Lightwieght Computing

I’ve been thinking about getting a netbook for a while now, and I finally chose to buy one.

I got the Samsung N220

It has some nice features, including multi-touch touchpad and built-in bluetooth.

So, I booted it up for the first time and immediately went to customise it, only to find that with Windows 7 Starter they took “Simpler and easier to use” too literally. The most shocking is the fact that they have removed capability to change the background wallpaper and menu colours.
Now, I know that being able to make a computer look pretty isn’t really important, but I like to customise my machines.
So, as soon as I discovered such reduced control I began installing Ubuntu.

Booted from USB, about 15 minutes and the installation was done,
The only problem I had now is I couldn’t use features such as multi-touch and some of the built in function keys (Fn).

After searching around for about 2 hours I’ve managed to fix this, and so I’m going to post how here for anybody else who may be having the same problem.

To get the backlight working with the Fn key shortcuts open up terminal and type:

(make sure Ubuntu is fully updated (i.e. via Update Manager) first)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:voria/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install samsung-tools

[Follow any prompts until you've installed samsung-tools]

sudo apt-get install samsung-backlight


Now, from what I’ve read that fixes the backlight issues for some people, however for me it didn’t.
So, if your backlight is fixed don’t bother with this next step.

Edit /etc/default/grub

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub


and find the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"


and change it to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

(Note: if your’s doesn’t say “quiet splash” just at “acpi_backlight=vendor” to whatever it does say)

and run

sudo update-grub


Once that’s done, restart and the backlight should now work with the shortcuts.

Now, to fix that multi-touch.

Open up terminal and type

sudo gedit .multi_touch_startup.sh

and add the following into the file

#!/bin/bash
sleep 5
synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1
synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=1
synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinW=5
synclient EmulateTwoFingerMinZ=48

(these are the settings I find best work for me, feel free to tweak the numbers)
Save that and close it.
Now type

chmod 755 .multi_touch_startup.sh

This changes the file to allow Ubuntu to execute it.

Go to System -> Preferences -> Assistive Technologies
and ensure that “Enable assistive technologies” is checked.

Now go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications
and add the file you just created as an entry here.

Now restart and all should work.

Another note: All the commands where I type “gedit” are simply because I use gEdit as my default text editor, so if you prefer something else you can use that instead.