Fedora 17; Hot Dog!

Quick first impressions.

installed Fedora 17 on an older 1024x600 netbook
stats:

• Acer Aspire 1 (black with the wavy cover)
• dual core hyper-threaded Intel atom N570
• 1 Gig Ram
• Intel integrated graphics Pineview GM, 1024x600
• WiFi recognized without a problem

installed: default gnome, 32 bit version.

OS history:
Previously was running Fedora 16, installed from a live usb stick;
then ran preupgrade to 17.

Process ran without issue; did take a long time:
I'm guessing that it would be faster to just re-install OS, keeping my /home directory.

First impressions:

seems a bit quicker;
new Gnome not too different;

one annoyance/ limitation:
some dialogs do not fit on this older system with the 600 pixel screen... could not see the bottom of some of the setup dialogs.

In a region with too many wifi networks, my VPN is off the bottom (again screen limitation?)

todo:
find a "netbook" skin for gnome; that is designed for the smaller screen.

Further notes:
(this entry will be updated a few times)

Power management
working.   I can suspend and resume, and mouse, wireless, screen all recover.
on this older system, resume is in seconds;  have not measured, would say no more than 5...

two finger mouse
working with this laptop;  tried it briefly;  then turned it off;
I do like and use the "scroll on right side" but I'm not using two finger moves yet.
-I still prefer a mouse, if I have the desk space.

External screen
working.
older laptop has VGA only, fedora picked it up. Tried dual monitor support;
the screen UI picked up both, but only set external to maximum of 1024x768
could not configure for higher...

Sound?
working; is a netbook with small speakers that are not loud.


Video Camera?
this may be an issue;
Skype, and SugarOS did seem to lock on using the Camera a few times;
now seems ok;  I have updated to current levels  kernel: 3.4.0-1.fc17.i686

SugarOS
working great, only the odd lockup with video camera

Chrome XOs?

running Fedora 17 with SugarOS UI on an older netbook.

found I could run google-chrome from the Sugar terminal.

The menu and tabs are not "sugarized", so you can maximize chrome, and it seems like it has taken over the system:

Android + Lego Mindstorm NXT via App Inventor.

Finally had a chance to go back and try out the MIT version.

Working well.

The unclear part was hooking up the bluetooth connection;  had to use google and find a sample showing how to connect it up.

Bluetooth keyboard working on the olpc XO running XOpup-2.2

mysteriously worked like magic; the small lump on the left is the bluetooth adaptor;

the keyboard is a Verbatim Ultra-Slim Bluetooth keyboard.


How?


The system found the keyboard itself;  I did not type any passwords to pair it;
which I found rather odd.  I had several web pages up, and my son was watching me.  I took out the bluetooth dongle to show him, and plugged it back in;  he was playing with the keyboard, and it started to work.

hmmm....

Instagram:

working on:
LG-P500h
Android 2.3.3

VM on Fedora 16 for Lego Mindstorms

Tried various things, and searched the web.

Did not find any success on running the GUI software that came with the Lego NXT under Wine, and having it connect to the NXT to download programs.

the python works great, as does my Android phone;  but the LEGO gui software

So:

Installed the default Virtualization on Fedora 16.
Then installed an old version of Windows XP

found I could install and run the lego GUI, and it could see the USB device !

On Fedora's Virtual Machine Manager GUI, I just added the usb device corresponding to the NXT brick,
and the XP vm found it.

Notes:

initial hard disk for XP is a bit small; need to investigate: can I make it larger or do I need to re-install?
my first install/setup was with all defaults, and the GUI seems to lag a bit, not as snappy as I'd like;

New year, New Toy: LEGO Mindstorms + Android

there was a sale, and I couldn't resist;  plus I had a gift card...

So now we have yet another type of computer in the house.

Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0
kit 8547

initial kit has one colour sensor and two touch sensors + ultrasonic
(older version had a monochrome light sensor, sound sensor and one touch sensor + ultrasonic)

In addition to the default windows setup that came in the box (which needed a updated Fantom Driver)
Have hooked it up the the Android phone via the MINDdroid app, as well as the Linux box via
NXT Python

note:  Buy Rechargeable Batteries!