HP Mini MIE & Open Source ???

[boolioncube]

there are a lot of mixed reviews about locked-down Linux devices like iPhone & this, however, as a linux user myself, i believe this is a positive step for introducing it to the M$ centric world ... keep it simple, plug-n-play, and all rest. this seems to be the most viable solution for it to shed the long standing images as a haker friendly alternative.

that said, i happen to be one of those hakers, who loves my CLI but also appreciates a well designed GUI.
not being able to teach tux new tricks doesn't work for this geek. can he come out and play ?

other posts indicate CLI is not really missing (as indicated in the docs)
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=OS&message.id=4194
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=OS&message.id=3531

I'd really like to get my hands on one of these
... if it can play nice with the open source community

have folks succeeded with stock ubuntu, NBR or other distor's ?
does the mini require custom wifi, snd or other modules like the eee ?
will hacking MIE impact the warranty ?

-marcB
Although I am an HP employee,
I speak for myself and not on behalf of HP.

[Bryan_N]

Hi Marc,

I love my mini! In fact my wife wouldn't give me mine back and her office had to buy one just for her.

I switch between XP, HP MI, and Win7 beta without any issues but I have not tried any alternative linux distros. HP MI is based on Ubuntu

The default drivers in Win7 picked up the Mini without requiring any effort at all.

The Ubuntu desktop is customized and simplified but you can still drop to a terminal to use commands like dpkg and sudo

'hacking' the Mini with software does not void your warranty. If you have a potential issue, the technicians may ask you to reload the original Operating System to run known diagnostics and to ensure it is not a software or configuration problem. Hardware modifications can void your warranty.

A nice side benefit is HP provides an online link to a utility that will write a bootable thumb drive with the HP MI image for OS recovery.

 The 802.11 wireless is a pretty standard Broadcom chipset.

The sound is IDT, and the chipset is a pretty standard Intel.

I don't think there would be any issues with drivers.

I don't have a model with the brodband wireless so I can't speak to that with Linux.

-Bryan N

Although I am an HP employee, I speak for myself and not on behalf of HP.

[benmhall · Accepted solution]

> does the mini require custom wifi, snd or other modules like the eee ?

I briefly installed Ubuntu 8.10 on the 1110NR Mini Mi.  All hardware was supported.  Wifi required a closed-source driver that was installable from repositories.  However, I have reverted to HP's Linux, as I found 8.10 to not always resume from suspend.

I'd guess this was related to the wifi drivers.  I spent 0 time troubleshooting, as I quite like HP's interface and generally prefer Ubuntu 8.04, on which HP's distro is based, anyway.

A couple of tips:

- Open a terminal: ALT-F2 gnome-terminal

- sudo apt-get install gdebi to install the nice .deb front-end that Ubuntu ships with.  This enables things like installing from .deb files over the internet

- The MIE repositories have thus far had every package from standard 8.04.1 that I've ever used.  HP limits what is available through Add/Remove... don't try to stop people from apt-get installing whatever they want.  This is very much appreciated.  I hope Asus takes a cue from this.

- I found the sound quality to be terrible, the problem was a package: idt-alsa-eq-plugin  I would just remove that.

- Adobe Reader is bloated for a machine with 8GB SSD.  apt-get remove it and install mozplugger.  It will use Evince to embed PDFs in a browser window

- HP's recovery USB thingie works great.  There is a text .cfg file that lets you tweak/remove both the recovery partition and the swap.  My 8GB SSD shipped with only 2.1GB free, as they allocated 1GB for recovery (fair enough, but not needed if you make a USB recovery drive) and a whopping 2GB for swap.  (!!)  Why on earth they did this is beyond me.  I reinstalled from the USB drive and ditched the recovery partition, made the swap 256MB.

- Shortcuts can be found in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop.  I copied one to make a .desktop entry for gnome-terminal.

That's all I can think of at the moment.  I have to say, HP and Canonical have done a brilliant job with the UI.  Just the right combination of easy-to-use and flexible.  Great stuff.

Yesterday I used my new Mini to troubleshoot a 7lb ThinkPad C2D running Vista in 1GB of RAM.  The Mini could fly circles around it.  10 minutes to boot, no exaggeration.

[boolioncube]

Thanks for the info Bryan_N & Kudos to benmhal for the awsome tips !! especially 3 & 4

  im happy to see HP & Conical join forced with 99% success, MIE looks great

 ( the crippled xandros on my eee lasted about 15min before i dropped in eeebuntu NBR )

  i've outgrown the eee & now im giddy like a school girl for MIE

i cant wait to apt get me some XBMC hooked into my NFSss, pluged into the MIE :P or some MIE skins. 

   until today i was on the fence, now i will drop bills tomorrow and get my hak on

myhpmini.com looks to have gather a pretty healthy community,

  have yall found others  out there for the new mini mi ?

Message Edited by boolioncube on 02-12-2009 09:31 AM

[boolioncube]

so my HP mini finally arrived. yeah me

it was back-orderd for a few weeks

new shwag is slow reaching canada, eh

---

benmhall wrote:

- HP's recovery USB thingie works great.  There is a text .cfg file that lets you tweak/remove both the recovery partition and the swap.  My 8GB SSD shipped with only 2.1GB free, as they allocated 1GB for recovery (fair enough, but not needed if you make a USB recovery drive) and a whopping 2GB for swap.  (!!)  Why on earth they did this is beyond me.  I reinstalled from the USB drive and ditched the recovery partition, made the swap 256MB. 

---

only 2GB free out of the box

i've mounted /dev/sda3,

now i should copy these files to my sdhc & boot

changing these lines, right ?

swap_partition_size=256

recovery_partition_size=0

my brother will lend me his sdhc on the weekend.

any thoughts or suggestions would be helpfull 

thanks