[stl1859]

So this past week , I finally gathered the courage and installed Ubuntu chroot on my Touchpad. Thanks to some wonderful tutorials written by the forum members, the entire process went pretty smooth and I now have LXDE running. However while it was an exciting DIY project, now that it is up and running, I am wondering what to use it for.

I was hoping to be able to use a better browser than the stock webOS browser. Firefox - while it installs , is really too slow to be usable. Chromium is good - however touch scrolling is too painful ( with chromeTouch ) and there is no multi-touch zooming. However the biggest problem is that flash is terribly choppy and not usable at all. So now - while I have a browser with tabs, password management and bookmark management, I have no touch scrolling, no pinch and zoom and no flash. I find myself going back to the stock browser - since it works perfectly fine in these areas, and these are the things I use more, than the one it lacks.

Also Chromium refuses to load Hotmail - and it has crashed on me on many other websites, including this one.

I do not like the stock music player, but I could not find any players on Ubuntu either. The last.fm app is broken - Outside of Ubuntu I can use Pandora or at least go to last.fm website. With the flash problem, I can't even do that inside of Ubuntu.

I was hoping I would be able to use VLC - but I could not locate it - and even if I did - I am now unsure about the performance of any video player. The stock player limits to one format, but once I take an extra step to convert by Videos to that format, it plays them beautifully.

I have not found a way to automatically raise and lower the keyboard - so it does not make for a good environment to do a lot of typing.

So given all that - I am now wondering - what are some of the other members of this forum using Ubuntu on their Touchpad for ?

BTW - while I may not have found any use for it - I still enjoyed installing Ubuntu - and thanks to all the fantastic tutorials that were written on it. I am looking for tips on how to make the most of it - before giving up on it.

[andrew025]

VLC is available for ubuntu.
If you don't want to go searching for it, just type this in the command line

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

You may or may not want the firefox plugin so just leave that last part of the code off if you don't want it.

[crucialcolin]

The biggest problem you will probably find with ubuntu right now is the lack of ARM based software packages for it. Of course that will likely change pretty quickly.

[andrew025]

The biggest problem you will probably find with ubuntu right now is the lack of ARM based software packages for it. Of course that will likely change pretty quickly.

Totally forgot about that...
Pretty sure you have to cross-compile VLC for ARM.

[stl1859]

Thanks - found vlc ( not sure how I missed it the last time ) and installed via Synaptic. I was actually able to play some videos - even though I would not use it to do serious video watching. But it was not nearly as bad as flash video on chromium is.

[andrew025]

Thanks - found vlc ( not sure how I missed it the last time ) and installed via Synaptic. I was actually able to play some videos - even though I would not use it to do serious video watching. But it was not nearly as bad as flash video on chromium is.

Well... disregard my previous post about the compiling then lol.

[mikemike017]

As far as VLC replacement player goes, I'd recommend the Kalemsoft player. It plays everything I need it to. You shouldn't have much of a need for VLC if you're just looking to watch movies on your Touchpad...

[kayphoonstar]

Right now, the main must-have is the java plugin, but it's in the Debian Chroot, since icedtea6 is missing some dependencies in Ubuntu. There's also much better document handling (OpenOffice) than anything offered natively. (my 2 cents)

[riw]

can the chromium browser handle the mouseover action also known as hover?

[FenrirWolf]

I'm using it to access a part of my school site that doesn't play well with the stock browser and I'm using it as a dev environment for my intro to CS course.

[zc1]

TP bluetooth keyboard didn't work properly with Ubuntu the first time I tried it out, and I haven't gone back to try it again since then -- apparently it's either florence or the bluetooth keyboard. I actually like Florence so no bluetooth keyboard for now, which means no document editing with Ubuntu for now, unfortunately.

There are some websites that I use all the time, but that won't work with the stock OS browser because of problems with redirects. Those same sites don't work in the Ubuntu Chromium or Firefox browsers because they don't have working java plugins. The workaround has been a combination of the two OSs, the details of which aren't important.

I'm sure that, with time, people will get these issues sorted out, or I'll get tired and switch to Debian. I was fully expecting to be using Ubuntu instead of WebOS, but it's not ready, yet.

[bugelrex]

Does anyone used ubuntu as a replacement for the stock PDF viewer?

Are the fonts sharp, can u fix the zoom? it must drain the battery much more if u use the PDF ubuntu viewer?

[DrPotoroo]

I am setting up ubuntu to run a mysql server and apache server with php. Once apache is running, you can access it without "using" ubuntu by pointing the webOS browser to 127.0.0.1 (works in airplane mode, too).

Because I have had NO success with one crucial use for the touchpad - generating printable invoices - this is what I am trying to achieve with ubuntu. I've had the following failures:
- QuickOfficeHD - can edit now, but no ability to embed date fields or calculation fields, meaning each invoice requires far too much manual entry.
- PDF forms - Acrobat on WebOS doesn't support PDF forms. Boo.
- Libreoffice in ubuntu - aside from being clunky to use, it plain won't open libreoffice templates I've created on another computer. No idea why.

So once I get mysql+apache+php working, I hope to also install latex. Invoice data should be entered via the browser and saved in a database. Then I will have a button in the browser to have pdflatex spit back a PDF to open in Acrobat in webOS and print from there. Wish me luck...

[umrdyldo]

Sorry for such the noob question.

I am having problems getting flash running. I have tried going directly to adobe, a deb file, and tar file and a few apt-get commands.

What steps, commands did you run to get it to work? Thanks for the help.

I agree there are some major issues with running this. I find having LibreOffice to be very useful, but need the keyboard to work.

[crutzulee]

With the recent scaling fix for the stock pdf reader, I was considering getting rid of my ubuntu partition on the TP.
I am glad I held off as I just discovered another great use for ubuntu!
One of the main reasons I wanted the scaling fixed was so that I could read my magazines on my TP and thus leave my android tablet behind. Usually I load them via usb transfer before I leave home but today, having run out of reading material at work, I decided to try and download a few periodicals via filesonic. This was a no go via Webos!
Solution- fire up chrome browser in ubuntu, download magazine via filesonic, move file from linux partition to webos partition via internalz pro and open in patched version adobe reader!
Thsi tablet gets better every day. I love these forums.

[decalex]

I almost didn't go through with chroot after reading this thread, but I'm actually really happy with LXDE. Ability to access (f'in) blackboard is worth it in itself. I picked the 'no Florence' option, because I'm using the HP Bluetooth keyboard. I'm stoked that keyboard shortcuts (ctrl A, ctrl F, ctrl T, ctrl N.. Etc) all work in the browser. And the arrow keys work! (especially to scroll.. Which is a pita otherwise).

I know there's additional special shortcuts, but can't for the life of me remember or find where I read it.

So far, I can see if you hold the control button for a few seconds, it locks, and opens up other functionality when you type or click on stuff.. But not sure if that's just a bug. Anyone know where to find those shortcuts? (or the shortcuts preferences file in LXDE?)

[shneor]

I installed ubuntu chroot on my touchpad, it worked beautifully that first time. I did a manual mount, added the ubuntu mount command to my fstab, apt-get a package or two...and signed off. But ever since, when I run executah (and only Xterm and Ubuntu chroot appear on the executah menu), after I start xterm and try to start ubuntu I just get a blank xserver screen. Ununtu seems to be mounted, but I can only get to the webos screen. I'd really appreciate any help.
Thx,
Shneor

[shneor]

Sorry for such the noob question.

I am having problems getting flash running. I have tried going directly to adobe, a deb file, and tar file and a few apt-get commands.

What steps, commands did you run to get it to work? Thanks for the help.

I agree there are some major issues with running this. I find having LibreOffice to be very useful, but need the keyboard to work.

You might want to check out gnash...

[shneor]

As far as VLC replacement player goes, I'd recommend the Kalemsoft player. It plays everything I need it to. You shouldn't have much of a need for VLC if you're just looking to watch movies on your Touchpad...

You can stream directly to the TP using Touchplayer - I watched movies from Crackle streaming from my router, no PC needed.

[blobos]

How do I access files that were transferred through usb into the touchpad from ubuntu or must I download everything through wifi?
Gnash(Flash) doesn't seem to be working very well. It lags in Youtube and doesn't load for some other things. But it would be great if I could get it to load since the touchpad browser doesn't work when I need to drag things inside the flash application instead of the whole browser.
Does gconfig load anything for anyone? Mine is blank. I was hoping to right click somehow.