Hi folks,

I am doing a pilot project in East Africa.
http://projects.powerdeveloper.org/project/imx515/816
The smartbooks were received with great enthusiasm.

Its kind of embarrassing though, how bad its usability is so far. Put aside problem #1 that the book should go to sleep when closed while I can still measure a consumption of 1.9W. I know that the geeks here are working on it.

Let me give you some examples why the Efika MX 3G at its current stage is difficult to manage for an average user -- who should be our target group:

Mariam lives close to a neighbor, whose WLAN "AKU" connected automatically -- unsolicited!
It was not possible to save the change after unchecking the box "connect automatically" -- the button "Apply" is greyed out.



As to be seen below, it is not possible to switch off WLAN. Unlike the Ubuntus I am used to, this version greyes out the uncheck option for the different networks.


Special characters like "&" are also not working!

I started with Ubuntu 08.04 and have my experience with the various dependencies within Gnome and the shortcomings of the network manager.

Hence I propose to follow the KISS-principle, to "keep it small and simple": Wouldn't it be better to start with a smaller system which has less bugs?

All the police needs is a webbrowser (Chromium or Firefox) and a communicator (Pidgin). For connecting to the WLAN could Wicd be the more reliable choice?

Since most mobile internet connections in Tanzania rely on the pre-paid card system of national mobile phone companies, we need a "mobile network services management application". Betavine would be great.

And that's it! :D

Better little well running than the freezes and hang-ups I experience during log-in or GDM regularly. :oops: During presentation its embarrassing, though the Africans are cool -- hakuna matata -- no problem. They hardly know PCs which work swift

Coming week I shall travel to the Ngorongoro area,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngorongoro
to help a school with their Efikas.

How can I explain the mess in Synaptic? :roll: Maybe smaller is also better for learning the essentials?


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Hi Matthias,

I'll try to respond to all your points, but perhaps not in order :-)

I remember doing similar projects in Algeria and Morocco among others. You know as well as I do that every project like that has its own set of unique requirements which is seldom met by any off the shelf system installation. We do our best to release products which suit a wide variety of use cases, but we do not have the resources to micro-manage each and every possibility and use case that pops up. In a way, that is why PowerDeveloper exists - to get people together doing similar projects so they can help each other out, as a community driven effort.

Regarding the unsolicited connection to a WLAN, that is something that can not happen. Are you sure the person in question didn't manually connect to it, and then save it? In any case, you can always delete the connection.

The best way to switch off WLAN (and wireless in general) is using the physical switch on the left hand side of the Netbook.

You say "Wouldn't it be better to start with a smaller system which has less bugs?". Sure - tell me which one. Perhaps this is where Étoilé can come in. At this point in time, we have to go with Ubuntu for a couple of reasons:
- it's what most people know
- maintaining our own distribution is not possible resource wise at this time
- other distributions have other problems
Sure, it might be, but who's going to maintain and test that to every new OS update? It would mean that we have to divert resources to testing and integrating a component which does not come by default with the system. Ubuntu uses NetworkManager, so that's what we use. On the other hand, nothing is stopping you from customizing it for your particular project or use case.
Normal users should not use Synaptic directly, but rather, use the Ubuntu Software Center. The Debian stuff makes sense since Ubuntu is based on it.

Let's try to help you out on some specific issues you have. You mentioned in the topic you need help with XFCE/LXDE? I have build systems in the past around a combination of both (XFWM rocks), and works great with a subset of LXDE or even a properly configured Cairo-dock. Perhaps this would be more suitable for your target group?


Johan

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

no doubt about that!
sorry, but I am rather talking about general usability! At its current state the Efika is a discouraging experience. IMHO its rather Canonical/Ubuntu to blame, why else would they start developing Unity2D?

Accordingly shouldn't we get real too and discuss whether Ubuntu's GDM is the best choice for ARM currently?

I mean ARM-computing means reduction in hardware, so why not reduce the amount of software as well? Gnome produces a lot of dependencies...
This is what I thought too so far. 100% sure. Via terminal, editing the resource file for sure. Did you look at my screen shot? Looks like a mayor bug to me! This switch is very important, since it's off/on restart provides the only way to reconnect Mobile Broadband which at regular intervals gets lost.

Another discouraging bug. Yeah. KISS-principle.
Another truism: Never change a running system!
The problem of PowerDevelopers should rather be: how do I get Efika software running stable than to cope with the release cycle of Ubuntu.

Let me be frank: if a friend would ask me today whether he/she should buy this smartbook I would recommend her to wait until its teething troubles are over. At its current stage the Efika package provides an unpleasant user experience and is unmanageable for a beginner. The most striking example I have put on top, inclusive screens.

I should add that sometimes it takes me 10min to get the smartbook ready for work as it likes to freeze during log-in. Also moving through the pull-down menu into the sub-sub-level has frozen my system. No other exit than switch-off possible.

Once I ended up with this display:


I think we both agree than Synaptic is the best package manager of all distros even since it is simple.
But it seems that elements of the Genesi repository classify as "obsolete" or "residual". That confuses me and makes we wonder if I can still distinguish the necessary from the obsolete when e.g. installing xfce-desktop and wanting to remove gnome-desktop.
If you can provide an image I would really like to test it.

Cheers

Hi.

I quickly created an image and I'm currently uploading it which you can try. It'll take a while, but I'll put the link here --> http://robotics.puv.fi/maverick_cairodock_xfwm4.img.xz (EDIT: uploaded).
That's what Ubuntu comes with. We can discuss the merits of other components all day long, but in the end, we don't have the resources (yet) to start changing individual components and making sure they won't break with Ubuntu system updates, etc.

It's not that we don't want to change it, it's that we don't have the resources (within the company) to properly manage it. I think it could be a nice community effort though! After all, that's what PowerDeveloper is for. We could host the images, etc.
No, I mean right click -> edit connections -> Wireless -> select connection -> press delete

Your screen shot showed the "Connect Automatically" which might be a bug, but I can't reproduce it here...
When you ship Ubuntu, you're stuck with the release cycle. Some of the fixes are available in Natty or eve Oneiric and don't get backported. So we have to keep up. At the same time, we have done (and are doing) a lot of work at kernel level, which improves stability and performance.

You know, looking at some of the screen shots you posted, I'm wondering if you are not experiencing hardware issues. We've never had those kind of problems before, and they certainly did not show up during the many tests we performed.

Give my image a try, and see if it causes any problems. Make sure you have the latest UBoot!

I've been running the Netbook for weeks on end without having any of the issues you mention.


Johan.

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Small query:

Cairo dock runs perfectly fine in the demo image
but when i install cairodock on the standard image it wants to switch on compositing and shows black background etc.

Is there any specific configuration/switch/option that i can use to get cairodock running in the normal gnome installation ?

BTW, i am using maverick_cairodock_demo.img.xz from: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/asset/by-id/122 - as it has a later date compared to the link posted above. Is that better or should i use the one posted here ?

Hi.

To get the best experience with cairo-dock, there are a couple of things you want to do:

- Switch off our imxng video driver and fall back to fbdev (don't worry, you will still have gstreamer, etc.). You can do so by renaming/moving /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/imx_drv.so

- Use XFWM4 as a window manager instead of Metacity. You can do so on a per user basis by creating a file named '.gnomerc' in the user homedir and putting the line 'export WINDOW_MANAGER=xfwm4' there. (after installing xfwm4 of course)

- Turn on compositing in xfwm4 (xfwm4-tweak-settings if I remember correctly)

- The configuration of cairo-dock has been optimized for the Efika. You can copy the config directory from the demo (in the home dir: .config/cairo-dock) to your target system.


Let me know if that works out for you.

EDIT: use the demo image on PowerDeveloper.

Johan.

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet