Samsung NC20

[harenarius]

Hello all,

Finally some signs that ubuntu can be successfully installed on the nc20. Thanks a lot for your info, without it I really wouldn't know where to start.

I were thinking maybe it is a good idea to create a descent howto or maybe even a wiki with instructions on how to install ubuntu on the nc20 and get the various hardware/software features to work. Starting with creating a bootable usb stick and than step by step instructions from there on. This, i think, would greatly help a lot of people, myself included, to get started.


Another thing: isn't it better to start of with jaunty as to have the latest kernel and openchrome etc? I tried installing it but got stuck on a flickering screen roughly the color of the default ubuntu background. No clue how to continue form there...


Thanks again!

[thawn]

Another thing: isn't it better to start of with jaunty as to have the latest kernel and openchrome etc? I tried installing it but got stuck on a flickering screen roughly the color of the default ubuntu background. No clue how to continue form there.

There are two reasons that IMHO speak against Jaunty. The obvious one is that it is still beta and a lot of other (not kernel related) things might not work yet.
The other one is that the via graphic drivers do not work with Jaunty, yet.
The latter is of course no problem if you plan to use openchrome anyways. However openchrome does not support most of the features of the VX800 chipset (3D and video decoding acceleration) yet (see http://www.openchrome.org/trac/wiki/SupportedHardware ). Therefore I used the via drivers and Intrepid.

However, I am going to try to upgrade to Jaunty as soon as the via drivers support it.

[Bram-NL]

[...]

same here, I the only thing I am missing is the microphone, but that can be worked around using a bluetooth headset

THANKS for your very useful post! you

About the microphone, according to this page (in dutch), there should be an internal mic.
It's listed as "Interne microfoon: Ja" which is literally "Internal microphone: Yes" in English.

And indeed, under Windows, using skype, I confirmed that that little hole on the right of the camera is the microphone.

[Tobis87]

Hello,

I also have a NC20 netbook, the only problem, except the 3d hardware acceleration, with the amd64 kernel is that it doesn't currently support the padlock and the rng number generator. The e_powersaver kernel module for the cpu frequency is also not precompiled.

Until I found a fresh patch for the padlock on the kernel mailing list. You will need the at least the 2.6.29rc8 kernel to apply the padlock patch. I also modified the via-rng.c file in order to get the rng number generator to work.

The patch doesn't get applied that well, so you will have to check the rej files in the linux-2.6.29-rc8/arch/x86 . For the rng number generator you will have to copy the via-rng.c file to linux-2.6.29rc8/drivers/char/hw_random and modify the Kconfig file inside that folder, to make the rng module not depended on X86_32. For the cpufreq module, you will also have to modify Kconfig inside linux-2.6.29-rc8/arch/x86/cpu/cpufreq.

After that, you can choose the padlock-aes, padlock-sha, e_powersaver and the via-rng module when you configure the kernel.

edit:
I also attached the patch for the vmware 6.5 modules for the 2.6.29 Kernel.
You may also want to enable the new ath5k module for the atheros card.

centaur-padlock-x86_64.tar.gz

centaur-rng-x86_64.tar.gz

vmware-6.5-2.6.29_x86_64.tar.gz

[thawn]

THANKS for your very useful post! you

About the microphone, according to this page (in dutch), there should be an internal mic.
It's listed as "Interne microfoon: Ja" which is literally "Internal microphone: Yes" in English.

And indeed, under Windows, using skype, I confirmed that that little hole on the right of the camera is the microphone.

Thanks!
(for the guitar and the info )

I havent still tested battery life cause i had hard times with freq scaling I will do it the near future

I tested the battery life now:
Conditions: Intrepid generic kernel (2.6.27-11) with e_powersaver. Via graphics driver, W-lan and bluetooth enabled. Browsing the internet via w-lan (including some youtube) and listening to music. Display set to 70% brightness.

This gave me a battery life of 4h 30 min
This seems to be a lot less than the promised 6 hours.

However I am not sure under which conditions the 6h are reached. If that is without wlan and bluetooth and without load then I think we can reach this under linux as well (will test that sometime)

The youtube videos and occasional browser restarts caused 100% cpu-load (maybe 2% of the total time)

could anyone post his experiences using windows?

[r4idei]

Im quite disappointed with via drivers.... 32/24 bits doesnt work: you can see it watching some photos or even the ubuntu gdm screen (the brown one).
HWCursor doesnt work, and this makes compiz unusable :/

[StephSD3]

wooow, mighty good info here
I'll be buying one next month, but first had to know if it would run Ubuntu (Offc). Now I know 8)

[Bram-NL]

I have a hard time getting Ubuntu 8.10 to work on the NC20. Jaunty/9.04 works fine, but I can't get the Via drivers to work there so I want to try 8.10 to get 3D.

I have tried 8.10 desktop and 8.10 alternate (using both the "Create USB startup disk" from Ubuntu and the "unetbootin-linux-319" tool) but it fails to boot at all (it becomes unusable after "Saving VESA state".

How should I do it right?

[Tobis87]

I have a hard time getting Ubuntu 8.10 to work on the NC20. Jaunty/9.04 works fine, but I can't get the Via drivers to work there so I want to try 8.10 to get 3D.

I have tried 8.10 desktop and 8.10 alternate (using both the "Create USB startup disk" from Ubuntu and the "unetbootin-linux-319" tool) but it fails to boot at all (it becomes unusable after "Saving VESA state".

How should I do it right?

Follow this guide and add fb=off to the syslinux.cfg.

http://actualreality.wordpress.com/2...h-a-usb-drive/

default vmlinuz

append initrd=initrd.gz fb=off

[Bram-NL]

Sweet! I'll try, thanks!

[Edit]
Victory!

Now I will try to get 3D to work