Last change 21/06/2012

I like using Linux more than windows. Having a powerful command line and jsut copying your home folder and have all settings with you really makes me like that OS. Oh and it really is free... and open source... But getting it to work on such exotic Hardware is proving al little difficult- but I like the challenge.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 (64bit) on the EEESlate - almost all out of the box

What worked out of the box:

Installing Ubuntu wasn't that hard. Prepare a usb stick, put it in and select install.I used the 64bit edition!

I added an USB hub with USB keyboard and mouse attached just in cas (and it was a good idea).

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Core i5-470UM (Arrandale), 1.33 GHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
12.1" WSVGA (1280x800)	Works	Automatically recognized
External Monitor using HDMI	Works	Only tried mirror mode until now
Intel HD Graphics	Works	No special procedure required during installation
4 GB DDR3-800 SO-DIMM	Works	No special procedure required during installation
SanDisk P4 SSD 64 GB, SATA 3Gb/s	Works	I resized the win7 partition and used Grub as a bootloader.
Wireless 802.11b/g/n	Works	No special procedure required during installation
">Audio	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Bluetooth	Untested...	Untested
Stylus (Wacom)	Works	No special procedure required during installation. Even the setup in Gimp worked without any fiddling
Touch Screen (Single Touch) eGalax eMPIA	Works	works most of time with out of the box driver. For more configuration and right click download the eGalax Drivers from http://home.eeti.com.tw/web20/eGalaxTouchDriver/linuxDriver.htm - simple extract und sun setup.sh as root ("sudo sh setup.sh"). Configure as USB. This will also install the eGtouchU utility program. You need to restart after installing!
Multi Touch	works	Works using twofing
Screen rotation	untested	Haven't tried it yet, but I think it doe snot work out of the box
Camera	untested	Should work out of the box

What doesn't work out of the box:

Bluetooth
touch - "Click": only seems to work once (down) - releasing wasn't recognized
mabye rotating
"Big" button
Keyboard button

I use a Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard kombo to work with the slate when I need to write a lot - so I didn't try bluetooth yet. I did not have to install any extra things.

Also check out https://help.ubuntu.com/community/T101MT which is a simiar device based ont he hardware.

Installation Notes

It is a very good idea to add an external keyboard/mouse. The installer without a keyboard is unuseable. Especially since the touchscreen or styles didn't work at first (they worked fine in the installed ubuntu)

When you want to select an operating system with grub you can use the volume rocker on the side to go up/down and the big button on the main screen to select.

On-Screen Keyboard

For the initial installation you need an external keyboard (at least I did). Once this is done, you can log in and change the System Settings -> Universal Access -> Typing -> Typing Assistant -> On

This will allow you to use the on screen keyboard. This will also add the little white man on blue background to the indicator bar and allow you to log in using only the touchscreen.

Touchscreen/Stylus/Mouse

The most interesting thing is the multitude of input devices available. Here is the xinput-list output:

$ xinput list 
Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)] 
Virtual core XTEST pointer                  id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
Wacom ISDv4 90 Pen stylus                   id=11    [slave  pointer  (2)]
eGalax_eMPIA Technology Inc. PCAP MultiTouch Controller    id=12    [slave  pointer  (2)] 
Wacom ISDv4 90 Pen eraser                   id=15    [slave  pointer  (2)]
Logitech USB Receiver                       id=16    [slave  pointer  (2)
....

As you can see the default pointing devices are the stylus, the eGalax touchscreen and then last my usb receiver for my Logitech mouse.

Out of box they all work (12.04). But no multitouch and I also ubuntu does not really identify the eGalax as a touch controller - i.e. I cannot enable/disable it and the settings are not availabe - only general mouse.

I am also still looking for a way so the touchpad is disabled once i use the stylus - and when i take the stylus away i can use touch again. This would really help a lot when doing gfx and other things. On windows I manually disable the touchscreen when using photoshop, but even that is only a half-solution.

To install Two Finger mouse gestures you can install twofing from http://plippo.de/p/twofing.htm . The current git version does support the eGalax driver.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev libxtst-dev libxi-dev x11proto-randr-dev libxrandr-dev git
cd /tmp
git clone http://github.com/Plippo/twofing
cd twofing
make
sudo make install
sudo cp 70-touchscreen-egalax-slate.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/70-touchscreen-egalax.rules
# REBOOT

You can now add "twofing --wait" to your startup and enjoy two finger scrolling pretty much everywhere.