MSI Wind

AD28 · 2008-09-30 03:42:21

archonwind wrote:

Someone kind posted a PKGBUILD here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=20201 and said that fixed all his network issues. I need help extracting and installing this.

Follow this wiki to build AUR packages.

lucke · 2008-09-30 10:36:50

archonwind, the wireless driver isn't in the kernel, it has to be installed manually, while for the wired connection there's a r8169 driver in the kernel, which apparently doesn't work with the kernel that's on Arch installation media, and the proper module provided by realtek, installed using that linked PKGBUILD.

http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Arch_Linux

lucke · 2008-10-17 17:29:23

Did anyone manage to capture sound with Wind, using either the built-in microphone or the external one? Loopback works okay for me, but I can't seem to record anything.

-edit-

Okay, seems to be working.

Last edited by lucke (2008-10-17 18:28:54)

Thoht · 2008-11-12 17:49:49

Any news regarding hardware support for the Wind? I just got mine, but ain't got a working USB pen drive. Would like to know if most of the troubles have been ironed out by now such as Ethernet drivers. Don't know if the WiFi or Bluetooth was a problem or not.

I ordered the one with Windows XP on it (the Linux version is nowhere to be seen in Sweden) and I quite like it, feels weird using Windows again. The touchpad tap-and-scroll function is a tad out of order, but other than that it's really neat.

Looks like a toy from a distance.

Thoht · 2008-11-12 17:55:08

Is the r8169 Ethernet driver a problem for others too? Because it doesn't even work properly on my PC. I can live without the webcam and stuf like that, but Ethernet/WiFi/Bluetooth is essential to me.

Does anyone know of a store that sells vertical laptop bags by the way that would fit a Wind and a calendar?

lucke · 2008-11-12 19:29:28

Use the r8101 driver for ethernet, it's in AUR (rtl8101?) - unload it when suspending, else you might get kernel panics.

Thoht · 2008-11-12 21:55:05

Righto, thanks. Is it possible to install Arch from an external USB-connected HDD? Got one of those Western Digital "Books".

lucke · 2008-11-12 22:06:48

If you can install from a USB stick, installing from a USB HDD should be possible...?

Thoht · 2008-11-13 19:15:34

Was thinking there might be some struggle since USB pendrives use flash (SSD?) memories and this is a regular drive, perhaps not! :-) Installed Xubuntu by Wubi, looks awesome in comparison to XP. I also have one of those 3G modems, and it's so easy to set up in comparison to on Windows and OS X!

kaola_linux · 2008-11-27 02:10:21

I'll just keep in track with this thread before I get myself a MSI Wind soon... :D Are they selling MSI Wind with no OS preinstalled?

Last edited by kaola_linux (2008-11-27 02:15:48)

Tindo · 2008-12-09 10:34:13

Hello!

I have a trouble running xorg on my U100 with Arch Linux and totally stuck with it, maybe someone of you have any ideas how to solve it?

So, I did a fresh installation of Arch from a USB stick, compiled r8101 ethernet module (didn't bother with wireless yet), updated system with `pacman -Syu` and installed some basic software, everything seems to be fine at this point. Then I installed xorg, it loads, but freezes the system immediately after showing the desktop. Keyboard and mouse/touchpad don't respond, and all I can to is to power off.

My xorg.conf looks a lot like this: http://geekshell.org/~madx/xorg.conf_wind

Have tried:
vesa/intel video driver,
disabling USB mouse or touchpad (switching to specific device instead of /dev/input/mice),
different WM's (windowmaker/openbox) to ensure that it isn't WM's fault
- no effect. It loads, shows the desktop and mouse pointer, then freezes.

Does anyone have any suggestions where to look? Windows XP runs just fine, so it's most probably not a hardware problem. Any help would be appreciated.

lucke · 2008-12-09 13:19:03

Isn't it the infamous problem with xorg hotplugging?

Tindo · 2008-12-09 22:17:37

lucke wrote:

Isn't it the infamous problem with xorg hotplugging?

Yes! Thanks! It works now.
(never heard of it before, haven't updated Arch on desktop for a looong time)

Onyros · 2008-12-18 01:43:34

Anyone mind sharing their xorg.conf for the Wind? Virtual cookies guaranteed!

madhatter · 2008-12-18 13:39:07

Here's mine - as you can see it's still a work in progress - I still don't have the external monitor behaving like I want and I don't know if I have to add some serverflags for 3D performance

# basic xorg.conf for MSI Wind
#

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option        "BlankTime"    "0"
    Option        "OffTime"    "5"
    # dont wanna edit hal stuff for now
    Option        "AutoAddDevices" "False"
EndSection

Section "Files"
#    RgbPath        "/usr/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/local"
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load        "glx"
    Load        "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "m0"
    Driver        "mouse"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "kb0"
    Driver        "kbd"
    Option        "XkbLayout" "de"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "v0"
    Driver        "intel"
    Option        "AccelMethod"    "EXA"
    Option        "monitor-VGA"    "external"
    Option        "monitor-LVDS"    "internal"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "internal"
#    Option        "Position"    "1280 0"
    Option        "Enable"    "true"
    Option        "DPMS"
EndSection

#Section "Monitor"
#    Identifier    "external"
#    Option        "PreferredMode"    "1280x1024"
#    Option        "LeftOf"    "internal"
#    Option        "Position"    "0 0"
#    Option        "Enable"    "true"
#EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "m0"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "scr0"
    Device        "v0"
    Monitor        "internal"
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Modes        "1024x600" "800x600"
        Virtual    2304 1024
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Onyros · 2008-12-18 14:19:17

Hey, thank you, madhatter, I am still too used to the old xorg.conf ways, so I may be putting too much stuff in there. I miss the way it worked, it was straightforward... and worked.

Here's what I have by now, but I still have a whole lot of "shaving" to do there.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Xorg Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "AllowMouseOpenFail"  "true"
    # I hate configuring stuff in HAL (too)
    Option "AutoAddDevices" "False"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
# Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF...
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi"
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi"
# True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig!
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/CID"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "glx"
        Load  "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
    Load  "type1"
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "synaptics"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "keyboard"
        Option      "CoreKeyboard"
    Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option "XkbLayout" "pt"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "USB Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
        Option          "Protocol"              "IMPS/2"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
        Option          "Buttons"               "5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier  "Touchpad"
   Driver  "synaptics"
   Option  "Device"   "/dev/input/mouse0"
   Option  "Protocol"   "auto-dev"
   Option  "LeftEdge"   "130"
   Option  "RightEdge"   "840"
   Option  "TopEdge"   "130"
   Option  "BottomEdge"   "640"
   Option  "FingerLow"   "7"
   Option  "FingerHigh"   "8"
   Option  "MaxTapTime"   "180"
   Option  "MaxTapMove"   "110"
   Option  "EmulateMidButtonTime"   "75"
   Option  "VertScrollDelta"   "20"
   Option  "HorizScrollDelta"   "20"
   Option  "MinSpeed"   "0.25"
   Option  "MaxSpeed"   "0.50"
   Option  "AccelFactor"   "0.010"
   Option  "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"   "200"
   Option  "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"   "200"
   Option  "UpDownScrolling"   "1"
   Option  "CircularScrolling"   "1"
   Option  "CircScrollDelta"   "0.1"
   Option  "CircScrollTrigger"   "2"
   Option  "SHMConfig"   "on"
   Option  "Emulate3Buttons"   "on"
   Option   "VertTwoFingerScroll"   "1"
   Option   "HorizTwoFingerScroll"  "1"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
#    HorizSync    28.0 - 78.0 # Warning: This may fry very old Monitors
#    HorizSync    28.0 - 96.0 # Warning: This may fry old Monitors
#    VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0 # Very conservative. May flicker.
#    VertRefresh  50.0 - 62.0 # Extreme conservative. Will flicker. TFT default.
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "intel"
    VendorName  "Intel"
    BoardName   "945"
    Option      "DRI"                    "True"
    Option      "NoDDC"                  "True"
    Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"  "True"
    Option      "EnablePageFlip"         "True"
    Option      "RenderAccel"            "True"
        Option      "AccelMethod"            "exa"
        Option      "MigrationHeuristic"     "greedy"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Card0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultColorDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     16
        Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     24
        Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     32
        Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

edit: BTW, I ordered an Intel wireless card (the 3945abg), I was getting too tired of the flaky Realtek wireless chip. It worked miserably, so much that I'm using an external USB wireless dongle (SMC using zd1211rw, works pretty well). This morning I read --> this <--

So maybe not all is lost on the Realtek front. I plan to replace the wireless card, anyway, because there are added perks to the transplant. Meaning, trying to make the fan less noisy.

Last edited by Onyros (2008-12-18 14:25:18)

Thoht · 2008-12-28 22:35:03

I haven't managed to get the r8169 driver to work under Arch, although it works just fine under Ubuntu. Any ideas?

GregW · 2008-12-29 11:10:26

Hi fellow Archers'

I was going to get an Acer aspire one with 1Gb ram and a 120Gb hard disk. They sell from about £220 in the UK. Since then, I've seen two other netbooks which both look really good.

The first one is the Toshiba http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/ … Shop/true/

The second one is the Dell Mini9 http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ … l=en&s=dhs

The dell's don't have a hard disk model though

At the moment, I'm erring towards the Toshiba model. but I hate ubuntu so it will be arch for me. My main question is: Do the manufacturers use their own custom kernel to support the hardware, or will a stock kernel from kernel.org work with these machines? The first thing that I do with any distro is to roll my own kernel to speed everything up.

Cheers
GregW

Super Jamie · 2008-12-29 21:38:06

Look for the F11 and F12 key on the Mini 9 (spoilers: they don't have them). The Mini 10 or 12 or whatever the bigger one is called looks good tho. Still, hard to beat the MSI Wind, it's pretty much the perfect Linux netbook at the moment.

leo2501 · 2009-01-12 01:34:20

I think im gonna buy one of these Wind's and put arch in it, but i don't see that the wiki says something about some questions i have, i never had a laptop before, so maybe a lot of my questions might seem obvious, but not to me... maybe we can elaborate them here and later add them to the msi wind article in the arch wiki (which doesn't exist actually...)

(first of all im planning to use plain dwm/GNU-screen and no DE, so more commands and fewer apps is all i want...)

- is still needed to re-install the wireless drivers every time you update the kernel?
- Is necessary to have swap space?
- how can i setup the external vga output so i can plug my 1680x1050 22" monitor and use it as main display (deactivating the Wind one) and revert all with a simple command to add like a keybinding?
- the Fn keys work out of the box? and can one bind those keys to run specific commands like turn on off wifi, low/up volume, suspend2disk?
- how can you take pictures of the webcam, i would like a simple command to add to a keybinding so it takes a picture or start/stop recording video
- any recomendation for the battery life to be better? (with no performance impact like underclocking)
- how do you setup the behaviour when you close the display? i want to suspend2disk (hibernate) when i do it

Thanks for the patience!!

TheBodziO · 2009-01-18 11:52:55

leo2501 wrote:

I think im gonna buy one of these Wind's and put arch in it, but i don't see that the wiki says something about some questions i have, i never had a laptop before, so maybe a lot of my questions might seem obvious, but not to me... maybe we can elaborate them here and later add them to the msi wind article in the arch wiki (which doesn't exist actually...)

In fact, such archwiki page exists but it is a stub currently and isn't written in english: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MSI_Wind_U100 (already asked author to rename it properly).

If you'll decide to get one of winds maybe you'll be willing to help with editing some quality wiki about it? If so—it'll make two of us .

There's also nice wikis at msiwind.net: http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Arch_Linux and http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/MSI_Wind.

leo2501 wrote:

(first of all im planning to use plain dwm/GNU-screen and no DE, so more commands and fewer apps is all i want...)

In my opinion wind is great for that.

leo2501 wrote:

- is still needed to re-install the wireless drivers every time you update the kernel?

As for rtl8187se, currently (18.01.2009): yes. From what I know this chip is mostly used with usb interface in wind it uses pci(-e?). In kernel driver (in latests 2.6.28) is for this usb cards. Also driver from aur uses its own implementation of 80211. I think that it takes some time to connect it all together smoothly.

leo2501 wrote:

- Is necessary to have swap space?

It depends… Yes if:
• you're using apps that are able to eat up all of your physical memory,
• you're about to use suspend to disk (aka. hibernation) feature.

In my case (1GB ram installed) browsing the inet (max about 20 tabs open), watching a movie and listening to music didn't get me higher than about 40% of mem. I have swap though for hibernation and rare cases when I'll be forced to do some heavy image editing in gimp or inkscape or do some other nasties with mass of data (which I don't know when it could be but I prefer to be ready).

leo2501 wrote:

- how can i setup the external vga output so i can plug my 1680x1050 22" monitor and use it as main display (deactivating the Wind one) and revert all with a simple command to add like a keybinding?
- the Fn keys work out of the box? and can one bind those keys to run specific commands like turn on off wifi, low/up volume, suspend2disk?

Answering the question about all keys would require more detailed investigation but I was able e.g. to easily set my own actions for raising and lowering volume. I noticed that some keys are giving scancodes even though they are connected directly with hardware. Some trigger acpi events (like Fn+F12).

leo2501 wrote:

- how can you take pictures of the webcam, i would like a simple command to add to a keybinding so it takes a picture or start/stop recording video
- any recomendation for the battery life to be better? (with no performance impact like underclocking)

Slowing down clock speed can be governed automatically so you could do it and system will decide if it needs more processing power. You can do it and don't worry about performance impact.

Most power in laptops is consumed by internal display so try keep it as dim as possible without reading comfort loss. In current winds displays are using led backlit which is nice but still use the same amount of power regardless of what's displayed.

You could also cut some power expense on your disk if it's a traditional mechanical unit by turning on power saving (-B switch in hdparm). You should decide on your own what's the proper level on this since too aggresive power saving can kill your disk much faster (your mileage may vary).

From the other side: battery. Most popular in winds is 3-cell batt which is sufficient but not great. You may want to consider buying 6-cell battery. I've heard that these are much better. I coudn't verify this myself though. There's also a rumor about 9-cell batts for winds.

leo2501 wrote:

- how do you setup the behaviour when you close the display? i want to suspend2disk (hibernate) when i do it

You can do it by setting an event for acpid. More on that you'll find on wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acpid.

Hope this'll help and that you'll get your wind soon!

Thoht · 2009-01-18 13:23:52

TheBodziO wrote:

In fact, such archwiki page exists but it is a stub currently and isn't written in english: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MSI_Wind_U100 (already asked author to rename it properly).

I registered at the wiki in order to add some content, but I don't understand how to add an English version of that page? Perhaps I should rtfm... :-)

Here's what I know worked for me:

Installing from a USB HDD/Memory Stick is a piece of cake using this command to write a bootable image to the memory:

dd if=image.img of=/dev/sd[x]

(See ArchWiki: Install from USB stick for a complete reference.)

Using Unetbootin doesn't work. Having tried both automatical downloads of images and custom such it will eventually result in a kernel panic upon boot, where it claims to be unable to find the CD-ROM drive.

The Ethernet R8169 drivers works perfectly fine in Ubuntu, but for some reason they only work at random (if at all) in Arch Linux. This doesn't just apply to the MSI Wind for me, but ANY computer.

Check the sticker underneath your Wind for what chipset it actually uses for WiFi. I went mad trying to get the various RTL8187SE drivers to work, only to find out after reading this blog entry that I wasn't even using the proper driver. Now how to do that in Arch, I don't know. I'd love to have someone fill me in on how to install the RT2860 driver. :-)

madhatter · 2009-01-18 13:34:46

Thoht wrote:

I'd love to have someone fill me in on how to install the RT2860 driver. :-)

Compile the official drivers from Ralink, they're working great. Here's more detailed information: http://forums.msiwind.net/post53646.html

leo2501 · 2009-01-18 13:35:33

TheBodziO wrote:

Hope this'll help and that you'll get your wind soon!

Thankyou TheBodziO! im still selling via web my desktop pc to get my wind im more than entusiastic to sacrifice the power of my desktop for the portability and cuteness of the wind

- I read somewhere that you can change the wifi card? for i think it was a intel one? with better driver support, i'll look into that to see if i can get one of those here in argentina

- As im planning to get suspend2disk/ram working i suppose i need a 1gb swap file isnt it? 1gb ram = 1gb swap space? or a little less/more?

Well i suppose that aaaaall my questions and more get their answer when i finally have it and play with it and google the rest, then i'll be more than happy to share the answers!

Thoht · 2009-01-18 14:06:40

madhatter wrote:

Thoht wrote:
I'd love to have someone fill me in on how to install the RT2860 driver. :-)
Compile the official drivers from Ralink, they're working great. Here's more detailed information: http://forums.msiwind.net/post53646.html

Oh thank you very much. Although I'm not sure what this means:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Would that mean I should type:

sudo pacman -S build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

?

Arch Linux

#26 2008-09-30 03:42:21

Re: MSI Wind

#27 2008-09-30 10:36:50

Re: MSI Wind

#28 2008-10-17 17:29:23

Re: MSI Wind

#29 2008-11-12 17:49:49

Re: MSI Wind

#30 2008-11-12 17:55:08

Re: MSI Wind

#31 2008-11-12 19:29:28

Re: MSI Wind

#32 2008-11-12 21:55:05

Re: MSI Wind

#33 2008-11-12 22:06:48

Re: MSI Wind

#34 2008-11-13 19:15:34

Re: MSI Wind

#35 2008-11-27 02:10:21

Re: MSI Wind

#36 2008-12-09 10:34:13

Re: MSI Wind

#37 2008-12-09 13:19:03

Re: MSI Wind

#38 2008-12-09 22:17:37

Re: MSI Wind

#39 2008-12-18 01:43:34

Re: MSI Wind

#40 2008-12-18 13:39:07

Re: MSI Wind

#41 2008-12-18 14:19:17

Re: MSI Wind

#42 2008-12-28 22:35:03

Re: MSI Wind

#43 2008-12-29 11:10:26

Re: MSI Wind

#44 2008-12-29 21:38:06

Re: MSI Wind

#45 2009-01-12 01:34:20

Re: MSI Wind

#46 2009-01-18 11:52:55

Re: MSI Wind

#47 2009-01-18 13:23:52

Re: MSI Wind

#48 2009-01-18 13:34:46

Re: MSI Wind

#49 2009-01-18 13:35:33

Re: MSI Wind

#50 2009-01-18 14:06:40

Re: MSI Wind

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