Some More Bytes

This post is intended to be a short reminder to myself about what I did to install/tweak the last ubuntu release into the Medion Akoya E1210. I doubt it helps more people than me, because there’s plenty of information/wikis about these netbooks and their best setups.

Anyway, here it  is:

The wifi: I’m using here a Dell 1935 wifi card, wich is automatically configured in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, using the propietary drivers (wl driver).

The next steps (ndiswrapper) are required in Ubuntu 8.10. Recent kernels, as the ones shipped with ubuntu 9.04, already have included the appropiate drivers for the Ralink wifi card.

The medion akoya comes with a Ralink 2860 wifi card. This card could be used under linux using the ndiswrapper and the windows driver. To do so, download from your preferred site (I used medion website) the windows drivers for the wifi card, and extract them to a directory.

• Install the package ndiswrapper with your preferred package tool. We need to insert into de kernel the ndiswrapper module. To do so from a console run:


$>sudo depmod -a
$>sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
$>echo 'ndiswrapper' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
$>sudo ndiswrapper  -m


• Now we need to blacklist the rt2860 module that actually comes shipped into the kernel. Do so running:


$>echo 'blacklist rt2860' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
$>echo 'blacklist rt2860sta' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist


• Then, to activate the windows driver through the ndiswrapper, we need to execute (in the directory where you extracted the windows drivers and the file rt2860.inf is located):


$>sudo ndiswrapper -i rt2860.inf
$>sudo ndiswrapper -l

The wifi device should be visible now, and after a reboot, the network-manager should recognize it and automatically set it up.

The webcam works fine with the uvc driver. Look at this other post, as it is explained there how to set up this driver.

TWEAK1: After an ubuntu clear installation, the power management system, forces the hard disk to spin down at random intervals, producing an annoying click. It is said, that this kind of aggresive power management may not be the best choice for a long lasting drive.If you  want to get rid of it, just edit the file /etc/hdparm.conf and add at the end of it:

command_line {
hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda
}

This will prevent the hard disk to spin down, while keeping some kind of power management. It’ll do it after the next reboot though. If you want to activate this tweak now, you can run from a console:

$>sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda

TWEAK 2: In 8.04, after  recovering from the suspended/sleeping state, the sound stops working. This can be solved by adding the next line at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:

options snd-hda-intel model=targa-2ch-dig

This(sound after sleep problem) is solved in Ubuntu 9.04.

TWEAK 3: There is a problem with the intel video drivers shipped with the 9.04 (at least in the first versions)  making very poor performance with the compiz effects.

More info about the bug itself, and how to solve it can be found here.

Basically, if you don’t want to read the whole post, what you should do is:

• Download THIS script and save it to /usr/local/bin

• Make it executable:


$>sudo chmod +x /usr/local/binfixmtrr.sh


• Make it run at boot:


$>sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/fixmtrr.sh /etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default


• And last but not least, edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add this lines under the “Device” section:


Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
Option        "AccelMethod"        "exa" #uxa
Option        "EXAOptimizeMigration"    "true"
Option        "MigrationHeuristic"    "greedy"
#Option        "Tiling"        "true"

In the original post recommends to use UXA instead EXA, but I obtained best results using the EXA old acceleration method, as well as deactivating the tiling option.

Other minor tweaks I did in this install:

• Change the font size to accomodate gnome in the small screen:

System>Preferences>Appeareance>Fonts>Details> Change value from 96 to 83

• Install firefox plugins “hide menubar” and “fission” to accomodate the browser to small screens.

And ready to go…

If you’ve reached this point, and have any other suggestions, I’d like to hear about them. Thanks.