Using Ubuntu on the ASUS Eee PC T101MT Tablet PC

Ubuntu The Specifications

Brand:

Asus

Model:

T101MT

RAM Memory:

1 to 2 GiB

Processor:

Intel Atom 450

Integrated Graphics:

GMA 3150

Distributions used:

Ubuntu 10.04-11.04

These instructions work with Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) and Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty). Unfortunately support for pressure sensitivity on Natty Narwhal is incomplete. The two finger daemon on Natty is experimental and has some limitations.

Tested with Ubuntu Desktop Edition (Gnome) and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Not completely tested with Kubuntu (KDE), but it should work just as well.

The original forum entry discussing this machine's configuration can be found at

Basic steps

Please note

* It is important to find out which type of touchscreen you have:

*If you find that two-finger scrolling and tapping on the touch-pad (not screen) sometimes doesn't work but the cursor starts hopping over the screen wildly, it's because you just used Windows (how dare you! Smile :-) ) and Windows changed the touch-pad configuration. You always have to turn the Eee PC off after using Windows and turn it back on to use Ubuntu instead of simply rebooting.

For 12.04, Precise Pangolin (and onwards?)

The process is relatively same for the later versions of Ubuntu except the addition of twofing which adds multitouch capabilities.

For 11.04, Natty Narwhal

For 10.10, Maverick Meerkat

For Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx

  1. Download the common touch-screen support package: egalax-multi-touch-driver-common.deb and install it by double-clicking on it.

  2. Open a terminal, enter gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub and change the line that starts with
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
    to
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"
    Then call
    sudo update-grub
  3. To enable full brightness, open the file /etc/rc.local with root rights:
    gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local
    ABOVE the line that reads exit 0, add the following line:
    setpci -s 00:02.0 f4.b=ff
    Save the file and reboot (or reboot after having performed the following steps).
  4. To make two-finger scrolling work on the touchpad, press Alt+F2 and enter
    gksudo gedit /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/96-synaptics-twofing.conf
    An editor with an empty file will load. Paste there the following text:
    Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad two finger scrolling"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "10"
    Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinW" "7"
    Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "True"
    Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "True"
    Option "VertEdgeScroll" "False"
    Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "False"
    Driver "synaptics"
    EndSection
    Now press Alt+F2 again and enter
    gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/scroll_method --type=int 2
    Nothing will happen then, that's okay. Log off and back in, now two-finger scrolling on the touchpad should work.

Touch-Screen

To Rotate The Screen

Use the touchrotate script that you have installed before (see "Basic steps").

You can rotate the screen and touch-screen by calling touchrotate with one of its parameters:

Examples:

Underlying Concept

There always seems to be a lot of confusion about how touchrotate works. The important thing to understand is that we are dealing with two devices: An output device (the 'screen', display) and an input device (the 'touch', USB HID). To rotate the output we use xrandr to rotate the input we use xinput with a coordinate transformation matrix. To be able to use xinput and xrandr we need to identify the device names. So if your device varies you may have to change touchrotate so that your actual device name is used by the script!

Express Gate/Screenrotate Button

How to use the little button next to the power button.

You can map the rotation to a key combination with the Keyboard Shortcut tool provided for ubuntu, just add a new shortcut and set e.g.

If you have a second generation screen and plan on using Multitouch functionality you will need to use another method (Multitouch)

If The Camera Is Up-side Down

Gimp

Support for pressure sensitivity on Natty Narwhal is currently incomplete

MyPaint

or

Multitouch

First generation touchscreens

Experimental Two-Finger Touch Daemon

Second generation screens

* If you want to use multitouch you need to change three things:

* The second change is about screenrotation, you will have to exchange the touchrotate script provided by plippo with this script http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11164649&postcount=993

* The third change is concerning the Expressgate/Screenrotate Button: You will need to put this code into a new file, make it executable and put it into System > Preferences > Startup Applications

 #!/bin/bash
#
while true
do
    press=$(acpi_listen -c 1 | grep 0000007b | awk '{ print $3 }')
    hold=$(acpi_listen -t 2 | grep 0000007d | awk '{ print $3 }')

    if [ "$press" == "0000007b" ]
        then
            if [ "$hold" != "0000007d" ]
                then
                    touchrotate toright
            fi
    fi
done

Kinetic Scrolling

One Finger Scrolling With FireFox

One Finger Scrolling With Chromium

Skype

GMail Video Chat

Microphone Issue (Skype And Google Chat)

Microphone works in Ubuntu Voice Recorder, but not with the above two.

For older versions of Ubuntu, download padevchooser, launch the application, click on input, click on the middle button on the upper right to unblock the channels, and put one of channels to zero and the other one to 100%. (padevchooser is ""not available"" for Natty versions onward, as it is deprecated (for some time) according to upstream. )

GuvcView

GKeyManager

Installation

  1. Install libxdo1 from debian squeeze for example downloading in deb form from here:

    http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/libxdo1

  2. If not installed yet, install acpi. For example by calling "sudo apt-get install acpi" Ubuntu should have a default acpid package, works just the same.
  3. After executing the deb file, or after having compiled from source, you should have a file called /etc/acpi/grotatescreen.sh Executing this should rotate the screen with a notification. This is its default behavior. But it can also launch a menu, linked to an xml file with proper instructions. There are examples of those xmls in /usr/share/doc/gkeymanager/xml/ - But you can also find icons and xml files in the source of this application Gkeymanager can launch apps, move/resize windows, get fullscreen with a touch of a finger, and so on. How it works: gkeymanager will search for the xml's first in $HOME/.gekeymanager and then in /etc/gkeymanager/xml. In both cases the icons should be in a subfolder ./icons/
  4. To make the program start at each boot put in the boot menu "gkeymanager twoclicks" or "gkeymanager showtray" (if you just want the icon) launched in your startup program manager.
  5. To make it run every time the rotate button is pressed the press of x86screenSaver has to be binded to the command /etc/acpi/grotatescreen.sh
  6. In ubuntu with gnome you can use keyboard shorcuts under System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts

  7. With compiz bind the keypress to the action in /etc/acpi/events/event_rotate
  8. In the source file there is a complete help file that explains the program behaviour and how to change the xml files.

Virtual Keyboard

Known Bugs

  1. The first bug is reported here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/625511 In the Maverick Kernel (tested with 2.6.35-19) the eGalax/DWAV touchscreen (USB ID 0eef:480d) found in the Eee PC T101MT doesn't send multitouch events although the correct module hid_egalax is included in the Kernel. The reason is that the MULTI_INPUT quirk is still used for this device although it is no longer needed, and it prevents the module from working.

  2. The second problem is that some ubuntu pathches in evdev don't let twofing multitouch application working properly. Here is the bug link:

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/637874

T101MT (last edited 2013-09-04 18:09:46 by dsl-hkibrasgw2-50deff-149)