TUTORIAL: How to get Ubuntu on the TouchPad

[Rennat]

I have been playing around with the UbuntuChroot I just got installed on my Touchpad (which wasn't all that hard to do) and guess what? I have gotten a whole hord of applications to work flawlessly on it! Some of these are AbiWord (a ligth weight word processor), GIMP (Image retouching tool), and Chromium (Chrome browser). I was doing this stuff in another thread but decided this deserved its own thread. If you want me to put together a tutorial or videos of these application working I'll go ahead and do so.

And of course here are some picture because it never is true without pictures (and now Video!) :P

LXDE:
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=159h_t0hHPQ

AbiWord:
Introducing word processing on the @HP #TouchPad using AbiWor... on Twitpic
Video:
AbiWord Running on the HP TouchPad via UbuntuChroot - YouTube (fixed)

Chromum:
Twitpic - Share photos and videos on Twitter
Video:
Chromium Borwser Running on the HP TouchPad via UbuntuChroot - YouTube (fixed)

GIMP:
The first fully functional Image retouching and editing tool ... on Twitpic

Eclipse:
The very first self-sustaining tablet: the @HP #TouchPad runn... on Twitpic

WebOS Quick Install:
@JayCanuck Ever think that WebOS Quick Install would ever be ... on Twitpic

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TUTORIAL: How to get the UbuntuChroot up and running for your HP TouchPad

I put it on the WebOS Internals Wiki below. Feel free to correct any misspelling or anything.
http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/...t#Instructions

[Cantaffordit]

wow, that is an awesome write up!

[Rennat]

Thanks How do make urls plain text without the forum linking it and changing the original text (see Step 3). These forums don't support alot of the html codes like [Plain]

I found a work around...

[japomani]

That is impressive, good job! Makes me jealous that I did not get one in the fire sale.

[TravisAntonio]

Nice tutorial is 200% better than mine

[phillytemptation]

thanks for this! i'm new to this whole ubuntu thing.. but i mainly wanted to use it for document editing. was there a way to sync a folder from ubuntu with box.net?

[Rennat]

Originally Posted by phillytemptation

thanks for this! i'm new to this whole ubuntu thing.. but i mainly wanted to use it for document editing. was there a way to sync a folder from ubuntu with box.net?

There would be 2 ways:
-Install Chromium Browser and upload via that
-Install Internalz Pro from Preware and move it over to /media/internal/ and then upload it via the Box.net app.

If you haven't gone through the tutorial yet you should go ahead and contact my Army of Monkeys in Step 1-B. Monkeys know how to save a lot of time.

[dgdonovan]

Great work! I need to backup the Touchpad, then meta-doctor it. Assume the BlueTooth keyboard works. I'll pick one up during the accessory sale on Monday. ... and I'll donate to homebrew.

[geekpeter]

Originally Posted by dgdonovan

Great work! I need to backup the Touchpad, then meta-doctor it. Assume the BlueTooth keyboard works. I'll pick one up during the accessory sale on Monday. ... and I'll donate to homebrew.

good guide and yeah the bt keyboard works fine, some minor issues tho hopefully fixed eventually.

[Rennat]

Anyone using Chrome in chroot you can install this extension to add touchscreen scrolling to the browser: chromeTouch « Google Chrome Extensions

[dgdonovan]

Any particular recommendation on the size of the ext3 file system? The 2GB default partition size in the makefile seems a bit small. If it's only used to bootstrap, then it's fine. I intend to try to build armv7 binaries for the Touchpad, and possibly even experiment with the latest webkit.

[innocentbystander]

This needs to be stickied...

[geekpeter]

Originally Posted by dgdonovan

Any particular recommendation on the size of the ext3 file system? The 2GB default partition size in the makefile seems a bit small. If it's only used to bootstrap, then it's fine. I intend to try to build armv7 binaries for the Touchpad, and possibly even experiment with the latest webkit.

2gb is for the imaged filesystems, any size for the metadoctored route, but im sticking to image files, i was looking into how easy/viable it woudl be for multiple boot images just with the OS/needed files, then having seperate home/apps and another seperate swap filesystem, so any main OS image would use the same apps/swap images without needing to have as many duplicates.

Meh dunno, still playing with tryign to find a environment i like, still cant "fat finger" my desktop widgets to my liking for a touchscreen, closest i rtied was that unity-2d setu, didnt like that, a netbook type approach is still far off a mostly touchscreen setup.

[johnj2803]

Just a question form someone new and non knowledgeable like me...

why install ubuntu? :-)

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by geekpeter

2gb is for the imaged filesystems, any size for the metadoctored route, but im sticking to image files, i was looking into how easy/viable it woudl be for multiple boot images just with the OS/needed files, then having seperate home/apps and another seperate swap filesystem, so any main OS image would use the same apps/swap images without needing to have as many duplicates.

Meh dunno, still playing with tryign to find a environment i like, still cant "fat finger" my desktop widgets to my liking for a touchscreen, closest i rtied was that unity-2d setu, didnt like that, a netbook type approach is still far off a mostly touchscreen setup.

With LXDE you can change the size of the menu bars and everything in preferences.

I don't know how to close out of the terminal window that comes up when you first launch it (if you close it, everything closes down), so I've just been moving it to desktop 2 though.

And I believe to get a terminal running in it you need to install GnomeTerminal. Otherwise though it's been working really well for me.

There's still the fact that dbus stuff is broken but Rod said someone was working on that I believe.

Another app you might want to mention in the first post is grdesktop. For those of us who need to use RDP occasionally to connect to Windows servers, it works well (though it doesn't remember settings at this time).

[dgdonovan]

Originally Posted by geekpeter

2gb is for the imaged filesystems, any size for the metadoctored route, but im sticking to image files, i was looking into how easy/viable it woudl be for multiple boot images just with the OS/needed files, then having seperate home/apps and another seperate swap filesystem, so any main OS image would use the same apps/swap images without needing to have as many duplicates.

Meh dunno, still playing with tryign to find a environment i like, still cant "fat finger" my desktop widgets to my liking for a touchscreen, closest i rtied was that unity-2d setu, didnt like that, a netbook type approach is still far off a mostly touchscreen setup.

Thanks. Initially, I was going to use an image file in /media/internal with a loop mount, but I see this approach causes issues. Guess I'll just experiment with the 2GB file system initially.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by dgdonovan

Thanks. Initially, I was going to use an image file in /media/internal with a loop mount, but I see this approach causes issues. Guess I'll just experiment with the 2GB file system initially.

If you put the file in /media/cryptofs there should be no issues.

[sleepymas]

I just went through all the steps and after editing the fstab... i type mount -a and i get

mount: mounting /dev/mapper/store/store-ext3fs on /media/ext3fs failed: No such file or directory

when i ls into media i see the ext3fs directory... i am not sure what i am doing wrong.. i just cut and pasted step by step and no errors come up until this step. lost

"edit: starting over... i think i missed the removing of # before create ext3fs.... crossing fingers as it loads"

[geekpeter]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

With LXDE you can change the size of the menu bars and everything in preferences.

I don't know how to close out of the terminal window that comes up when you first launch it (if you close it, everything closes down), so I've just been moving it to desktop 2 though.

And I believe to get a terminal running in it you need to install GnomeTerminal. Otherwise though it's been working really well for me.

There's still the fact that dbus stuff is broken but Rod said someone was working on that I believe.

Another app you might want to mention in the first post is grdesktop. For those of us who need to use RDP occasionally to connect to Windows servers, it works well (though it doesn't remember settings at this time).

you can change pretty much everythign except the size of the window widgets, close/minimise etc, they remain TINY, annoyingly so.

and i havent tried RDP yet, i was using xtightvncviewer.

[charybdis]

For those following the guide, when you compile meta doctor, don't forget to uncomment the part that actually sets up the ext3fs partition. It's around line 174 of the Makefile. (While you're at it, you might as well uncomment AUTO_INSTALL_PREWARE and INSTALL_SSH_AUTH_KEYS too, just to save yourself some time).