HP Mi Linux
HP Mi Linux
In June 2009 I ordered an HP Mini 110 netbook, which arrived July 9th. From the first day I've liked it a lot on a hardware level. This page is about some of the fun stuff I ended up messing with to get it working the way I wanted.
HP's Ubuntu-based Mi Linux package, offered on HP Mini netbooks for a time as their only alternative to WinXP, seemed intended for non-technical users wanting a very simple Internet device, and was quite restrictive. The training wheels were definitely on. You could only install software from a very limited selection they provided, which in fairness did include Firefox (called "Web Browser") Thunderbird, GNOME's "gedit" syntax-highlighting text editor, and OpenOffice.org. It was also annoying if you preferred browser-based Web-mail (such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) because it dedicated a third of what should have been your desktop to a POP-mail protocol you weren't using. Fortunately you could still install Firefox browser add-ons, at least on the version I got.¹
If I had pushed my research a bit farther before ordering, I probably would have gotten a Dell netbook with Ubuntu. On the other hand, if I'd done that, I wouldn't have learned as much as I did, scratching around figuring out how to get a decent Linux distro working on my HP Mini.
The normal Linux command line was disabled by default, but you could enable it (it took me a while to find this). From the desktop, it was Settings, Advanced tab, Customize Settings, Advanced, Root Terminal. You had to go back to Settings, Advanced every time you wanted a terminal window, and it prompted for your system password every time.
HP is no longer offering HP Mini netbooks with their Mi Linux OS, or any other Linux version. Their only OS offerings now seem to be WinXP Home SP3 and Windows 7. This should be encouraging news to competitors; it means that any maker like Dell can offer comparable netbook hardware with real Linux installed at a lower price point.
I ordered a Linux netbook because I wanted to get away from WinXP and its flourishing malware, so when it showed up with Mi Linux, I wanted to install some other distribution. Ubuntu Netbook Remix, sponsored by the Ubuntu project, seems the most advanced among netbook distros. I waited the better part of four months for the 10/29/09 release of Ubuntu Karmic, because advance reviews claimed that everything would work on the the Mini 110. I eventually decided that for my 10-inch display I liked the regular desktop Ubuntu interface more than any netbook interface I'd seen.
Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope from April 2009 booted fine from a 2GB USB stick or SD memory card on my HP Mini 110 and looked great. WiFi worked out of the box, but not sound or reportedly the Ethernet port. Sound from the headset jack worked, but not from the speakers. One forum poster said installing all available updates for 9.04 fixed his speakers, but it didn't for me.
With Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on my Mini, sound worked but WiFi didn't. Everything else seemed to work except the "HP" key on the Mini's keyboard, which in HP Mi Linux minimizes all running programs and shows its sorry excuse for a desktop. In Ubuntu you can accomplish the same thing by clicking the Show Desktop button at the left end of the lower panel, or pressing Ctrl-Alt-D. You can go into Keyboard Shortcuts and see where that keystroke is defined, and perhaps change it, but it doesn't seem to recognize that HP key. Also, while Karmic can boot as a LiveDistro from an SD memory card in my Mini's built-in card slot, once it's up, the Nautilus file browser and other programs in Karmic don't find that native card slot (works fine in Jaunty).
There's a hidden fat32 recovery partition on the Linux HP Minis, from which the Mi Linux package can supposedly be restored.² If you have UNR or Ubuntu in a bootable LiveDistro format, you can see this hidden partition using Partition Editor. This partition is present on my 16GB solid-state Mini, and I'd guess it's there on all HP Mini-Mi 110s. You can install another distro without disturbing the recovery partition.
A forum post I found on how to do that with Ubuntu said in part "Install ext4 over the old ext3 partition, and reuse the swap partition." The following applies to Ubuntu/UNR 9.04 Jaunty or 9.10 Karmic.
That should overwrite installed HP Mi Linux with your Ubuntu choice, without changing the swap partition or HP's recovery partition.
The forum post went on to say:
Then add this to your new GRUB:
title System Restore
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
boot
This adds an option to your GRUB boot loader menu to restore HP Mi Linux from the intact recovery partition.
In November 2009 I decided to go with regular desktop Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope on my HP Mini 110, because of its Preferences option to disable the touchpad, discussed below. In 9.04 WiFi works out of the box, but sound from the Mini's speakers doesn't (sound from the headset jack works). I saw forum posts indicating this issue can be fixed by upgrading ALSA from the 1.0.18rc3 version which is native for Jaunty to 1.0.19 or later.
The blog post Upgrade ALSA to 1.0.21 tells in detail how to upgrade Jaunty from the command line. Briefly, you download three tar-file packages of ALSA source code, unpack them, and then compile and install them into the Linux kernel. It took me about 45 minutes, mostly for the compile and install steps. When it was done and I'd rebooted, I immediately had sound from the speakers.
Then in the first week of December, I was prompted to install a set of security updates to the Jaunty kernel, which I did. The next day I noticed I no longer had functional speakers. I was briefly pretty upset by this, from a Monday night to a Tuesday morning: it felt like I might have somehow returned to some version of my former Windows existence, in which your computer does wierd stuff sometimes for no discernable reason. When I checked my ALSA version on that Tuesday, however, I discovered the kernel updates had reverted ALSA to 1.0.18rc3.
It happened again the first week of February 2010, and the third week of March. Apparently I'll have to do the compile and install procedure every time, so long as I'm running Jaunty. Here's hoping Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (late April 2010) which will after all be an LTS release, fulfills the "everything works" promise that Karmic broke, at least on my netbook. It'll definitely have a later version of ALSA, which should resolve the sound issue. The question is, will everything else work ... roughly a year after the Mini 110 model started shipping.
The HP Mini 1000 netbooks I'd been examining at Best Buy all had a touchpad switch with red/green LED mode indicator, that enabled and disabled the touchpad.³ You can see it in the picture in the Wikipedia article, between the touchpad and the keyboard. That was a big reason I ordered an HP Mini; I thought that switch was brilliant. I mostly use a USB wireless mouse, but I valued availability of the touchpad for quick use, when the netbook would be yanked out of the bag for the sake of an idea, so to speak. Best Buy didn't offer the Mi Linux model, and I was fed up with the viruses and other malware, crawling all over Windows boxes now like ants on a marshmallow. I was quite annoyed when I received the next incarnation, the HP Mini 110, which doesn't have that switch. If anybody else had offered a switch like that, I would have burned up phone lines sending my Mini back. Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty under System Preferences Mouse has a satisfactory Enable touchpad check box; in 9.10 Karmic that's morphed into Disable touchpad while typing, which doesn't get the job done for me. Even in Jaunty I have to try the touchpad every time I'm not sure which mode I'm in.
There are several models of HP Mini netbooks now, with various options.
The good news in hardware is there's now a VGA port, which the Mini 1000 didn't have. In terms of space on the edges of the netbook, it seems to have replaced an odd pocket the Mini 1000 had for a proprietary USB drive that fit flush. The VGA port of course lets you connect a larger external monitor, which might be nice in combination with a full-size USB keyboard (or PS/2 keyboard with USB adapter) in case you get stuck doing some kind of tech-writer project on your Mini.
My Mini 110 has a teeny two-speed cooling fan, intake center front and exhaust on the left side. It seems to be temperature-controlled; it reacts to CPU load, but with a delay. It's very quiet even when it speeds up; you don't hear it if there's any ambient sound at all. It took me a few days to even discover the fan existed. The CPU warm spot is under your left hand as you type, and it never gets more than faintly warm.
The protective sleeve HP offers for their Mini netbooks fits well and seems effective, with neoprene padding and a nice fabric lining. If you get an HP Mini you should probably get one of their sleeves. I've seen them for sale aftermarket at Best Buy as well.
The Mini's single headset jack is a 3.5mm 4C or TRRS type, supporting stereo audio out and mono mike input. HP now offers a couple of bulky-looking headsets, under Accessories. Apparently iPhone and some BlackBerry and LG media phones use a similar single 4C headset jack. The BlackBerry Multimedia Headset seems to have special controls requiring BlackBerry software. I saw an LG headset of the earbuds plus inline mike style, at Best Buy, that appeared to have the proper 4C plug; it could have product-specific features too.
Third-party adapter cables are available online which connect to this 4C jack, have a 3.5mm 3C jack on the other end for headphones or earbuds, and an inline mike in the middle; you'd probably want to bundle up most of your headphones/earbuds cable, or have somebody shorten it for you.
Typical old-school cell-phone headset jacks are 2.5mm 3C with mono audio and mike. A desktop PC's pair of audio jacks are both 3.5mm 3C, one for stereo audio out, and the other for mike input; lots of laptops and PC headsets still use the two jacks. One can make or have made a custom adapter, to convert from the Mini's 3.5mm 4C jack to either the 2.5mm 3C cellular headset, or in Y-adapter form to the two-jack PC style.
I'm not sure four-conductor miniature audio jacks existed when that two-jack convention was set by early PC sound cards, but it looks like the single 4C headset jack is taking over for media phones and netbooks/notebooks, and I suspect eventually for desktop PCs too. Dell seems to be still supplying the two PC-style jacks on their netbooks and notebooks.
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