Well … not really, since the ubuntu-mobile images are not in the official release list yet, but i’m happy to announce that we:
a) have a *beta quality ubuntu-mobile image* up today
b) all images are officially built in the ubuntu infrastructure on cdimage.ubuntu.com now, which results in:
c) daily ubuntu-mobile images !!!
The known installer problems with the first shot image are fixed, the image is fully installable, recent problems with the browser not starting were solved as well and a good bunch of improvements went in over he last week.
To mention only a few:
* onscreen keyboard support in the locked screen dialog of gnome-screensaver by default
* making the onscreen keyboard for apps that require password input usable
* support for a few more touchscreens, a proper calibration tool for evtouch based touchscreens
* and a lot more …
Lots of thanks go to all the people sending feedback to the ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com mailing list, to all the testers and to UMPCPortal for the nice review. In the end its your image, we only build it, so keep up the great feedback 🙂
If your fix wasnt in the current image it might show up in tomorrows (or the one the day after) build, so stay tuned, we try to weed out all bugs we can until final release.
There was some confusion about the naming i’d like to clearfy, we have a page with the naming history and how it evolved over the different releases up here.
Essentially the ubuntu-mobile image is aimed at UMPCs with 7-9 inch touchscreens (though the feedback showed that many many people with eeePCs and netbooks use it too) while the ubuntu-mid image is aimed at 4-7 inch MID devices with touchscreens.
The daily image for ubuntu-mobile can be found at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mobile/intrepid/
The daily image for ubuntu-mid can be found at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mid/intrepid/
If you want to discuss the work with us, feel free to drop by on IRC in the #ubuntu-mobile channel at irc.freenode.net, we appreciate any feedback, or even come and participate in the weekly IRC meeting where you can also get (or provide) info about the project status and the work the different team members did the last week. The meeting takes place every Thursday, an agenda for the coming week can be found under the Current Team Meeting link on this page.
Future views …
DD made easy:
Since many people report problems with using dd we have the usb-imagewriter project (a screenshots link is on the page) that will enter the jaunty jackalope (9.04) archive, it is a simple frontend to dd to make writing our images from an ubuntu desktop to a USB Key as easy as possible (we are discussing a windows port as well, windows programmers wanting to participate, please contact me). A package for intrepid can be found in my personal package archive here (if i get around to it next week i’ll roll a package for hardy as well).
A new calibration tool in jaunty:
I started work on a touchscreen calibration tool for jaunty (9.04), here are some mockups:
Ogra's blog 
Good news!
Can I just use update now as I have the first build or do I have to download the whole image and install it again?
just updating will be fine, you will get everything thats on the image with the new packages
update worked..
.. using it on Eee 900 with touchscreen and 3G now.
Touch screen doesn’t still work, it uses eGalax controller.
Sleep/stand by not on the shotdown list / does’t work.
I sent the hal.out…
btw. should it now work on Polsbo based devices too?.. I have Fuji U2010 here too so i will test it it works on it now… last time it halted on graphics..
Don’t you mean “Right button” emulation in the mockup?
I feel that the mockup is a bit too “bla-bla” 80’s regarding the instruction text, which is also a bit hard to read.
Anyway, better than nothing. Wished Ubuntu/Kubuntu would have some set-up for tablet pc’s; OpenSuse has something in that awful Yast thingy (boo, just go for kde native system settings).
Keep up the good work.
Great job.
I’m using it on a Netbook (an aspire one) since the first build, and it is exactly what I was looking for.
A big thanks to you.
I’ve used the calibration tool, and to be honest, it’s not particularly good. The idea of moving the stylus around the corners of the screen, is not very user friendly, and my experience it’s not very good for calibration either. The touch sensors are often not active in the corners, so I’ve found it better to let the user click a bit away from the corners, and then extrapolate the min/max values.
I have cairo-based software for this that is released under the X11 license. It’s available in the xorg mailing list. Get in contact if you want to use this instead.
Cheers,
Søren
indeed, i would love to provide a better calibration experience, the problem here is that the tool needs to hook in directly with the driver, the tool you see is what upstream ships for evtouch, the big deal is that it is actually the first time this calibration works at all, for jaunty (9.04) lets get in contact and see if we can work together on getting your tool attached to all 8 touchscreen drivers available to report the right values in raw mode, thanks for the feedback 🙂 for intrepid which releases in about two weeks this is the best we can have atm.
Yeah, I get that this is the best that can be provided for Intripid. I’ve been working upstream to ensure that the evdev X driver works with touch screens. It’s still work in progress, but it’s almost done. This means that evtouch should no longer be needed (this is good, as that driver appears to be unmaintaned). It also means that touchscreens will be auto-detected, with no need for any configuration other than calibration. Work is being done to ensure that we can do the calibration without restarting X.
Søren
BTW. you mention 8 touch screen drivers. Could you elaborate? In the kernel there’s a bunch of drivers, that all seem to use the evdev interface (I’m a bit shacky wrt the ucb1400 module as it never emits BTN_TOUCH). So, these should all be usable with the evtouch X driver or with recent git of the evdev driver. So, when you mention 8 drivers, does that include proprietary drivers or something like that?
Søren
there are xserver-xorg-input-fpit, xserver-xorg-input-palmax, xserver-xorg-input-elographics, xserver-xorg-input-elo2300, xserver-xorg-input-tslib and xserver-xorg-input-evtouch … sorry i miscounted, its only 6, i was sure last time there were 8 when i looked 🙂
By looking at the source code of these drivers I get the impression that the ones that use the serial port are essentially the same driver, with some hardware specific parts as the difference. So, I guess some of these drivers could be merged. Unfortunaly I don’t have access to the hardware, so I can’t do this unless testers volunteer. Is there a community of testers with access to the hardware?
I’m a bit uncertain about the tslib driver as that seems to use the evdev interface. If so, then this driver can be superseeded by the git version of the evdev driver. At least I know that the evtouch driver can be replaced by evdev.
The impression I have is that evtouch is unmaintained, and it’s only because the Debian people do an excellent job, that the driver still compiles. Do you know the status of the other drivers? Are they actually maintained? Also, do you know if they are needed for recent hardware? I mean, there’s no point in spending many hours on making these drivers work with calibration if nobody actually uses the hardware.
I think my calibration software should be usable by all drivers with only a small amount of work. The only thing I need is a way to get the currently used calibration parameters. I’ve avoided using tricks that require the driver to do weird things, which some calibration software seems to rely on.
I am trying to run either of the images on Qemu to see that layout and would like to see if ported to OpenMoko FreeRunner open source phone. However, when I start Qemu with either image I get the splash image but then it drops to busybox and I cannot start X.
Is there a way to run it on Qemu or VMWare? Any instructions?
Thanks,
desNotes
cmon – can we get some x86 builds soon
what do you mean by that ? the images are all x86
Hi Stemp, are you running this on an Acer One with SSD or HDD? and does this build have all the drivers? thanks.
Hi, I tried your first image release and it was great. Wifi was working straight of the bo with my EEEpc 701. I installed a fresh version of your latest image and wifi no longer works. The Atheros wirelesss lan card is recognized and is marked as “activated” but nothing shows under the network manager. Its probably something small but any help? Thanks a ton.
Running it (the nightly as of 5 Oct 2008) on a Q1P. Quite nice. The touchscreen works, but apparently, it’s not an evtouch. Think this is likely related to the same HID issue I had when I upgraded from XP to Vista on it before converting it. Was running just Intrepid, and again, touchscreen worked, but doesn’t see it as evtouch (thus no tap and hold) and seems to not see taps at all if within about 1/8″ of the edge of the screen. But all in all, pleased. Can’t wait for the 30th and what comes next…
can we hope for something for the aigomid?
a realease of ubuntu mobile 7.10 works on it but nothing more…
is it possible to use this realease to make something for this mid.
the main problem is with the touch screen and the wifi
thanks a lot for your job i’m enjoying it on a fuji u1010
with last img, i lost my wlan connection, besides, i got my ts back, wich info you ppl need to make it works by default? ( its en egalax ts ) works ob in hardy ( only need calibr ) but with this buid it dosent event move…
o forgot to tel eee pc 701 tablet pc
I had tried the daily build yesterday can the tablet calibration work like a charm on my Fujitsu U820/U2010. And I would like to know which package containing the calibration code, config setting and touch panel driver? Can you tell me ? thanks
If your Fujitsu U820/U2010 has a touchscreen that can be managed by the evtouch driver, yes.
Have a look at the /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/50-* files to create your own .fdi file (or send me the output of lshal and i can create one for you) these .fdi files as well as the calibration tool are in the xserver-xorg-input-evtouch package.
Nice read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing some research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile Thus let me rephrase that: Thank you for lunch!