I installed Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Remix on my new HP Mini 110-3000 CTO a couple of days ago. As I’d read, it was nearly seamless.

The one bit that I did struggle with a bit was the wireless networking. Many sites that I found asserted that you have to install the Broadcom STA proprietary driver to get wireless working. After discovering that the Broadcom driver wasn’t seeing any hardware, I did an lspci and discovered that the network card was not a Broadcom at all, but an RaLink RT3090. After visiting the Linux support page on RaLink’s website, getting the drivers for the RT3090, and running make install, I was in business.

The only other complaint that I’ve had so far is the lack of multitouch scrolling and gestures. Articles I’m reading make it sound as though the hardware supports it, but the kernel module only reports “left right middle” capabilities for the touchpad, but no “double” or “triple”. Hardly a deal-breaker, though.

Update:I just realized this morning that sound didn’t work out of the box either. However, after installing the linux-backports-modules-alsa-lucid-generic metapackage and rebooting, that’s resolved.

After getting a tip from a friend that Cyanogen was worth trying out, and being curious about running a more vanilla (specifically, not-tied-to-the-Sense-UI) version of Android, I finally installed it.

I found the full update guide on the CyanogenMod wiki site to be overly and unnecessarily complex. As noted in a previous post, I was running the leaked Android 2.2 w/Sense OTA update image, which meant that I already had fairly up-to-date radio firmware and the ClockworkMod recovery. Instead of backrevving to stock 2.1, I instead:

• Installed unrevoked forever, which obviates the need to use dangerous hacks like dinc_ota.zip to update radio firmware.
• Installed the latest radio firmware available on the CyanogenMod forums. (I also installed the custom splash. 🙂 )
• Downloaded the latest version of CyanogenMod and Google Apps for HDPI devices and copied them to the SD card.
• Rebooted into ClockworkMod Recovery, wiped the phone, and installed the images.

It was all very straightforward. The only snag that I ran into was the Mail app continuously crashing, which I resolved by removing the included Mail.apk and installing the Mail.apk from the CyanogenMod forums.

So far, I’m pleased. The phone is much snappier. There’s a small but noticeable lag in interface response on the Sense ROM (nowhere near what my old iPhone had) which does not exist in Cyanogen, and it makes using it less frustrating.