Adventures with a SUSE Linux-Powered OQO Palmtop
By: Rob Reilly
Friday, April 28, 2006 03:10:04 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6231/1/
SUSE in the Palm of Your Hand
After seeing the specs for the OQO model 01+ tablet palmtop PC, I knew I had to put SUSE 10.0 Linux on it and do a review. OQO currently offers only a Windows XP version.
Would SUSE even install? Would the tablet work? What are the challenges? Where would you use Linux on such a small package? Would Linux techies even be interested?
All good questions that you'd probably like answered.
This is my adventure of putting SUSE Linux on the little micro PC. I also carried the machine around the recent LinuxWorld Conference in Boston, for a few days.
To say the OQO/SUSE Linux combination is a "geek magnet" is to overstate the obvious.
The Usual Laptop Quirks
The OQO model 01+ runs a 1 GHz Transmeta processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 30 GB drive, and an 800 x 480 slide up color tablet/screen. There's a thumb keyboard under the tablet with a mouse stick (for the right thumb) and buttons (under the left thumb). It runs on Li-Polymer batteries and is just slightly larger than my HP iPAQ PDA. Advertised weight is 14 ounces.
I managed to get almost everything in SUSE Linux 10.0 working with the OQO. Lacking are a working internal WiFi chip and accelerated native driver graphics. No surprise there. For the most part installation was standard YAST, with a few challenges.
Before going any further, OQO definitely doesn't officially support Linux. If you install a distribution, you are on your own for support.
First off, there is no built-in CD/DVD drive for boot-up. And, although I could plug in an external USB CD drive with a bootable Linux CD, it wouldn't boot on it's own either. "Boot from CD" had to be enabled in the OQO BIOS settings. Using the function key (FN at the lower left on the thumb keyboard) together with the 2 on the number pad, during the OQO splash screen put me into the BIOS configuration menus. Once there, I chose Startup, then Boot Device and select CD-ROM drive for the 1st boot device. The 2nd boot device was set to Hard Disk C.
I also used text mode YAST for installation. Initially, the graphical version of YAST came up, but the buttons were below the bottom of the visible screen. Later I found out that the display worked well using the VESA driver, but not the native Silicon Motion SM720 Lynx3DM video chip. Using the Silicon Motion chip resulted in a scrunched screen. That made it impossible to proceed beyond certain installation steps because the buttons couldn't be clicked. The traditional Ncurses/text version worked fine inside an X-term window. I tabbed around the menus instead of using the mouse.
As for partitioning, I chose the normal default scheme that YAST suggested. The Windows XP partition was resized to around 16 GB, swap was set at 256 MB, and the remainder allocated to Linux (roughly 15 GB). ReiserFS is the default file system type.
Running through all five CDs on my clunky old IOmega USB CD 650 external drive took around an hour and a half. After Linux was up and running, I configured NFS and loaded additional software from the DVD drive on my SUSE Linux 10.0 powered 64-bit HP notebook. While you can type in changes to configuration files and run command line programs from the OQO thumb keyboard, it's much easier to log in remotely using SSH from a laptop to do maintenance. I changed the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and could run the text mode YAST remotely (over WiFi from my HP).
Alternately, my USB Gyromouse and keyboard worked by just plugging them in.
WiFi was an issue with the internal Atmel 802.11b/g chip. I guess some people have the on-board chip working, but it requires re-compiling the kernel and building a driver.
I solved the problem by sticking in a D-Link DWL-122 wireless USB adapter. It's a Prism based device, so it was immediately recognized and operational. Again, using YAST, I configured networking for DHCP and exited. Firefox and Mozilla came right up and I was able to cruise Web sites, to my heart's content. Occasionally, when rebooting or coming out of sleep mode, the network needed to be restarted. I haven't spent a lot of time tweaking.
Audio is handled by an Ali HP Compaq nc4010 sound chip and worked out of the box. It's a little strange to listen to my favorite Internet radio stations on such a small machine. Reminds me of an ancient transistor radio with it's slightly tinny speaker. Sound quality through the headphone jack, with earbuds, was excellent.
The tablet also worked after adjusting the xorg.conf file. It was configured as a Wacom tablet and I had to add "input device" sections for the tablet cursor and stylus. The stylus was useful for Web surfing but, a little sensitive to lean angle. I don't know if any handwriting programs currently exist, that would work with this setup.
Using the OQO in the Real World
I'm happy to report that the SUSE powered OQO worked reliably during my testing period. Battery life was comparable to a regular laptop. On the thin battery (3/8th. inch thickness) I ran the OQO for about two hours, during a trip into town. The D-Link adapter was plugged in and 29% power remained, upon returning home.
At the conference, the palmtop ran for about eight hours on the thick battery (1/2 inch thickness). Part of that time was spent in sleep mode, with and without the USB WiFi adapter attached. At the end of the day, the battery was nearly drained. Sliding the tablet closed helped battery life, because it turned off the screen backlight.
I also put my grocery list on the OQO and trudged off to the market, with my kids. Real geeks know that getting through the store is much faster using an aisle sorted list of food items. Using a list also nearly eliminates impulse buying induced, kid selected junk food. The OQO worked pretty well, using OOo Calc. It was convenient to check items off using the down arrow key and an "x" character. The downside was that I was worried that I would drop the $2100 machine while grabbing boxes of spaghetti and cans of green beans. Compared to using my iPAQ, it was a little awkward for this task. It's something to consider, when evaluating the unit for field use.
You'll definitely want to set the networking scripts correctly, to bring up the D-Link USB card automatically. Restarting with rcnetwork or ifup is a pain, because a root login is required, followed by the command line typing.
Connecting to a commercial WiFi access point was frustrating. While at the Logan airport in Boston, I tried to connect using my Earthlink user name and password, through Boingo. Boingo will let you on, using a long string attached to your Earthlink account. My account works at Barnes & Noble, some Starbucks, and a few other pay WiFi places. It was absolutely no-go on Logan's network. After 15 minutes of trying different combinations of never ending login strings I finally gave up. It wasn't a reflection of the OQO's performance, just that typing can be a bit of an effort.
The OQO worked fine on the complementary in-hotel WiFi network and at the convention center. Hardware boot up into Linux usually took about a minute. Not surprisingly, starting KDE and OpenOffice.org took another minute or two, as well. Making WiFi connect sometimes required an ifup wlan0 and 30 seconds or so.
Carrying around the Linux powered OQO at LinuxWorld was fun. Reactions ranged from people just standing and intently examining the machine to "that's really cool". Several people actually wanted to know what it was...while it was still in it's carrying case!
Talk about a conversation ice breaker, this thing was it.
Just for fun, I tried running Apache on the little machine. Since I had chosen just the default system build, Apache had not been installed. No problem, I started the NFS server on my HP laptop and the NFS client on the OQO, then installed from the SUSE 10.0 DVD. You might want to mount the DVD on the server to the target /dvd mount point first before starting the server. Apache2 loaded and then I was able to start it up under the network services tab (start HTTP server) of YAST.
Using the OQO's IP address, I was able to view it's Web pages on my HP laptop. The OQO running a Web server would be very useful in remote locations, when power is at a premium. You could also put MySQL on it and develop some very portable applications, possibly with other Linux laptops, Nokia 770s, or WiFi enabled iPAQs as clients. For that matter a big USB 2.0 external drive could be plugged in for lots of storage. Sales, inventory, and maintenance type programs all come to mind.
Wrapping Up
Putting Linux on the OQO presents a few challenges. It's the usual laptop suspects. For the imaginative, the device running Linux, may open up some interesting new business opportunities. If we think beyond the notion of "one computer, one user" I can see where the tiny portable could host applications, serve Web pages, and automatically (via cron, for example) perform various computing jobs. This is especially true when extreme mobility or weight is a major consideration.
But at about US$2100, it could be a bit pricey for day-to-day basic business email and web surfing.
Overall I think it's a good package that could be integrated into a number of useful applications.
Rob Reilly is a consultant, trend spotter, and writer. He is a contributing editor for Linux Today. He advises clients on portable computing, presentation technology, and business process integration. You can visit his web page at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.