriate files (check the content and layout when copying -- there's no CODE tag available in Blogspot, and it might mess it up -- particularly line-breaks.):
   
• /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources:

  xlogin*login.translations: #override \
  CtrlR: abort-display()\n\
  F1: set-session-argument(failsafe) finish-field()\n\
  Delete: delete-character()\n\
  Left: move-backward-character()\n\
  Right: move-forward-character()\n\
  Home: move-to-begining()\n\
  End: move-to-end()\n\
  CtrlKP_Enter: set-session-argument(failsafe) finish-field()\n\
  KP_Enter: set-session-argument() finish-field()\n\
  CtrlReturn: set-session-argument(failsafe) finish-field()\n\
  Return: set-session-argument() finish-field()\n\
  BackSpace: delete-previous-character()
  
  ! Can root user log in?
  xlogin.Login.allowRootLogin: false
  
  ! Allow Null Password?
  xlogin.Login.allowNullPasswd: false
  
  !Xcursor themes are in /etc/X11/cursors on a standard Ubuntu. Not Mint.
  !Xcursor.theme: whiteglass
  
  !use xfontsel to help pick X fonts
  
  ! LOGIN BOX
  xlogin*geometry: 550x170+570+685
  xlogin*borderWidth: 0
  xlogin*background: DarkGreen
  
  ! BEZEL HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS
  xlogin*hiColor: Gray75
  xlogin*shdColor: Black
  xlogin*Login*sepWidth: 0
  xlogin*frameWidth: 1
  xlogin*innerFramesWidth: 1
  
  !USER TYPED TEXT
  xlogin*foreground: White
  !xlogin*font: -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
  xlogin*face: Courier-11
  
  ! LOGO
  xlogin.Login.logoFileName: /etc/X11/xdm/theme/mint/logo.xpm
  xlogin*logoPadding: 25
  
  ! GREETING
  ! variable CLIENTHOST gives hostname
  xlogin*greeting: =|=|=|=|=|=|= Fluxbox CE on CLIENTHOST
  xlogin*greetFace: Serif-8:italic
  !xlogin*greetFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
  xlogin*greetColor: grey60
  
  ! PROMPTS
  xlogin*namePrompt:Username
  xlogin*passwdPrompt:Password
  xlogin*promptFace: Sans-11:bold
  !xlogin*promptFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
  xlogin*promptColor: Black
  
  ! FAIL MESSAGE
  xlogin*fail: Login Incorrect
  xlogin*failFace: Sans-11:bold
  !xlogin*failFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
  xlogin*failColor: Yellow Green
  xlogin*Login*failTimeout: 0

  
  
• /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup:

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  #
  # This script is run as root before showing login widget.
  
  #xsetroot -solid green
  
  display -window root /etc/X11/xdm/theme/mint/background.png &
  
  /usr/bin/cellwriter --keyboard-only --show-window --dock-window=1 &
  
  exit 0

• /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup:

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  # This script is run as root after the user logs in. If this script exits with
  # a return code other than 0, the user's session will not be started.
  
  # Kills the virtual keyboard before the user's session starts
  # as it is running as root, not the user
  pkill -u root cellwriter
  
  # Reset the keyboard map after killing the virtual keyboard
  # as killing it causes the physical keyboard to not work
  /usr/bin/setxkbmap
  
  PATH="$PATH:/usr/bin/X11"
  
  if [ -e /etc/nologin ]; then
  # always display the nologin message, if possible
  if [ -s /etc/nologin ] && which xmessage > /dev/null 2>&1; then
  xmessage -file /etc/nologin -geometry 640x480
  fi
  if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ] && \
  ! grep -qs '^ignore-nologin' /etc/X11/xdm/xdm.options; then
  exit 1
  fi
  fi
  
  # Insert a utmp entry for the session.
  if grep -qs '^use-sessreg' /etc/X11/xdm/xdm.options \
  && which sessreg >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  exec sessreg -a -l "$DISPLAY" -u /var/run/utmp \
  -x /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers "$USER"
  # NOTREACHED
  fi
  
  exit 0
  

4. Make a directory named /etc/X11/xdm/theme/mint and put your two image files from #2 there.
5. Reboot. Should work.

Also, we need to update our grub, to set the display depth to 1024x768. Well, we don't need to, but I did -- and while I was at it, I made the grub boot screen a little more beautiful.

The distro has a custom grub layout, but it's not enabled, and it's not at the optimal size. So let's fix it!

Make another PNG background image at 1024x768 pixels (for this machine's resolution). Save it as /usr/share/backgrounds/GrubBackground.png. You'll be seeing this at every boot, so you might want to consider the theme you're using, or what you'd like to see all the time. It's a little harder to change this than your desktop background, but not too difficult (and we could script it pretty easily.)

As root, edit /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme and change the following:

• Line 16: for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/images/desktop-base}/linuxmint.{png,tga} ; do should become for i in {/boot/grub,/usr/share/backgrounds}/GrubBackground.{png,jpg} ; do
• Line 39: set color_normal=white/black should become set color_normal=green/black

That will tell grub whenever it updates itself -- like when you upgrade the kernel -- to look for a file named either GrubBackground.png or GrubBackround.jpg in the system backgrounds folder.

Now, let's change the startup defaults for grub, since we're working on it. For speed, grub just boots the first kernel/OS in its list. Which is fine, until you have a problem. You can access the grub menu by holding down the shift key, but I always forget that. So let's put a small delay and show the menu -- and see that pretty picture!

As root, edit /etc/default/grub and change lines 5 through 10 as follows:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false
GRUB_TIMEOUT="5"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Also, uncomment and change line 18 to:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024X768

which should be pretty obvious. The larger change above basically unhides the menu, and puts the first kernel/OS on a 5 second delay. Change GRUB_TIMEOUT to suit yourself.

Now, open a terminal and type:

sudo update-grub

and give it your password. It'll do some nice magic, and then when you reboot, PRESTO! a sweet picture and a slightly more attractive menu. When Grub2 is finalized, there will be a GUI, and many, many more options for themeing the boot menu. This will have to do for now.

Whenever you want to change the background, change /usr/share/backgrounds/GrubBackground.png and do sudo update-grub.

BTW, if you want to remove the memtest entry from the boot menu, as root go to /etc/grub.d and remove the executable bit from 20_memtest86+ by right-clicking the file, selecting Properties | Permissions | Program and unticking the checkbox. Then sudo update-grub again.

More later,

m a r

Transitioning

Since I had decided to wipe and restart, I downloaded Linux Mint Fluxbox Community Edition.

It's beautiful, and pretty fast. Very, very lightweight. A small amount of X and HAL config later, and it's basically working.

More later.

m a r

What a short, strange road it's been...

Okay. I've mentioned that my ignorance is limitless. I try to use a lot of Google, and "in the light of my intelligence, guided by my experience" I takes my shots.

This minimal install thing isn't working out too well. If it weren't for the fact that this is a tablet, and requires a bunch of extra configuration, it might be just fine.

I keep running up against things that just should work, like wacomcpl. Or suspend/hibernate.

Ubuntu seems to be headed down the Windows path, the Gnome path, where it becomes more and more difficult to custom configure things -- Trust Us, We Know What You Want Better Than You Do -- Hey, Don't Touch That! Stuff gets so broken down and dispersed that you have to be an expert to make what are fairly superficial changes to the system.

Suspend/hibernate is probably some sort of quirky kernel/scripting interaction that I've decided I don't want to spend a week working on.

Also, I managed to break my touchscreen driver while trying to fix wacomcpl. The switch from X to hal to udev over the last few Ubuntu releases makes figuring out how to configure everything pretty difficult.

Blerm. And yergh.

So, I'm going to do what I usually do: install Xubuntu, and trim it down, replacing as much Gnome evil as I can. I've learned some cool stuff, though, over the last week and a half. But I may go back to Jaunty, even, if I can't make it all work out in Karmic. There are some good resources for both of these distributions, but not so much when it comes from an Ubuntu Minimal perspective.

I'll still have loads to do, making sure everything works. And I'll share it all with you, who don't read this.

m a r