LXDE great on my Samsung NC10

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

A big thank you to Texstar for the OS we all love, and to Neal and Leiche and others for work on the LXDE version. A little hacking but nothing difficult, has made it into a great, and blindingly fast, OS for my Samsung NC10 netbook. The NC10 is no slouch with KDE4, but this removes that last bit of "drag".

To get the best out of it, Tex's post on cpufreq should be followed:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?p=1310

You'll need to add a couple of packages:

alsamixergui
gnome-power-manager
acme
cpufreq
gcalctool (if you wish to allocate a calculator key)

The "Configure your LXDesktop" program has made it a simple matter to add acme and gnome-power-manager to run on startup. They are both configurable from icons that appear in the system tray.

As a result, I have a lightweight system that flies, does all the power management stuff, it even recognises my Brightness Up/Down keys without any ugly hacks involving "sudo" which I had to use in the past! Sleep key, lid down and power button mapped to Suspend, Hibernate and Shutdown, great stuff! The latest kernel update 2.6.38.8-pclos3.bfs includes patches to improve the Atheros ath5k wireless, am I a happy bunny? You bet!

The processor is mostly running at minimum speed, too. I can even give it a KDE-ish look using options already present, which makes me feel more comfortable!

For anyone that can do the cpufreq hack (it's not that hard), this has to be a solution that makes a real computer out of your netbook.

Did I say - well done? WELL DONE!

[OMSkates]

That sounds great.  Do all your other Fn keys work as well?  My sis has this netbook, I might follow your tips.

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

When I set up gnome-power-manager, the Sleep, Lid-Down and Power keys work, also the Brightness Up/Down.

I got the volume/mute keys going throught acme.

Wireless On/Off, Touchpad On/Off seem to be hard coded into the hardware.

Using acme I've allocated a couple of Fn-F keys to Screensaver, Calculator, and Firefox though I'd like the last one to be Chromium (better use of screen estate on these small machines but acme appears to be hard-coded). I've put a self-hiding panel at the top with the commonly used programs.

A previous version of Skype didn't work properly but the recent update does, so that's a plus, too, and the workaround I explained in my previous how-to in the Desktop Hardware section is no longer necessary.

Needed alsamixer to enable the internal mic as the default settings had it muted and the non-existent external one turned up though.

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

My ex-girlfriend showed up today, along with the eeepc900 I passed to her on her birthday in 2009. It's got a bit flakey, so I re-installed but this time using LXDE edition. It goes like a train, and I never thought I'd ever say that about ANY OS on this machine. All the essentials work, too. Basically the method was identical to that for the NC10, such are the improvements in the kernel these days that both machines "just work" and it's a case of adding the power management and extra key functions.

Despite having 1Gb ram, this machine has always been a bit of a slouch, so seeing menus etc come up without the usual half-second delay, was great. Whilst I do like KDE, for this type of machine LXDE covers the basics, and will run the essentials like Skype, Pidgin, XIRC, etc, and you don't need all the extra baggage that a more sophisticated desktop brings. Great work!

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

The way to make ACME run Chromium browser instead of Firefox is to edit the file in your home folder:

.bashrc (you'll need to turn on "View Hidden Files" then right click on it and select Leafpad)

Just add a line:

export BROWSER=chromium-browser

and now I've got LXDE running EXACTLY how I want it!

(thanks to Longtom, this came from one of his posts on another subject so I tried it here)

[Neal ManBear]

The newest update to lxdecc will have one new feature. You can set your default browser and mail client > lxdecc > Personal tab > click Set Default Applications icon.   

[Texstar]

Davecs.

Does your touchpad work properly being able to tap etc on the Samsung NC10? If so can your share your configuration file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

I just put KDE MiniMe with openbox on it so using that login (openbox-kde) instead of using Kwin which makes it almost as fast as LXDE.

Still in the process of setting everything up but it runs great!

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Hi Tex, it wasn't working but I had a look around the site, found a solution, tweaked it and this did the trick - the file is /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synpatics.conf


Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        #Option  "Device"        "/dev/input/mouse0"
        Option  "Protocol"      "auto-dev"
        Option  "FingerLow"     "25"
        Option  "FingerHigh"    "30"
        Option  "MaxTapTime"    "180"
        Option  "MaxTapMove"    "220"
        Option  "VertScrollDelta" "100"
        Option  "MinSpeed"      "0.20"
        Option  "MaxSpeed"      "1.00"
        Option  "AccelFactor" "0.15"
        Option  "SHMConfig"     "1"
        Option  "VertTwoFingerScroll"   "0"
        Option  "HorizTwoFingerScroll"  "0"
        Option  "VertEdgeScroll"        "1"
        Option  "HorizEdgeScroll"       "0"
        Option  "TapButton1"            "1"
        Option  "TapButton2"            "2"
        Option  "TapButton3"            "3"
EndSection


4 of the last 7 lines for the scrolling can be changed to taste, "0" or "1" - I have set it so it corresponds with the marking on the right of the touchpad.

[Texstar]

Perfect! Makes it easy to use while sitting in the loo. Thanks a lot. 

[OMSkates]

+1 Yes thankyou

[DLWood]

+1  Thanks a million.....FINALLY working a treat!!!

[DLWood]

This fix doesn't seem to be working anymore on three laptops I've tried it on in the last week or so.  On an Acer Aspire 3000 that had Summer Fairy E17 installed, I get an error that says:

Parse error on line 2 of section Input class in file /etc/X11/sorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
"M-BM-" is not a valid keyword in this section.


On a Dell Inspiron E1705 that had kde 2011.9 installed, I keep getting thrown back to the command prompt after making the file change.  Nothing I put in will then continue to the desktop.


I noticed that Linuxera in Summer Fairy has the package "qsynaptics" version 0.22.0-5pclos2007 installed already.  This seems to work and stays persistent during the next boot.  How can we install this package for KDE?