Fedora 11 on a Samsung N140
September 10, 2009 – 9:17 pm
I got myself a Samsung N140 netbook a couple of days ago, as i’m going back to Australia for a couple of months soon and i don’t want to have to drag my heavy old Thinkpad around with me. I’m likely to have to do some web development work while i’m there, so i wanted something i could work with comfortably. The N140 seemed to fit the bill – it’s got a non-gloss screen, for a start, and a full sized keyboard. It also comes with a 6-cell battery, which promises about 9 hours of off-mains use – and, from my experience so far, it gets pretty close to that, too.
You can get it with Windows XP or Linux (for £20 less). I chose the Windows version because i wanted to be able to dual boot – so i could upgrade the firmware on my Nokia 5800. I tried doing it using XP in a VirtualBox virtual machine on my Thinkpad, but it didn’t work. I could take it to a Nokia service centre and get it done for free, but i’d have to leave my phone there for a day or two and £20 for a Windows system seemed worth it to avoid that hassle. Anyway, i’m going to be running XP in a virtual machine on this system too (for testing web sites), so i don’t mind having a licence for it.
The first thing i did was install Linux. I’m running Fedora 11 on my Thinkpad, so it made sense to install that on my netbook too. Installation was fairly easy – using the live version and writing it onto a flash stick using the supplied utility. There was one annoying glitch in Fedora installation though – when i tried to manually set up the partitioning system it refused to allow the root partition to be ext3 because the image on the installation system was ext4 and it refused to allow it to be ext4, saying it had to be ext3. (I must remember to file a bug report!)
In the end, i allowed it to set up its own choice of partitioning scheme – which i’m not really happy with, but which worked. When you first set up XP on this system, it allows you to create two partitions – so i created the minimum possible one for Windows (which is still way too big) and i used the rest for Linux. Samsung’s system restore system also grabbed a 7GB partition at the beginning of the disk. At some point i’ll get round to deleting that and shifting the windows system down there, freeing up 25GB of hard drive space in the process.
Most things worked out of the box with Fedora 11 – sound, bluetooth, ethernet, SD card reader, touchpad, webcam. But the wireless interface didn’t work and nor did the built-in mic.
I think support for this wireless card (Realtek RTL8192) is included in version 2.6.31 of the Linux kernel – which is currently in development – but it’s not in the current Fedora version (2.6.30.5) and i didn’t really want to build a custom kernel if i could avoid it, so i used ndiswrapper – which works fine.
I got the RTL8192 driver from the CD that came with the computer – it wasn’t easy to find, but it’s there on the disk. But i had a bit of trouble getting ndiswrapper to work. For some reason when you install ndiswrapper using yum, it doesn’t require the kernel module – so, of course, it won’t work. You have to explicitly install kmod-ndiswrapper as well. Once i’d worked that out wireless networking just worked (with NetworkManager).
Once you’ve installed ndiswrapper, install the driver with
ndiswrapper -i net819xp.inf
(you’ll need all three of the driver files in the directory you execute that command from).
then
ndiswrapper -m
should write the configuration file for modprobe. Once that’s done,
modprobe ndiswrapper
should get wireless working and the interface showing up in NetworkManager. If not, a reboot will do it.
Getting the built-in mic to work was a bit trickier. First, i installed the gnome-volume-control (also known as gnome-alsa-mixer) application, hoping that there would be a switch somewhere that would turn it on. But there wasn’t. So i resorted to the best mixer of the lot – the one that always seems to show all controls, even when nothing else does – gamix. Unfortunately gamix isn’t packaged for Fedora any more (i should try lobbying for its inclusion again i guess), so i always keep the source code handy.
Getting gamix to build required installing a few development libraries – glib-devel, alsa-lib-devel, and gtk+-devel. Once i built and installed it, gamix showed a switch that the gnome mixer didn’t: “mic”/”front mic” in the capture section. Switching this to “front mic” made the built-in mic work. The sound isn’t very good though, so unless you really need it, it’s not worth the bother!
The other problem i had was with some of the software. In particular, Thunderbird’s account settings window and Nautilus’s configuration window are too tall for the 600 pixel screen. This is really annoying, as it means you can’t get at important parts of the configuration. Both of these bugs have been reported on their respective bugzillas.
The workaround i used was to use the System–>Preferences–>Display dialog to rotate the screen left – and then turn the netbook on its side. That way, you can get at everything on the config window. It’s a bit awkward, but it works!
Some of the function keys work with Fedora and some don’t. Using the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ dialog i set Fn-ESC (which has a moon on it) to suspend, and Fn-F12 (which is “scroll lock”) to “lock keyboard”. I wanted to use Fn-F10 for this, as it’s got a picture of a screen with an “X” in the middle of it, but that doesn’t seem to generate a key code.
The volume keys work, but the brightness keys don’t – which is a bit of a problem, as when the N140 is being used on battery power the brightness drops to a very low level and there’s nothing you can do about it. This obviously helps with battery life, but it would be nice to have the choice.
A workaround for this seems to be to suspend it with the power connected, then disconnect the power and then wake it up. When you do that, it comes back on with full screen brightness, even though it’s running on batteries.
Overall, i’m very happy with the N140 so far. It’s mostly very well designed and a pleasure to use. Its one really weak point, however, is the keyboard layout – it’s not centered. That might not matter much if you type with two fingers, but if you touch type it’s a big problem.
Surely it would have been simple to move one key from the right of each row over to the left hand side. That would leave the centre point of the letter and number keys – the gap between the ‘g’ and the ‘h’ – in the middle. As it is, it’s too far to the left and if you touch type your left palm is sitting on the corner of the palm rest, which isn’t very good ergonomically. A single key width to the right and it would be perfect.
I considered pulling the keys off and moving them over, and then modifying the key mapping. But keymapping is an awkward business in Linux and it may well be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s also complicated by the fact that i may want to dual boot Windows – i don’t even know if it’s possible to remap the keys in XP.
Us netbook old timers know that (in Linux) you just have to hold down the ALT key and then you can click anywhere in a window, not just on the title bar, to drag it. It’s essential for all those too-big dialogue boxes.
Yeah, well, that’s alright in theory – but it doesn’t actually work! Well, it does work, but in F11/Gnome it won’t allow you to drag the top of the window above the top of the screen – so it’s no help.
Use KDE in F11 then. Or use Gnome in Ubuntu. Either way works for me. What is broken about Gnome in F11 I wonder? You’re not using Compiz or something? No, of course you aren’t.
No “of course” about it! I was using compiz, but i just disabled it because it was filling /var/log/messages up with junk. And, strangely, the “Account settings” dialog in Thunderbird no longer has a “maximize” button – but Alt+mouse left can now move it above the top of the screen!
Ah, I thought you had enough sense not to use Compiz for long. 😉
Big clanger that, not being able to install Fedora 11 without creating a separate boot partition, but there is already a bug report about this (possibly more): https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=504831
Hmmm… I wish i’d seen that before i did the install.
Hi there. I was thinking about getting this laptop this weekend due to the awesome battery life along with it’s price and specs! Just wondering if the scroll on the right hand side of the touchpad works in Linux? My friend has a different laptop and can’t get his to work properly so this is swaying me towards getting a netbook that is supposed to be on linux. Let me know, Ritch.
Hi Ritch,
Yeah, touchpad scrolling works perfectly out of the box – with Fedora 11, at least. Horizontal scrolling works too, but you have to enable that in the mouse config first ( System –> Preferences –> Mouse –> Touchpad ).
Thanks, I think I’ll order one then right now! Just need to decide what distro to run. I’m kind of new to Linux. I used Ubuntu a little bit when I was younger but we have a really weird version of Fedora 11 at uni that our tutor has heavily edited (different desktop manager and such). I’ve seen a “netbook” version of Ubuntu and was possibly thinking about that? Or do you think I would be better off with F11 or even something else? Cheers for you fast response last time!
No worries.
I can only vouch for things working under F11, but i’d guess the latest Ubuntu would probably work too. I’d go for the full version, not the netbook version though. There’s no need to use the cut-down version on this machine, as it’s got a 160GB hard drive.
I’d download the live version of both distros and try them out first – it’s only a CD’s worth of data each time. Bear in mind, though, that the wireless networking is unlikely to work with either of the live versions (you’ll need to install ndiswrapper and the drivers first) – so you’ll need an ethernet cable to do the full install.
Ok that’s cool. I’ve just read that Ubuntu 9.10 is out on the 29th of October and that uses Kernel 2.6.31 so I might wait for that as the wireless card might be natively supported then! That would be pretty cool. Thanks for your help
My N140 came today and I downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 release candidate and it doesn’t support the wireless card natively! It’s ok as the ndiswrapper works fine it just would have been nice! Just warning you in case you decide to upgrade to the new kernel! Ritch.
For Ubuntu, install the backport modules to get wireless card working out of the box…
That’s useful. Thanks!
hi there
can you please cut&paste the output of the following commands??
lspci -vv
lsusb -vv
thanks 😀
hfish: They’re too big – tell me what you’re interested in and i’ll post those parts.
ok
i’ve bought the notebook and i’m trying to install debian.
i’ve already installed it, using net-istall, but now, i don’t know how, the ethernet is no longer working… i see the r8169 module is loaded, which i assume to be wrong.
wich module do you use for the ethernet card?
can we continue this via email?
I recently picked up a N130, the ‘economy’ model of the N140, and I’m quite happy with it so far. I ended up adding Slackware 12.2 to dual boot with the installed WinXP Home. Worked out pretty well as the N130 hardware is pretty basic so video, sound, integral microphone, integral webcam were no problem. I ran into two rough spots though, but nothing too serious — cfdisk had a problem initially seeing the hard drive (Hitachi 160 GB SATA) and setting up the wireless chip (Realtek RTL8192, same as the N140). I ended up booting off GParted Live on a USB stick to repartition the drive and I also ended up using NDISwrapper to load the WinXP Realtek driver.
Regarding a couple of things in the original post. I use ‘rexima’ as my mixer. The interface is really bare bones but I like it’s comprehensive capability. The function key issue is kind of bummer when I’m running Linux but there’s a ‘Brightness Mode Control’ option in the ‘Boot’ menu of the BIOS. By leaving that set as ‘User Control’ instead of the default ‘Auto’, at least when I set my display brightness all the way up in Windows, it stays that way all the time when I’m booted into Linux.
Being an N140 owner myself since yesterday, I can add this to the brightness discussion: You don’t have to start Windows for changing the screen brightness; the brightness controls (fn-ArrowUp / fn-ArrowDown) do work while you’re in the CMOS setup, so it’s only F2 on boot instead of going through a whole Windows cycle just for setting the brightness.
Also, this suggests that it /should/ be possible to get this functioning while running Linux.
hfish: i’m not sure what module gets used for the ethernet port, i’ll try and remember to check it next time i use ethernet (which i don’t often do). As for continuing via email: sure, if you want to pay my consultancy rates. Send me a message via the contact page if you do. Otherwise we can continue here, where everyone can benefit.
slouchfuzz: thanks for the tip about the “Brightness Mode Control” setting. That’s fixed the problem for me!
balpha: thanks for pointing that out.
I just found http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samsung_N140 which offers a way to set the brightness using linux — and it works like a charm on my Fedora 11. With root privileges, call
setpci -s 00:02.1 F4.B=hh
replacing “hh” by a hexadecimal value from 00 (lamp off) to ff (full brightness). With some little scripting, it should be easy to bind brightness setting to appropriate keys. The archlinux wiki also gives some tips for making X react to the fn-ArrowUp/Down keys, but I haven’t checked into that yet.
Excellent! Thanks for that.
Just wondering, are you seeing those “about 9 hours” of battery life on Fedora?
I’m getting over 6 hours – but i always have the screen brightness on full, so i guess i could get longer if i had it on low.
WHERE can you get £20 off for windows free? failed so far to find it anywhere, and I hate paying a tax for something I’ll never use.
I can’t remember where i saw it now, but i think it was the Samsung site. However, they seem to have scrapped the Linux option now!
Just like to say thanks to you all, have been reading above about N140, I bought mine with XP, but installed 7 the other day, and the Function keys not working, the Brightness is my main concearn, but thanks to you guys… problem solved… cheers
Ran across this site with some interesting power optimizing tips for Linux on netbooks:
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/make-your-linux-netbook-battery-last-longer-661874
Thanks for that link – it’s an interesting article.
Just an FYI — Samsung released an updated BIOS for the N140 a couple of days ago. Just did the update for my N130 and so far no issues except I had a password set via the BIOS locking it at startup that I did have to re-do.