Ubuntu Linux Netbook Edition, a Beginner's Experience (pt 3)

Oh well. My batting average seemed to be pretty poor so far, but undeterred, I tried to install my web browser of choice, Opera. I selected 'Software Centre' then searched for 'Opera'. 0 matching items. Alright, 'Get Software' - 'Internet' - 'Web Browsers' - search for 'Opera'. 0 matching items.





Is Opera really that unpopular? It runs far more smoothly on my T23 than firefox does. Feeling a bit deflated, using firefox I went to Opera's website and downloaded the linux 'deb' file. The Ubuntu software centre recognised the file and took over, then stopped working. I tried to close it off after a while, and got a Windows style 'Not Responding' error. This is not the kind of stability issue I had expected from Linux.




I decided to give it another go, and double clicked the 'deb' file in Firefox's downloads:



It seems there was some sort of existential issue. I will confess I was finding life a bit meaningless at this stage. To recap:

• Trying Ubuntu's 'Netbook Edition' involved using over a gigabyte of my bandwidth allowance 
• The easy on the eye 'Netbook Edition' crashed as soon as I  logged in
• Installing flash  wouldn't work 
• Downloading Thinkpad specific trackpoint drivers was an frustrating and futile exercise
• So was installing Opera

I've by no means given up on Linux, but it will be a good few years before I try it again. I am glad, glad glad I didn't let Ubuntu anywhere near my proper hard drive.

Ubuntu Linux Netbook Edition, a Beginner's Experience (pt 2)

So I had Ubuntu freshly installed in the Thinkpad (a 1.13ghz T23 with 768mb ram), without getting the netbook edition theme to work. The standard Ubuntu looked great though, very smooth and modern, and a bar along the top of the screen had enough information to get started, with applications, documents, and settings nice and easy to find. The WIFI network was found straight away and worked without a hitch, thank god. After exploring the menus at the top, I clicked 'updates', though I had only downloaded Ubuntu the day before.





What I wasn't expecting was the 300 megabytes of updates shown in the photo above! Add that to the first 700 meg Ubuntu iso file and you get a great fat chunk of my monthly data allowance. The updates took an age to install, and to cap it all off, churned out a cryptic error message halfway through. I jump though hoops with Windows XP updates and autoloader, I was expecting something better from Ubuntu :(

Pressing on, I opened up the firefox browser using the top menu bar, and tried Youtube. Woops! I forgot, flash player isn't installed, so you can't see the videos. Okay, you just click through the prompts as you would on a Windows machine. Everything seems to be going smoothly.





Until this. To be fair, this is a step up from Windows 7. I had one in recently that refused to play youtube videos, even though the flash install process completed perfectly about a hundred times, and the solution was so obscure I can't even remember it. At least Ubuntu didn't pretend everything was hunky-dory.

I gave up on youtube, and set about getting the trackpoint scrolling to work. The trackpoint is something I've only seen on Thinkpads, it didn't really take off in a big way. It's like a tiny joystick, used in place of a touchpad. You can use it, among other things, to scroll up and down a page. It was this function I was especially keen to get working - I can live without flash video for internet banking, but not moving the cursor to the scrollbars to navigate pages, no thanks. A quick google search led me to a ThinkWiki page suggesting a program called 'Gpointing'. I typed that into the Ubuntu 'software centre', and it downloads and installs. Helpfully, the software centre also tells you where to click to open the program.



Gpointing didn't work. None of the options let me scroll up and down using the trackpoint. Back to the Thinkwiki page, I try another approach; I have to start typing out commands, download a 'deb' file, and install that. It's not ideal, but I give it a shot.

Some esoterica...




'dev' installed, running the program...




None of the options above enabled trackpoint scrolling >:-(
Ay this point, I gave up trying to make it work. How many Thinkpads were made with trackpoints? It can't be more than a handful of models, is it really such a big job to get it working on Ubuntu? Seems so.

Next post: installing my favourite internet browser, Opera.

Ubuntu Linux Netbook Edition, a Beginner's Experience (pt 1)

I've always liked the idea of running Linux. It's free. It's secure. It's stable. Most flavours look incredibly sleek. So why don't I use it? I haven't given it a chance since downloading a mammoth Mandrake Linux CD image a few kilobytes at a time, 3 or 4 years BB (Before Broadband). It was very good-looking, but quite buggy and very intimidating too. After about a week, I gave up and went back to Windows.

Fast forward to today, waiting in on a delivery. Arriving 'anytime between 7 am and 8 pm'. Wouldn't it be great to set up Linux on my indefatigable Thinkpad laptop? Fine idea, I thought, admiring screenshots of Ubuntu Linux's netbook edition as it filled up a USB stick.





A dual boot set up! Windows for most tasks, and Linux for safe and secure online banking. I knew better than to dive in straight away and risk messing up my un-backed-up files with an unfamiliar operating system, so I swapped out my hard drive for an aging 20GB guinea pig drive with healthy SMART attributes.

Things got off to a good start, with a nice installation menu asking if I wanted to go Ubunting without making any system changes, or installing it onto the donor hard drive. As this 20GB hard drive was to be a test bed, I allowed Ubuntu to blank the hard drive and install itself on it. After a few forms to fill in, everything's done and before I know it, a beautifully crafted window is asking me to log in. I do.

Then... nothing. Just the wallpaper, and a cursor.

Oh dear. I waggle the cursor about and start clicking randomly. Niente. After a while, I press the Thinkpad's power button, and this brings up shutdown options and a 'help' button. I click the 'help' button. The screen distorts, then hangs completely.





I'm surprised to find that I'm not irritated by this. Some sort of sense memory has been triggered by the sight of this intimidating setback, and the eerie "lights are on, but no-one's home" sound of the processor fan quietly whirring on its own, with no interruptions from hard drive clicks... I'm very young, scratching my head over an open, 2nd hand ATX case, and wearing a lame FCUK t shirt that I think is both very witty and daringly edgy...

But enough of that. I restart the laptop, Ubuntu loads up, and the login window appears as before. This time, I pay more attention; down by the bottom of the screen, there's an option to load vanilla Ubuntu instead of the netbook edition's pretty interface. I give that a go, and it loads up without a hitch.

Installation was a bit of a mixed bag. In the next post, I try my hand at downloading any Ubuntu updates, Thinkpad drivers, and using the internet. Unfortunately, more disappointments were in store.

(3) Cleaning out the Cover and Touchscreen, Reassembly

With the front cover off the phone, I could finally get rid of all the dust and trouser lint that somehow accumulated inside. You can see how much had gotten in, and that's just the cover. The screen, and the circuit board itself, were really filthy. I've no idea why, you'd think I was some kind of slob there was that much debris. None of my other gadgets have this problem. Notice the double sided tape surrounding the transparent area - it must have done a very poor job of sealing the cover to the the touchscreen for that many particles to pile up.





Keep the cover on a flat surface before wiping with a paper towel sprayed with window cleaner, or the transparent window could easily get pushed through the rest of the front cover.

Here's the state of the screen before cleaning - wipe with a paper towel sprayed with window cleaner. Don't spray window cleaner onto the screen and then wipe, to avoid short circuits on reassembly.





I was surprised to see the painted icons at the bottom of the touchscreen - it looks like homepage, contacts, messages, camera and PC connection. They're blanked off by the opaque part of the front cover, and aren't used. It makes me wonder what phone this touchscreen was originally designed for?





The flimsy 4 contact painted ribbon at the bottom left corner of the touchscreen is the one to pull if you're replacing a broken screen. As mine only needed cleaning, I didn't chance disturbing it and potentially damaging the ribbon. If you are changing your touchscreen, you are on your own for this step, sorry. After I cleaned the screen and circuit board, it was time to put the phone back together.

In a reversal of the disassembly, press the bottom cover clip (arrowed) first, followed by the middle and top clips:





Do the same for the other side of the phone, then pop the top screws back in their slots. Remember not to use to much force tightening them, as you're screwing metal into plastic.





Slide the SIM card(s) into position. To reinstall the memory card, place it into its keyed slot, close the metal hinge over it, and slide the metal hinge up (towards the on/off switch).





Place the battery in position (it will only fit in one way) and fit the battery cover by placing it over the battery, then pushing it down (away from the on/off switch) till it clicks into position.


The result: A dust free screen, worthy of Kolokotronis.




This guide is dedicated to all right - headed patriots everywhere.

(2) Screw, Hidden screw, Hidden version number, Plastic Catches.

The first thing to do is take out the one visible case screw, near the on/off switch in the top left corner of the phone. I used a small cross head screwdriver.





I took a macro shot of the screw, to give an idea of the screwdriver size needed. It's pretty small.





The next screw is hidden behind a sticker in the top right corner of the phone. It's the same size as the exposed one, so ignore the sticker and just unscrew it!





Presumably the sticker acts as a tamper indicator in case of returns, though I don't remember this phone coming with a warranty.





I didn't know it at the time, but these two top screws are all you need to remove to open up the case. I thought there might be a couple more hidden under the long sticker at the bottom of the phone.





... Instead, there's another sticker, showing the version number and serial number. I think mine is an earlier KA08, I've seen ones on eBay with Java capabilities.





So the screen cover can be prised off at this stage. Like a lot of modern kit, there are flimsy plastic catches holding it to the main body of the phone. The next few photos highlight the position of the plastic catches, 3 on either side of the phone. Prise at these areas to avoid breaking them or straining the thin cover unnecessarily. The cover is surprisingly pliant rather than brittle and is less trouble to remove than it looks.





The photo above shows the phone in profile, the top of the phone toward the left of the picture, and the bottom to the right. Start by prising the top left corner, where the highlighted markers are drawn, then the middle section, then the bottom. The bottom is the stiffest plastic catch. I took a couple more shots to show the catches more clearly:

* In the picture below, you can see the area to prise the top and middle catches roughly corresponds with the sim card slot area...





* The catch towards the bottom of the screen is more awkward than the others. I used a craft knife to prise it open. You can see (or squint, sorry about the blur) there is a lot of dust inside the phone.

(1) Removing the Battery Cover, Sim Card, and Memory Card

Turning the KA08 over, the battery cover incorporates the camera window, the hands-free loudspeaker grille, and at the bottom, some outrageous fibs (the memory card supplied is 2 gigabytes, and the camera resolution is parsecs away from 2 megapixels).



Slide the battery cover upwards - towards the on/off switch - by about 1 centimetre, then pull away from the phone. The battery simply pulls out, and the SIM cards slide to the right to remove. Push the steel memory slot cage downwards (away from the on/off switch) and open its hinge to release the memory card.



Notice the twin SIM slots, a handy feature. You can have two different providers, or one for work and one for personal use, without carrying two phones. In the next post, I'm going to take the case apart.

KA08 Mini iPhone Clone Screen Disassembly

The catchily named KA08 is one of a family of Chinese Apple iPhone style cellphones. I bought this one almost two years ago, after my old Motorola forgot all my contact names, leaving a long list of meaningless phone numbers. I was in the market for something different and took a chance on the this cellphone on eBay; I didn't particularly want an iPhone clone - the KA08's main appeal over its siblings is its diminutive styling, being smaller than a credit or business card, and very thin at 1.2 centimetres.

  

If you can live with the cryptically translated manual (tip: the 'spirit of the ancients' camera effect setting means sepia tone) the KA08 is a surprisingly well equipped package, being quad band, with a free 2gb memory card, simultaneous twin SIM slots, a spare battery, charger, USB cable, radio, earphones, and so on. You can even record your conversations, though I'm not sure as to the legality of that feature here in the UK.


Having tried a full size 'SciPhone' I can confirm the touch screen on the KA08 is also far more responsive than similar cellphones.  Over time this tough little phone has been dropped several times and still works as good as new. However, aside from the silver coloured bezel surround chipping, a lot of dust and dirt has gotten trapped under the screen. This is quite hard to photograph because of all the light reflections, the picture below shows the amount of dirt trapped behind the screen as well as I could photograph.



A google search for a solution shows a lot of questions asking how to open these phones up to replace a cracked or broken screen, and, as far as I could find no answers. One promising youtube video turned out to demonstrate merely opening and closing the battery cover (!). I'm all for the adoption of new media, but as an expedient to access content, never as a substitute for it. At least the replacement screens are inexpensive.

The following posts show how to disassemble the KA08 for cleaning, and should help anyone wanting to replace their cracked touchscreen.