Karmic.on.the.HP.mini.110

My friend Jon bought a brand new HP mini 110 last week and asked me to install Ubuntu 9.10 on it (Karmic Koala). I suggested we install the remix edition instead as it designed exactly for netbooks (eeePC, Wind, HP mini,etc). The HP mini come with Windows XP installed and is actually pretty snappy for a netbook. I also liked its keyboard and it comes as no surprise that Jon chose it because he is a journalist and will actually be using the mini primarily for writing. After playing with it for a while, I prepared an Ubuntu 9.10 remix installer on a usb drive, stuck it on the mini, rebooted, and installed it. The installation was a breeze and after a few minutes or so I got the familiar orange-brown scheme and the remix interface. So I did the usual checks and was happy to found out that all of the mini's hardware work (at least that's what I thought at that point).

Now Jon is a Skype user and since Skype is not installed by default I promptly downloaded the Skype package from their site, installed and configured it. Audio and web cam worked fine but that's when I discovered that the internal mic does not work. As usual the first thing to do to is to install back ported drivers and hope that it might fix the situation. For the mini this is what I did.

sudo linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic

You can also use the Synaptic Package Manager, search for the package and installed it.

I installed the generic meta package so that all supporting packages are installed and should ensure that upgrades work correctly. I reconfigured Skype again and this time the internal mic worked. And just to make sure the package is loaded correctly I did a reboot. One of the stellar improvements in this Ubuntu version is its fast boot loading, I was up in running again in a few seconds. The back ported alsa driver definitely fixed the internal mic but somehow broke the mini's wireless connectivity. Sensing a driver conflict, I attempted to use ndiswrapper and loaded the windows drivers instead. The procedure failed but it reminded me to just use Ubuntu's Hardware Drivers app. This app allows users to load proprietary drivers to hardware that either don't have a Linux driver or have an untested implementation of a Linux driver. Their are two choices for Broadcom (the mini's wireless card) but for the mini you need to choose the STA drivers. Activate the driver and just do a reboot to be sure. Everything worked well in my case and I hope you'd be able to do the same for yours! :)