Karmic Koala - rather disappointing

Has anyone else tried Karmic Koala Alpha?

I wouldn't normally bother with an alpha release but I am so fed up that after almost a year Ubuntu still doesn't support the hardware properly (the main issue being the card readers) that I thought I would give it a go.

It installed fine but it doesn't even work as well as Sickboy's kernel with Jaunty. The right hand card reader only recognises a card if there is one inserted at boot time. I didn't dare try suspending with the left hand reader mounted on /home. Sound doesn't work after suspend.

In short, it appears to be no better (possibly even worse) than Jaunty - what a disappointment. I really (really really) wish that Acer had done what Dell did and work with Canonical to build support into Ubuntu rather that teaming up with Linspire. What possessed them to make that decision? The One is a great little machine, but the software support, for Linux at least, is very poor.

 

You said it yourself it is Alpha so you can't expect it to be working as it should. I almost never use the card readers (I suppose people with an SSD version tend to be use them). Ubuntu is a generic distro not specifically for netbooks (we should be happy that it works pretty good, better than a famous non-free OS).
IMHO It is too early to judge karmic ...

I suppose you meant Linpus instead but wrote Linspire

Grtz

 

Unfortunately I think it is unlikely that the fact that the card readers don't work is anything to do with its being an alpha release. If they don't work now I'd bet money they won't work in the final release. Canonical have said they are trying to target the netbook market so it is disappointing that this hasn't extended to our hardware. I am a big fan of Ubuntu and I have installed it on 20-30 machines but my One is the very first that I have had any real problems with.

Unfortunately, it's not true that Ubuntu works better than a famous non-free OS. I hate Windows with a passion, but my son uses XP on his One (we're a two One household) and all the hardware works perfectly and it generally runs fine. The only problem is that it's a crap OS.

I actually did mean Linspire but I was wrong to. I had mistakenly thought that they were behind Linpus (ie what Canonical is to Ubuntu) but now I have checked I realise that is not correct. Thanks for pointing that out, it will save me repeating my mistake.

Oh well, it looks like I may be waiting for Luscious Lemur (or whatever the next release of Ubuntu is called)...

 

Hi,

making the hardware work as we want it is really disappointing, but GNU/Linux distros, no matter if its ubuntu, mandriva, etc. relies heavily to the Linux kernel and the manufacturers that provide support to Linux. Acer, Asus, and other hardware manufacturers "provides" the source code to open source developers like linux or whatever organization that wants to make their OS run at par with Microsoft Windows. Unfortunately the Linux kernel must be customized based on the hardware to make everything work out of the box. Somehow, manufacturers are still afraid of investing to provide linux developers the adequate resource to make everything really work. Just like Ubuntu's (Canonical's) relationship with Dell in providing their users full support. Having this said, developers now weighs which they need to test and make working in their releases, when they start to review the source code provided by the manufacturers, some developers finds them incomplete; therefore causing hurdles in making all the hardware work..

I would still give kudos to all those who have contributed in making GNU/Linux distros (not only ubuntu) work as much as they could in any netbooks and other computers; and also to those who have shared their customized kernels.

 

fyi. karmic koala is just in its infancy.. ubuntu has just finished their developers conference. alpha 6 will most likely be closer to what the developers would target. After alpha 6, the kernel and feature freeze are implemented.

Also just today, ubuntu's commercial sponsor, Canonical, have announced that they will be launching their version of moblin.. If anyone have tried moblin v2 beta.. my impression is that it is a graphically improved version of Linpus lite.. what I meant is all the basic functions - such as browsing, email, IM are at your fingertips. but needs a lot of tweaking as people did with their Acer custom linpus lite.

 

Posting from it right now. Using kernel 2.6.28.9-20090404 (I believe it's one of Sickboy's kernels). Card readers work as they are supposed to (with SD cards). So does sound. I don't use suspend or hibernate. Webcam doesn't work. To make the card readers work, I added the following:

Code:

/etc$ cat rc.local
#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

## below commented out 20090409 to try sarvatt's kernel
/sbin/modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1

Code:

/etc/modprobe.d$ cat aa1.conf 
options sdhci debug_quirks=1

edit: Just installed the latest updates, including kernel 2.6.30-7. Still no webcam. No sd card unless inserted at boot with 2.6.30-7 kernel. [OT]Webcam and card slots both work properly with stock Fedora 11 RC; no messing around with /etc/rc.local or anything in /etc/modprobe.d[/OT]

 

I am also using Sickboy's kernel only with Jaunty and the key issue with the cards is suspend and hotplugging for the RH card.

Suspend works fine with the LH card mounted on /home at boot time with Sickboy's kernel but the RH card reader isn't hot pluggable. I have read elsewhere that the pciehp approach sorts the hot plugging issue but causes corruption when suspending with a mounted card. If anyone has got suspending with a mounted card and hot plugging working at the same time I'd be interested to know.

I have read on the kernel development mailing list that one of the devs was aware of the cause of the card reader problems and had submitted a patch for 2.6.30, that's why I had hopes the kernel would support both suspend and hotplug. Either the patch didn't make it or it doesn't work.

I should make it clear that I am a very long time user of Linux (using kernel since version 0.26 if my memory serves me) and Ubuntu and I appreciate the efforts of the thousands of devs enormously. I'm just disappointed, I'm not complaining.