Linux on a Tablet

Update May 2008: See my report on Ubuntu's wiki.
Update Nov 2008: Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex works very well!

This is an HP Pavilion Tablet PC model tx1302au (tx1000 series) which I got mid October 2007.

Here are the specs:

AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 CPU

64-bit, dual core, 65nm, 1 MB cache, 1.9 GHz

AMD-V virtualisation support in the BIOS

2 GB DDR2 667 Mhz PC2-5300 RAM

160 GB 5400 RPM Hard Disk

LightScribe 8x dual layer DVD writer

12.1 inch touchscreen LCD 1280 x 800 WXGA

nVidia "onboard" GeForce Go 6150

Built-in Webcam, Mic and Altec Lansing Speakers

Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and Broadcom 4321 802.11 a/b/g wireless

Fingerprint Reader - AuthenTec AES1610


See my post on the India Broadband Forum on the topic.

Well, I tried the 5 distros on the tablet and it was a disaster. openSUSE started out looking promising but it looks like it needs rolling up of the sleeves and some serious command-line tinkering to get things working...

Notes follow for each distro in reverse order of preference. I just tried the live cd sessions except for openSUSE which is not a live cd so I went ahead and installed it.

5. PCLinuxOS 2007
Bootup detected screen ok, no touchscreen, wireless not working (tried to look for broadcom ndiswrapper but failed), sound failed, power status icon seemed ok, special "Fn" keys not working.

4. Mandriva One 2008.0
Screen detected ok, nvidia splashscreen showed up, no touchscreen, after selecint the timezone it hung.

3. Fedora 8 Test 3 (7.92)
Again screen detected ok, no touchscreen, mouse pointer not visible but functioning, sound not working, no wireless. Didn't try to install. UPDATE: Tried Fedora 8 final, the live CD works nicely with sound and laptop buttons working! Will install and see how the wireless networking and nvidia 3d works!

2. Ubuntu 7.10 beta
Boot screen resolution ok, I saw a msg during boot "BIOS BUG FOUND" lol, saw a msg that appeared that broadcom "bcm" wireless was loaded, but screen went blank and appeared hung in the middle of the bootup process. Sad, will revisit gutsy next week with final release version. update: apparently you need to add the "noapic" boot option and maybe others. Laptop buttons kind of work but sound does not.

1. openSUSE 10.3 KDE
This of course isnt a live cd, so started the installation. screen resolution ok, setup starts ok, config options all taken, cpu name/model detected properly, partitioning worked ok, saw mono-core being installed along with libgpod (ipod for linux). broadcom wireless appeared to load ok in boot msg. First boot, "HP BroadCom a/b/g" detected fine! But no WPA2 security only WEP and WPA1 was present during initial boot config. nvidia 6150 card detected ok, lcd monitor name/model/size/resolution etc detected nicely! sound was ok. bluetooth seemed ok (not tested). After logging in I now got WPA2 option for wireless! Sadly tried all options but it would not connect wireless. More research needed to get it to work I guess there is still some hope. Touchscreen config went missing, fingerprint reader config failed (didnt detect device), special "Fn" keys (brightness adjust etc) not working... bah.

Will do some web searching hopefully some HOWTOs will be available. Worst case, will wait till next round of releases 6 months from now to revisit Linux On The Tablet.

I just need to get the touchscreen and wireless connection working, then it will be sweet...

Its not that bad of a disaster since I have wireless working now! woohoo

The following links helped: suseforums and tablet

I now have touchscreen working with the following calibration numbers:

Option "MinX" "95"
Option "MinY" "3977"
Option "MaxX" "3975"
Option "MaxY" "120"
Option "SwapY" "1"

Plus, this ubuntu forum thread helps.

The fprint fingerprint reader library project has launched!