Samsung NC10 Netbook

[simbloke]

just takes a bit of work

I've just bought one of these for the wife. I made a bootable USB stick under Intrepid and used it to install Intrepid on the NC10. Overall following the guide on the Ubuntu wiki things weren't so bad.

? Wireless drivers work after enabling backports,installing extra packages and blacklisting the other modules.
? Sound was better after updating to the -proposed kernel. Needed to open the volume control and adjust/turn on various bits.
? Brightness keys will need a small kernel patch, hopefully Ubuntu will include it one day. For the moment I installed the brightness applet.
? I enabled laptop mode and adjusted the HD power saving times.
? The main remaining problem is that the touchpad vertical sensitivity is too high.

Pretty much everything else just worked. The battery lasts for ages - not sure how long yet but in excess of five hours!

Anyway, if I had wanted everything to 'just work' I would have got a Dell Mini 9.

[pfunkman]

Guess not enough are released for you to find linux based netbooks to review.

Yes all of the GENERAL reviews I've read suggest the nc 10 is a very nice machine, (I even considered it myself before purchasing a linux based device) but I come to Phoronix hoping for news about Linux products, unfortunately I am usually disappointed. Phoronix does not need to re-iterate what has been said elsewhere. If your benchmarks had compared the NC 10 with other (Linux Based) netbooks it would have been more useful.

If you have not noticed the selection of linux native netbooks is not very good. On top of that the biggest problem is most OEMs are only putting linux on their very low end selection. So basically your only option for a high end linux netbook is to do just what they did and buy the netbook of choice and put the OS they prefer on it.

The nc10 is one of the most reccomended netbooks on the web and im sure plenty of people where curious about the difficulty of getting linux installed on it ad how well it performed when installed.

Now what that has to do with the nc92 system is beyond me and why they are comparing them instead of comparing something relevant is anyones guess.

[[Knuckles]]

I was so excited to see netbooks come with linux... and then the EEE pc 1000h came out with very nice specs and only windows.

Still waiting for another decent netbook with linux preinstalled. It's not for the preinstallation -- the first thing I'll do is erase it and put something else, but I don't want to give my money to microsoft, and to add +1 on those "see we sold more netbooks with windows than with linux" stats.

I want my +1 on the linux column.

[clinamen]

I agree with simbloke -- with a little bit of work this laptop works perfectly in linux.

My preference is to make my own systems rather than to depend on some "just works" thing which never quite delivers.

At the moment the only thing that doesn't work for me is the wifi led light which is not turned off when I disable the wifi. DAMN!

I use a custom kernel for this machine, patched with the fn keys patch. All hardware is supported in the kernel, no need for binary drivers of any kind.

Wifi works flawlessly with ath5k driver.

Battery life -- I'm getting up to 7,5 hours (with wifi, usb, bluetooth, camera disabled), and around 5-6 hours in regular use.

I'm very happy with it overall.

[joffe]

Define "broken".

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/206295

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/231078

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=741228

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5195687

Very, very annoying.

[bnolsen]

I'm posting from an acer aspire one 110L which I ordered for $250 from newegg around black friday.
I put Arch Linux on it (so far I'm happy with my choice).

The samsung keyboard looks identical to the AA1. Is it the same or larger size?

Also it seems the samsung is vastly more expensive than all the other atom based netbooks out there.
Especially considering it's hardware wise almost identical to the MSI wind.
I don't see 6 cell batteries costing $200.

I see nothing in this review that tells me that this samsung brings anything new to the table.

Try again??

[clavko]

I'm getting all excited about new VIA's Nano based
netbook with VX800 integrated graphics. I'm not quite
sure, but I think VIA had XvMC for quite some time,
and this one could prove capable of playing some nice
HD video and feel a bit less underpowered than Atom

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16158

[Svartalf]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s....0/+bug/206295

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/231078

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=741228

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5195687

Very, very annoying.

That's not an Ubuntu issue, per se, but a Firefox one.

And, yes, it's very annoying- and one I find on eeeBuntu as well, but it's something boggled in the browser itself, not in any given distro.

[Svartalf]

I'm getting all excited about new VIA's Nano based
netbook with VX800 integrated graphics. I'm not quite
sure, but I think VIA had XvMC for quite some time,
and this one could prove capable of playing some nice
HD video and feel a bit less underpowered than Atom

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16158

Heh... They might actually have something good going there, finally, with the work they're doing with OpenChrome, etc. If a vendor couples it with a usable WiFi (No Broadcom stuff...), it should be a decent play if the support's "there" for the graphics stuff.

[joffe]

That's not an Ubuntu issue, per se, but a Firefox one.

And, yes, it's very annoying- and one I find on eeeBuntu as well, but it's something boggled in the browser itself, not in any given distro.

Well, my Firefox 3 works fine in Vista, XP and OpenSolaris so I could only presume it was a distro issue.