Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix bad for HP 1030NR (no out-of-box wireless, overly large icons in Go Home applet)

[jasonq]

Despite Ubuntu 9.04 working well out of the box on the HP 1030NR, the Ubuntu 9.10 missed on two major issues: out-of-the-box wireless and screen size:

1) The wireless problem may be fixed by using the wired Internet as done in several other bugs to install the broadcom drivers.

2) The screen size issue I haven't figured out how to fix yet. The screen is detected as an 11" screen when it is in fact a 10.1" screen. This makes a huge difference. The icons are very large and applications don't fit onscreen correctly sometimes.

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

Jason, please try to update the xorg server for intel in the following repository and see if it helps solve your second issue:

1. in /etc/apt/sources.list, add the following two lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

2. add GPG key for the new repositories by the following command:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 8844C542

3. use Update Manager to install the new packages and check the outcome.

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

Hi, Chih Ho. I tried it and all went smoothly but nothing seemed to change. The System > Display app is still reporting that the monitor is 11". Actually, I should be more specific. Gnome itself seems to be fine. My menus and applications run properly and fit in the screen space. What does seem off is the Netbook Remix launcher. It is too big and sized as if the monitor were 11" instead of 10.1". It's possible that the video drivers are not to blame but the Launcher is (or is just poorly designed).

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

Jason, I was testing it on a HP mini model equipped with a 10.1" (1024x576) display. Kamic correctly reported it as a 10" display and I did not seem to notice any anomalies in layout. The attached screen shot is from netbook-launcher running atop standard Karmic desktop. Can you also post a screen shot of yours?

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

Hello, Chih Ho. Thank you for your attention to this issue. I am attaching a screenshot.

The screenshot shows that the display is reported as 11" instead of 10" (the little green box is appears when you open Display under the System folder). It also shows that the icons are absurdly large for this screen size and you cannot even fit four full rows of icons in the view without clipping. This is almost exactly the problem you would get if the computer thought it was using an 11" screen instead of the true 10". I had assumed that the computer was confused about the size of the display but the Gnome menu bar is correctly displayed. So perhaps the bug is just that the Go Home folder views use absurdly-sized icons and it is not truely a display problem.

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

Jason, you are very welcome. However, if you do a quick comparison of your screen shot with mine, you would notice no difference there. Therefore, I am afraid, the "absurdly-sized" icon and non-even clipping behaviors you are observing are more of a style/design issue, i.e. the current launcher may just not be smart enough to align itself properly with different display resolution. By the way, may I know the actual display resolution detected by you system? Is it 1024x600 or 1024x576? You can get the info from display preference or by typing the following command in a terminal:

xrandr

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

xrandr reports that the current resolution is "1024 x 600".

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

I changed the title of the bug to more accurately reflect my dis-satisfaction.