Libreboot X200 Tablet now available on Minifree. With Trisquel 8 preinstalled

18 risposte [Ultimo contenuto]
libreleah
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Iscritto: 04/03/2017

Hi everyone :)

Libreboot is a fully free (as in freedom) BIOS replacement, which initializes the hardware and loads your operating system. Minifree is known in the Trisquel community for providing laptops with this preinstalled alongside Trisquel.

As of today, Minifree has launched a new product: the Libreboot X200 Tablet.

This is similar to the regular Libreboot X200 which the Free Software Foundation already endorses. The X200 Tablet has these improvements over the X200:

* Better screen. It has an IPS panel, which provides better colour/contrast and viewing angles.

* Built-in wacom tablet with a stylus pen, which can be used for drawing.

The performance is similar to the X200. A sample of the X200 Tablet from Minifree has been sent to the Free Software Foundation, for evaluation under their Respects Your Freedom certification. I'm confident that it will be certified, since they already certify the X200, and the built-in wacom tablet is fully functional in libre GNU+Linux distros.

Here it is:
https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200-tablet/

~Leah

aloniv

I am a translator!

Offline
Iscritto: 01/11/2011

Does the tablet use the MultiTouch display, the outdoor display or a different one (see the link for details)?

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X200_Tablet

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

Some might have it, but I'm not currently focusing on that. You could mention it in the textbox on the checkout page, and I'd see if I have one that has it. Some X200 Tablets have it, some don't, according to thinkwiki. EDIT: Having re-read that thinkwiki page, it's unclear that even a few models exist with multi-touch. So you should assume that the answer is no.

Nonetheless, these devices can be used for drawing, with the provided stylus pen.

GrevenGull
Offline
Iscritto: 12/18/2017

But what about the "outdoor" display?

Ignacio.Agullo
Offline
Iscritto: 09/29/2009

On 25/04/18 23:55, wrote:
> As of today, Minifree has launched a new product: the Libreboot X200
> Tablet.

Great news. Thanks for expanding the number of free devices.

--
Ignacio Agulló · name at domain

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

Hopefully the FSF RYF announcement will be out soon.

nadebula.1984
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Iscritto: 05/01/2018

X200t was (and is) a nice shape-shifting tablet PC with digitizer pen support. I originally run Fedora "Design Suite" spin but subsequently switched to Debian/Trisquel.

I had five of them and shared (gave away) two with my friends. One's motherboard damaged and was thus unusable, so I have two remaining.

I didn't flash coreboot or libreboot on either of them yet, but I do have some usable (authorized by Lenovo's BIOS) Atheros WLAN adapters for them (X200, T400, W500 series).

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

If you have some X200 Tablets and you want Libreboot on them, you could send them to Minifree for flashing. Minifree has a Libreboot Installation Service:
https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-installation-service/

Price is per laptop/system flashed, but if you're sending more than 2 laptops, email me and I'll send you an invoice with a special price.

Eemeli
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Iscritto: 01/04/2014

I recently bought that x200 tablet from Minifree. Previously I had a 32bit x60s with libreboot, and it was worth the upgrade! The battery lasts 6 hours, and Minifree shipped an extra one. So 12 hours on the go! The wacom screen works well. I can make my notes on the screen instead of paper, and thus help save the environment. Using MyPaint (http://mypaint.org/about/) is awesome on this type of screen.

There's one issue (depending on your desktop environment): display rotation and digitizer pen input rotation. The bezel of the screen has a button for rotating the screen 90 degrees at a time. On MATE desktop it does rotate it, but not the digitizer. To fix this save the following into a file "rotate_input.sh", then make it executable: "chmod +x rotate_input.sh"


#!/bin/bash
# This script works in the MATE desktop:
#
# * When pressing the rotate screen button on the bezel, (keycode 153,
# possibly sends the XF86RotateWindows symbol), MATE always seems to
# rotate the screen.
#
# * The script below finds the current rotation, and makes the wacom
# driver set that same rotation for the stylus.
#
# If the bezel button wouldn't rotate the screen, e.g. it does noting,
# then one should instead make the following changes:
#
# * rotation==normal --> "xrandr -o left", and wacom to "rotate ccw"
# * rotation==left --> "xrandr -o inverted", and wacom to "rotate half"
# * rotation==inverted --> "xrandr -o right", and wacom to "rotate cw"
# * rotation==right --> "xrandr -o normal", and wacomd to "rotate none"
#
# The above would then cycle between each rotation. The difference
# between these two cases is: in this file we assume that the screen
# has been rotated before running the script. In the above we assume
# that the screen hasn't been rotated before running the script.
# Find the line in "xrandr -q --verbose" output that contains current screen orientation and "strip" out current orientation.
rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted|right)')"
# Using current screen orientation proceed to rotate screen and input tools.
case "$rotation" in
normal)
# rotate to the normal
xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled Pen stylus" rotate none
;;
left)
# rotate to left (counter clockwise)
xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled Pen eraser" rotate ccw
;;
inverted)
# rotate to inverted
xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled Pen eraser" rotate half
;;
right)
# rotate to right
xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled Pen eraser" rotate cw
;;
esac

Then go to System > Hardware > Keyboard Shortcut and assign a new shortcut that runs the above script when the screen rotation button is pressed. After this the digitizer should follow the orientation of the screen.

jonas5381
Offline
Iscritto: 05/16/2018

I tried this script but it didn't work. Any other suggestions?
Am I missing some step?

Thanks!

Eemeli
Offline
Iscritto: 01/04/2014

Okay, my bad. Here's a more detailed explanation. First of all you need to have packages installed which provide "xrandr" and "xsetwacom". These are probably "x11-xserver-util" and "xserver-xorg-input-wacom". I already had them installed so no problems there. A possible reason why the above script did nothing for you might be this: if pressing the bezel button didn't already rotate your screen, then the script would do nothing (by design).

I made the following three scripts. Use them depending on what's your situation.

* rotate_only_stylus.sh: Use this if you only want to set the stylus to your screen's orientation. Caveat: in the MATE-desktop pressing the bezel rotation button will always rotate the screen (but not the stylus). So this would happen when I add that bezel button as a keyboard shortcut to this script in the MATE desktop: once I press the button, first MATE intercepts the signal and rotates the screen, then it notices that it's a keyboard shortcut and runs my script, which sets the stylus orientation the same as the screen. Victory!

* rotate_screen.sh: Use this is you only want to rotate the display, or if your desktop environment will automatically set the stylus orientation based on the screen orientation. This was the right one for me when I tried the Trisquel 7 live USB hanging around (I run Parabola from the hard drive).

* rotate_stylus_and_screen.sh: Use this if your desktop enviroment does absolutely nothing automatically ;) I installed the very lightweight LXDE to try, and this was the script that made both the display and the stylus rotate correctly.

Here are the scripts:


#!/bin/bash
#
# rotate_screen.sh
#
# * The script below finds the current rotation, and and rotates the screen
# to the next orientation by 90 counterclockwise.
#
# * To rotate only the stylus (i.e. if your display is already rotated
# by your deskop environment), use "rotate_only_stylus.sh"
#
# * To rotate both the stylus and the screen (i.e. if your stulys acts weird
# after running this script), use "rotate_stylus_and_screen.sh"
#
# Find the line in "xrandr -q --verbose" output that contains current screen orientation and "strip" out current orientation.
rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted|right)')"
# Using current screen orientation proceed to rotate screen.
case "$rotation" in
normal)
# rotate to left (counterclockwise)
xrandr -o left
;;
left)
# rotate to inverted
xrandr -o inverted
;;
inverted)
# rotate to right
xrandr -o right
;;
right)
# rotate to the normal orientation
xrandr -o normal
;;
esac


#!/bin/bash
#
# rotate_only_stulys.sh
#
# * The script below finds the current rotation, and makes the wacom
# driver set that same rotation for the stylus.
#
# * To rotate the display too, use "rotate_stylus_and_screen.sh"
#
# * To rotate only the screen (i.e. if the stylus acts weird after
# running this script), use "rotate_screen.sh"
#
#
# Find the line in "xrandr -q --verbose" output that contains current screen orientation and "strip" out current orientation.
rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted|right)')"
# Find the device name from the STYLUS-entry in "xsetwacom list"
device="$(xsetwacom list | grep STYLUS | sed -E "s/( |\t)*id:.*//")"
# Using current screen orientation proceed to rotate input tools.
case "$rotation" in
normal)
# rotate to the normal
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate none
;;
left)
# rotate to left (counterclockwise)
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate ccw
;;
inverted)
# rotate to inverted
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate half
;;
right)
# rotate to right
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate cw
;;
esac


#!/bin/bash
#
# rotate_stylus_and_screen.sh
#
# * The script below finds the current display rotation, rotates the
# display by 90 degrees counterclockwise, and makes the wacom driver
# set that same rotation for the stylus.
#
# * To rotate only the stylus (i.e. if your display is already rotated
# by your deskop environment), use "rotate_only_stylus.sh"
#
# * To rotate only the screen (i.e. if the stylus acts weird after
# running this script), use "rotate_screen.sh"
#
#
# Find the line in "xrandr -q --verbose" output that contains current screen orientation and "strip" out current orientation.
rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted|right)')"
# Find the device name from the STYLUS-entry in "xsetwacom list"
device="$(xsetwacom list | grep STYLUS | sed -E "s/( |\t)*id:.*//")"
# Using current screen orientation proceed to rotate screen and input tools.
case "$rotation" in
normal)
# rotate to the normal
xrandr -o left
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate ccw
;;
left)
# rotate to left (counter clockwise)
xrandr -o inverted
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate half
;;
inverted)
# rotate to inverted
xrandr -o right
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate cw
;;
right)
# rotate to right
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set "$device" rotate none
;;
esac

jonas5381
Offline
Iscritto: 05/16/2018

Excellent! Works great!
Thank you so much!

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

Thank you Eemeli. I've made a copy of your notes and I will use these for new Minifree X200T orders.

EDIT:
specifically, I've added links to your posts here:

https://minifree.org/faq/

Eemeli
Offline
Iscritto: 01/04/2014

You're welcome. I have been quite busy and lazy lately so haven't added the documentation to libreboot yet. Those scripts are based on one from the Arch Linux wiki. I'll see how to add these... Probably as files in resourses/utilitities/x200t-screen-rotation + a mention somewhere else? There's no documentation page for the x200t yet is there?

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

The X200T documentation is virtually non-existent in Libreboot, since it's the same schematic and board design for the most part.
The digitizer needs to be documented, as you quite rightly point out.
The flashing process also needs to be documented (there is an incomplete guide currently under review, not yet merged).

nadebula.1984
Offline
Iscritto: 05/01/2018

I am also interested in another X series Tablet model. The X60t with 64-bit processor and SXGA+ screen. If there is a 3rd antenna, all the better.

Though the 945 series motherboard only support 3 GiB RAM, I still want a 64-bit processor.

libreleah
Offline
Iscritto: 04/03/2017

Eemeli, could you document this on libreboot.org? Libreboot docs are mostly for libreboot itself, but for things like this we often merge documentation to help people.

Info about submitting patches to the libreboot docs are here:
https://libreboot.org/git.html

Eemeli
Offline
Iscritto: 01/04/2014

Pull request done!

On a sidenote: the instructions at Libreboot for making pull requests,

https://libreboot.org/git.html#how-to-submit-your-patches-via-pull-requests

are VERY useful. I recently heard that a large part of people starting to work in software development have never heard of pull-requests, and would wonder why they can't just push to master directly. Not only is Libreboot good for free bios replacements, but also for teaching good habits in coding!

dani77
Offline
Iscritto: 06/09/2018

REVIEW:

After a long waiting time (about a month) my laptop arrived.
From packaging to the general state of the computer, everything is impeccable; carefully packed in bubble wrap was the laptop itself, charger, an extra battery and 3 sheets to accompany with general data and quick tips for working with a laptop with Libreboot.
The notebook was neatly clean, with everything running smoothly.

The less good it was the waiting time and the service of exchange of messages ... will have to evolve a lot in these 2 aspects, moreover, recommended.