Stefan Seidel

Android-x86 progress

Saturday, 18 February 2012 14:01 Stefan Seidel

So, it's been a while since I last reported something, so I will now allow people to keep track of the progress on Android-x86 on the IBM Thinkpad X41 Tablet.

So, here is the latest status:

Working:
- Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS)
- WiFi (tested with Intel 2200bg and Atheros 9k mini-PCI cards)
- Bluetooth (only enabling/disabled and discovery of other devices tested)
- Audio (make sure the volume is switched on using the keyboard buttons)
- Touchscreen/Pen input
- Screen Brightness
- Orientation Sensor (calibrated at startup, so laptop need to be level when booting)
- Screen bezel buttons:
  - up/down = Android volume up down
  - Enter = Enter (doesn't work everywhere)
  - ESC = Android "back" key
  - "suitcase" key = Android "menu" key
  - "rotation" key = Android "home" key, but doesn't do anything
  - "hidden" key = Power, to switch tablet off, and sometimes needed after waking up from suspend
  - Power key = normal power key behaviour: long-press shows "switch tablet off" dialog
- Hardware Acceleration (may need to set "Force GPU rendering" in Settings -> Developer options
- SD card slot
  - when using the SD card slot, sometimes suspend doesn't work properly
  - to use the SD card slot, you need to add SDCARD=/dev/mmcblk0 to the kernel command line (in Grub)
Not working/Planned:
- recognition of state laptop/tablet
- better resume behaviour
- support for 3G modems (USB dongles/PCMCIA cards)
- debugging of SD card issues

So, if you want to test it out, download it via Torrent:

Magnet link: thinkpad_x41t-4.0.3-20120218.iso
regular torrent file: thinkpad_x41t-4.0.3-20120218.iso.torrent

You need a DHT/trackerless torrents compatible torrent client like Deluge or µTorrent.

For comments or questions, use the Google Groups discussion.

Here is a little video showing the basic features:

Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich Demo on Thinkpad IBM X41t

Last Updated on Saturday, 18 February 2012 14:32

Debian Squeeze, mytop and Mysql Server 5.1

Thursday, 18 August 2011 09:55 Stefan Seidel

After having updated most servers to Debian Squeeze (6.0), I noticed that the packaged mytop utility didn't work with the new mysql-server-5.1. After looking for a solution for a long time, I found out that the variable name for the number of queries has changed in 5.1 - from "Questions" to "Queries" (or maybe the other way round). Thus, a dirty solution is to apply the following patch to /usr/bin/mytop:

--- /usr/bin/mytop	2009-04-06 23:49:09.000000000 +0200
+++ mytop	2011-08-18 10:54:09.000000000 +0200
@@ -794,6 +794,11 @@
         {
             my $key = $ref->{Variable_name};
             my $val = $ref->{Value};
+	    if ($key eq 'Queries') {
+		$key = 'Questions';
+	    } else { if ($key eq 'Questions') {
+		$key = 'Queries';
+	    } }
 
             $STATUS{$key} = $val;
         }

This solved it for me. Of course, the correct solution would be to check the MySQL version and act accordingly, but I leave that as an exercise to the reader :)

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 10:38

Android-x86

Tuesday, 29 March 2011 11:01 Stefan Seidel

I have recently discovered the Android-x86 project, which aims to provide a usable implementation for Android on normal computers (a.k.a. x86 -based computers). Since I have an IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet/Convertible, and have previous Android experience from my Motorola Milestone, I thought I'd give it a try. After some hours, I now have the first customized version, and you can download it from here.

Version: 0.1

Working:
- Android 2.2 FroYo
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- Touchscreen (!)
- Audio
Not Working/Planned:
- Screen Brightness
- Orientation Sensor
- Screen
- Tablet Buttons
- Hardware Acceleration
- sometimes it goes to sleep right after you wake it up and it takes several attempts to stop it from doing so

How to use: download the file, unpack in android-x86 root directory using

tar xjf thinkpad_x41t_0.1.tar.bz2

For the WiFi to work, it is necessary to add

CONFIG_DRIVER_AWEXT=y

to external/wpa_supplicant/.config.

Then, build using lunch or "make TARGET_PRODUCT=thinkpad_x41t usb_img", as described on the Android-x86 page (towards the bottom of the page).

Check out the ISO/USB images.

Comments (13)

Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:54

Opera Mobile on Android and Google services

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:27 Stefan Seidel

After being fed up with the stock Android browser for yet another time (couldn't resize a website, and thus couldn't access anything on the site), I thought I'd give Opera Mobile another try. And what can I say, I'm stunned. It's blazing fast (once it's past the splash screen, which takes a while to load), scrolling is soo smooth and it does what I want.

However, there are some problems. It's not that there are some cosmetic issues with some websites. It's mainly the site operators, first and foremost Google, who think they know better. So I get the super "mobile" version of GMail and Calendar, which is basically a plain text page with some links. Not what I want. So here are the URLs you would really want if you use Opera Mobile and Google:

"Touch" GMail: http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/

"Touch" Calendar: http://google.com/calendar/gp/

"Touch" Reader: http://www.google.com/reader/i/

Why do they not give you the option right away?

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:54

Starting again

Friday, 08 October 2010 10:30 Stefan Seidel

Hello dear visitors,

after several years of not having a real internet web page, I'm starting again. I'll try to keep this updated regularily with (hopefully) interesting posts. I hope you enjoy being here.

Stefan

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:54

Stefan Seidel

Android-x86 progress

Debian Squeeze, mytop and Mysql Server 5.1

Android-x86

Opera Mobile on Android and Google services

Starting again

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