Last updated Tue 27 June 2006
Some of my experiences installing Fedora Core 5 (new window) on my HP TC1100. This is just my experience, anything you do is entirely at your own risk. I can’t be held responsible for any spontaneous combustions, human or otherwise, or anything else for that matter. Ignore this warning at your own risk!
Update: If you haven’t come across Stanton Finley’s FC5 Installation Tips (new window) they’re a great resource for anyone starting out with Fedora.
I’ve followed various instructions from Andy Schofie’ds linux pages (new window), GroundStates’s TC1100 pages (new window) among others. A big thanks to them for their help.
Install
Installing FC5, firstly, you need a USB CD or DVD drive. You can install from a USB hard drive or network, but I won’t get into that. You download and burn the FC5 ISO as normal.
After installing, following all the prompts, etc, you need to update. Although you’ve just downloaded FC5 the ISO distribution will be very out of date. You can update by running “yum update”. You’ll need to see other pages for more info on how to do that.
Wireless
Update: You can now ignore this entire section. All that’s needed with the latest kernel version is to install the firmware which is most easily installed from livna (new window) by adding the livna repo and then typing “yum install ipw2100-firmware”. Once you start up, go into Services and select NetworkManager, click start and set it to start automatically. It simply works.
I haven’t got wireless working quite perfectly. However, the patches provided on Andy Schofield’s pages are no longer required to get wifi working. Until I have a solution, I have to run the following commands as root, to get the wireless card to start.
#rmmod ipw2100
#modprobe ipw2100
#rmmod ipw2100
#modprobe ipw2100
#service network restart
I also had to install the firmware which is available here (new window) or from livna (new window). Livna provides an RPM, easy, or if you download the tgz you need to put the 3 files (not LICENCE) in /lib/firmware.
Pen
Getting the pen to work was remarkably easy in the end. I added the following sections to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option "Button2" "3"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option "Button2" "3"
EndSection
Then under the ServerLayout section I added these two lines
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
I also issued these commands, although I don’t know if they’re necessary or not…
#modprobe wacom
#echo 1 > /dev/ttyS0
One thing on all this stuff. Various people have found the pen on different serial ports. Most people apparently find it on /dev/ttyS4, some on /dev/ttyS14. I only have 0-3, so I used the following command for each port no and chose the odd one out!
#setserial /dev/ttyS0
To check you’ve got the correct port, you have to try the above for each one, I used:
#wacdump -f c100 /dev/ttyS0
This was compliments of instructions for debian on a TC1100 (new window).
Issues
When using TwinView (dual monitors) the pen doesn’t work properly. As you move the pen from one side of the touchscreen to the other, the cursor moves across both monitors. So the width of the touchscreen becomes the width of both screens. I’m sure it can be resolved with a little configuration.
I can’t get XRandR rotation working, although I believe it is supported by the nvidia drivers. I’ll continue to experiment and post my results if I get it working.
Well that’s as much as I have time for just now. Those were my main hurdles.
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