2012-07-28

Ubuntu 12.04 in Nokia Booklet 3G

I finally decided to upgrade my Nokia Booklet to latest Ubuntu.

Basically 12.04 seems to work much better, but still 3D acceleration or lack of it causes some headache. There are instructions here and there about running Ubuntu with GMA500 graphics, but I think the easiest solution is to use kernel from 12.10 repos and with that one you don't need to have modifications in multiple places.

To keep up-to-date with kernel changes add two files:
1) /etc/apt/sources.list.d/quantal.list
------- 8< ------- 8< -------
# Ubuntu Quantal Quetzal Repositories
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security main universe restricted multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates main universe restricted multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal main universe restricted multiverse
------- >8 ------- >8 -------


2) /etc/apt/preferences.d/quantal-kernel
------- 8< ------- 8< -------
Package: *
Pin: release n=quantal
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: linux-generic
Pin: release n=quantal
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: linux-headers*

Pin: release n=quantal
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: linux-image*
Pin: release n=quantal
Pin-Priority: 1001
------- >8 ------- >8 -------


To upgrade to your new kernel run:
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
So far this seems to provide best graphics experience so far with booklet.

Because I like to use Gnome instead of Unity, I tried to run gnome-shell, but it didn't work out of the box so I ended up using old gnome session. In the end this is what I was using earlier too. There are people using LLVM Pipe for 3D acceleration and you should be able to run gnome-shell with it, but I didn't have enough time to make it work. To get some more up-to-date components for gnome in Ubuntu 12.04 run:
# sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
# sudo apt-get install gnome

While doing my experiments, I realized that nowadays you can hardcode wifi WPA settings into /etc/network/interfaces file and this helps a lot if you can boot to console only. Just add to /etc/network/interfaces:
------- 8< ------- 8< -------
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-ssid ""
    wpa-psk "your passphrase"
------- >8 ------- >8 -------

Then after boot when you login, run command:
# sudo ifup wlan0

Remember to comment out these lines when you get the stuff working, so that network manger won't ignore your wireless interface.

Finally starting my blog

I reserved this blog name for some time ago, but for some reason I never got really started writing anything. Today I finally decided to do something about this.

Year ago I started a new page in my life when I resigned from Nomovok being the first employee and spending almost 10 years working for the company. As a surprise to many, I moved to London working for Nokia. Since I'm a greedy bastard (as my old lectured at TUT named me), I also have my own company in Finland that I use for random projects outside my day job and for projects that are out of the scope for my day job, thought the company is mostly just idling.
 
Two months ago I moved to new apartment in London and I finally got extra room to have actual study/guestroom which caused some challenges for my networking and distribution of different devices and computers. I also started to build some experience with iOS development and soon I'm also going get some experience with Android. Due the stuff I have been doing and experiencing, I realized I have learned bits and pieces others might find helpful and this was the actual reason for me finally starting to write this blog and share my experiences.

This blog will be about my opinions and experiences with technology and if you find this interesting, stay tuned.