Friday, March 4, 2011

I'm BACK!

Sorry I was gone for so long. My normal job had me fly out to Thailand for 30 days. I've spent the last 4 days catching back up on office paperwork, the work networks and computers and yet more paperwork.

I've not had any real breakthroughs on the laptop in the meantime. I've been impressed with the general setup I've got going. So tonight and tomorrow morning I'll start working on the external HDMI connection as per the request in the comments on my last post.

23 comments:

  1. Mark did you really get a full functional multitouch clickpad on OpenSuSE 11.3, orit just works as a simple touchpad? on fedora I can not use touch pad, with two fingers, multi finger gestures aren't wotking at all, puting two fingers on touchpad area make a disaster on screen!

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  2. :D opensuse is caused by a confusion on commenting. I meant ubuntu :D

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  3. I surely have gotten the basic multi-touch working correctly. I give step by step instructions in one of the earlier posts. If your trackpad goes nuts with more than one press at a time then it is currently not being recognized as a multitouch surface.

    At this point I'm able to double press for right click, drag two fingers to scroll (vertical and horizontal), tap to left click. I'd like the pinch zoom and other cool stuff but the driver simply isn't to that level yet. Having those basic features brings the trackpad back to a usable level. The only real annoyance is that it is a very large trackpad and also very sensitive, so binding a key to turn off the trackpad while typing is highly recommended.

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  4. Hi Marc you are using the ubuntu 10.10 32bit version right? My multitouch worked fine with 32 bit but with the 64bit It won't work anymore. I have to choose either right click or multitouch. If i choose to be able to right click it goes crazy when i use two fingers. And if i install the multitouch driver like you show in your post I can't right click correctly. I followed every step of you post i believe.

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  5. I am using the 32 bit. I had intended to work on the 64 bit but simply haven't had time.

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  6. I can say that I just tested Kubuntu 11.04 alpha3 and the click/touchpad worked almost flawless (meaning clicks, drag etc works and can be configured from SystemSettings). I will for now be "happy" with it and stop tinkering until Natty is released. Then start all over with vga-switcheroo bla bla bla...

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  7. Hi Marc and thanks for sharing that huge work you're doing ;-) For my part I am nothing of a developer or techy guy but just a simple user of a computer. Indeed I am not totally unaware of how it works and can occasionaly twick around. Not having much time myself I wonder if waiting for Ubuntu 11.04 to be released should solve all my problems. Will it be ready to correctly configure all the settings?

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  8. Gragga: I am not sure it will solve ALL problems but it does remove the click/touchpad issue, at least in Kubuntu. As my dm4 (almost same as Envy) works "reasonably" now that I can switch off ATI etc I will just leave it at that for now. If it was not my main machine I would install Natty Alpha 3 actually

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  9. 11.03 has been shown to fix the touchpad issue as its using the new mouse driver from the newer kernel. However I don't expect that the switchable graphics will be fixed at all. The how-to from my earlier post will probably still be required to get the best battery life out of the laptop.

    We are better off than the guys with the NVidia optimus, thats causing even more headaches. I'm starting to think that the switchable graphics will be yet another microsoft specific novelty that will never work right with any other OS, nor will it last long enough to matter.

    I've not gotten the HDMI out to work as of yet. My normal work has been pretty crazy with the Japan disaster and having more flights than normal scheduled. The HDMI out is not too far from working, its just got some issues with the scan working correctly. It detects the external display, and can even turn it on. However the external display is full of nothing but visual artifacts and scan lines.

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  10. Happy to hear u still working on it when time allows Marc. I did install 11.04 alpha 3 and it was - disaster... wireless broke for some reason in a way that if you touch the on/off button the computer froze. Completely, as in reboot did not help either.
    So am back on 10.10 (thankyou Remastersys) and look forward to further suggestions

    If you are on KDE and want to use the scripts I found I had to install kshutdown and use that to log out, reboot, hibernate etc. Have to turn both cards on or nothing works smooth when I do these. "Suspend" does not work still, hibernate does

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  11. If anybody is brave enough to get the 2.6.38 kernel that was recently released - it fixed the issues I was having with external HDMI display. You have to turn the overscan off with xrandr but otherwise, it's flawless. :)

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  12. @mattr: where did you get it and did you compile yourself etc?

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  13. @mattr I compiled the 2.6.38 kernel and am running that
    -following with minor changes -> http://ubuntuguide.net/install-latest-kernel-2-6-37-2-6-38-in-ubuntu-10-04-from-ppa

    then turned on the discrete card with vgaswitcharoo.
    "echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch"

    I am currently getting static on my hdmi port but I also was not able to follow the turn off overscan with xrandr instruction. I couldnt find any mention of overscan or even scan in the man page.
    -man xrandr | grep scan

    could you please explain in a little more detail what you did, preferably giving the commands you used.

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  14. Hello and thanks for all that hard work some of you put in making that Envy type computers work with Unbuntu. As I am not at all a techy and since I don't want to mess up too much with the system (done it too often and too often broke the systems ;-) I was wondering if anyone of you would know 1- if the next unbuntu release will help install on envy ? 2- if any other "easy to use" distro is currently envy friendly ? I can't stand uing windows every day on that machine !

    Thanks folk !

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  15. Hi Marc, I just bought a Notebook exactly the same as yours! I just install Ubuntu and start to get angry with the same issues that you pass it over.

    My main point is work HDMI, because I use my notebooks on my 22' inches monitor.


    Thanks for your Blog and I'll be looking always!

    Cheers
    Rafael C

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  16. @merci there's no other ditro that is easier on the envy. The next release helps with the screenbrightness and the touchpad but the switchable graphics don't work so far without work

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  17. Guys, my HDMI is not working but the mini-display-port works??? I don't have the adapter to test it.

    Regards

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  18. I have tested with Mint(linuxmint.com) distribution and same errors as Ubuntu (10.10 64b). Probably due to be based on Ubuntu releases.

    #fail

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  19. So any changes? Did u tried to install the 11.3 catalyst? I tried, it has the command "aticonfig --px-dgpu" for use powerxpress set to discret card, but for me it link up the hd4250 (my integrated card)...Ill try to upgrade to the 2.6.38 kernel.

    igpu hd4650 - dgpu hd5650
    For now(Ubuntu 10.10 x86)

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  20. Announcing a linux distro optimized for the Envy 14.

    http://www.lenvyx.com/

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  21. Sorry, wasn't seeing the other posts. I run Archlinux, and so I compiled 2.6.38 vanilla from git.

    Doing an 'echo DDIS > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch' was what got things working

    Setting underscan is an output property in xrandr:
    'xrandr -output HDMI-0 --set underscan off' is what I think I ran, as I don't have the underscan problem at this point anymore either.

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  22. Can anyone put the HDMI port working?

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  23. My HDMI port is working on the Envy 17 3D
    Kubuntu 11.04

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