After some research it turns out that (contrary to popular opinion) not every unlocked Google Nexus actually has the ‘official’ Google Firmware. Some of them have a Samsung variant (WTF !?) of the firmware. Now I really don’t want to get off the technical topic, but I personally think that this means Google is misleading their most loyal customer base. The reason I chose a Nexus device over the (from a hardware perspective) superior HTC One X was the fact that they were supposed to have the official Google Firmware and I did not have to wait forever for bugfixes from the manufacturers.

There are a reportedly several different versions out there. Google’s ‘official’ build for the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus is named ‘yakju’. Samsung builds ‘yakjusc’, ‘yakjuxw’ and ‘yakjuux’. While they appear mostly the same, only Google’s yakju build is likely to get updates as they happen. Go figure why there was a need for others …

To find out which version your Nexus uses you can use this key combination (in the phone app)

*#*#4636#*#*

or for a more permanent option grab “Android System Info” from the Google Market.

Disclaimer: this procedure obiously has the potential to ‘brick’ your mobile. Only attempt this if you are absolutely comfortable with flashing device firmware. Proceed at your own risk !!! If you decide to proceed – BACKUP YOUR DEVICE FIRST ! Check the documentation for ‘adb backup‘.

All the notes below are for GSM (HSPDA+) NEXUS (GT I9250 - maguro) devices !

Android SDK Install

The Android SDK can be downloaded from the Androide Site: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html)

Android Fastboot Mode

For all the following procedures to work the device needs to be in ‘Fastboot Mode’
How put your phone in fastboot mode:

1. Power off the phone
2. Hold the Volume Up Key + Volume Down Key pressed and at the same time press the Power button.

You should now see an Android robot with it’s body opened (see photo).

wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r18-linux.tgz
tar -xzf android-sdk_r18-linux.tgz
android-sdk-linux/tools/android update sdk --no-ui
#test fastboot mode
#this should show the serial number of the connected device
cd android-sdk-linux/platform-tools/
fastboot devices


Adding the USB Driver definitions for the Galaxy Nexus

vim /etc/udev/rules.d/70-android.rules
#add this line:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"

Unlocking the Bootloader

NOTE: This command will erase the whole device. Make sure backups have been taken before (check the ‘adb backup’ tool http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/adb.html).

fastboot oem unlock

Flashing the new Firmware

The ‘factory images’ for Nexus devices can be found here: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images – make sure to choose the correct model. The commands below are for the European GSM/HSPDA+ version of 4.0.4 (yakju)

wget https://dl.google.com/dl/android/aosp/yakju-imm76i-factory-8001e72f.tgz
tar -xzf yakju-imm76i-factory-8001e72f.tgz
fastboot flash bootloader yakju-imm76i/bootloader-maguro-primela03.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot flash radio yakju-imm76i/radio-maguro-i9250xxla02.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot -w update yakju-imm76i/image-yakju-imm76i.zip

After the last step the handset will reboot and you should be presented with a Google “Stock” device and go through the normal Android setup wizard. As it should have been when I purchased this “Google” branded device in the first place – thank you Google (and of course SAMSUNG) for wasting my time !

If you want to lock your bootloader after the upgrade (not necessary) you can go into Fastboot Mode again and issue the following command:

fastboot oem lock

Vector Graphics

Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/)
Xara Extreme (http://www.xaraxtreme.org/)

Raster Graphics

Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/)

Photo Editing

Gimp (see above)
Darktable (http://www.darktable.org/)
RawTherapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com/)
Luminance HDR (http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/)
Layout Tools (DTP): Scribus (http://scribus.net/canvas/Scribus)

3D Modelling & Animation

Gimp (see above + plugins)
Blender (http://www.blender.org/)

Video Editing

CinelerraCV (http://cinelerra.org/)
OpenShot (http://www.openshot.org/)

Audio Editing

Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
Ardour (http://www.ardour.org/)

Before anybody thinks this is to start a flame-war – I don’t have a problem with a creative professional whose livelyhood depends on this work needing a professional package such as Adobe Creative Suite. I do however have a problem when some graduate or work-experience kid dabbling in graphics tells me he can not do this with anything else. Hopefully this list helps to open some minds ….

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

HT to WebUpd8 http://ppa.webupd8.org/

1. Download an Ethernet enabled ISO from Tablets x86

   wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75945873/android-x86-4.0-eth0-generic_x86-20120426.iso.torrent
transmission android-x86-4.0-eth0-generic_x86-20120426.iso.torrent

2. Create new ViratualBox VM
   
   
   
   Important Settings (see screenshots)
   • OS: Linux, Version: Linux 2.6
   • Enable VTx/AMD-V
   • Use Bridged Network Adapter (if you want to allow direct Internet Access)
3. Mount the ISO file downloaded previosly and start the VM
   
4. Create the Root Filesystem (ext3) on the VBox .vdi created with the new VM, mark as bootable
5. Write the Filesystem changes to disk (VDI) and format the disk
6. Install GRUB Boatloader
7. Copy files from ISO to VDI
8. Unmount the ISO image and reboot

Note: You need to disable the mouse pointer integration (if you have installed VirtualBox Client Add-ons) in the menu of Virtualbox (‘Machine’ –> ‘Disable Mouse Integration’) when you start the VM (see screenshot). I have not found a way to disable this by default on Virtualbox on Ubuntu (If anybody has managed this I would love to know how !)



9. Start the Android Setup Wizard to set locale and you should be up and running (network should already function to test external sites from Android browser) !

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp

TIP: Go to the “Windows” menu and select ‘Single-Window Mode’ to use Gimp in one window (see screenshot).

Thanks to http://www.linlap.com/wiki/acer+aspire+s3 the solution was found quite quickly.

sudo vim /etc/default/grub

This will open the grub configuration file. (Grub is the initial boot selection software)
To be able to dim the screen brightness, You’ve got to modify the line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

to these two lines:

pcie_aspm=force
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor elevator=noop"

Another neat tip: intel-gpu-tools can be used to control brightness from the commandline.

# will set brightness at 50%
intel_backlight 50

sudo apt-get install gmtp mtpfs mtp-tools

NOTE: Unfortunately there is a bug in the 64-bit version at the moment (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mtpfs/+bug/936165) – which means it’s not all that useful to me at the moment.

To disable the default Guest account you need to edit lightdm.conf and add a line (allow-guest=false).

sudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=unity-greeter
user-session=ubuntu
allow-guest=false

Tested in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin & Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

With the recent Ubuntu 12.04 LTS upgrade I was in the process of upgrading a few other notebooks and noticed that the release schedule for some of the Ubuntu variants (Kubuntu, Xubuntu & Lubuntu) has been brought in line with the main OS branch. So while waiting for the installs on the other machines to finish I thought about updating the EEEPC as well. I tried Xubuntu at first, but did not like the interface (and the default apps pre-installed) and there were hardly any performance gains.

But installing Lubuntu was a different story. I am very impressed by the LXDE desktop environment and the UI performance. The responsiveness of the UI is remarkably better than other desktop managers on a small netbook. And you still get the underlying strengths of the Ubuntu (Debian) based package management in it’s latest revision. That means most applications come packaged and there’s PPA’s for the rest.

Looks Lubuntu’s the new favourite. Hat tip to the Lubuntu maintainers and LXDE developers – excellent work in producing a no-frills but very functional, decent looking & usable desktop environment for devices that are getting a bit older … !

UPDATE: [11-May-2012] The reason the PPA does not work is that it has been disabled by Ubuntu due to a licensing issue with (not hard to guess) Oracle. Flexion.org have however created a script (hosted on Github) to allow the automated update of Java 6 for those who still require it as a dependency.

wget https://github.com/flexiondotorg/oab-java6/raw/0.2.1/oab-java6.sh -O oab-java6.sh
chmod +x oab-java6.sh
sudo ./oab-java6.sh

Hat tip to Martin Wimpress from Flexion !

Note: If you do not need Java 6 it’s much safer to stick to the current Oracle Java 7 release.

This is an update to the Java6 install on 11.10 since the previous PPA repository has not been updated. To install on Precise Pangolin you need to add the following repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-plugin

EDIT: [01-May-2012] since there seem to be many comments about the repo not working here’s the manual process (since I can’t find any working PPA that is actually maintained).

Download the Linux .bin install (32 or 64bit) from Oracle’s site Java Archive.

#change permissions to allow execute
chmod a+x jdk-6u[current_version_number]-linux-i586.bin
#run the installer file
./jdk-6u[current_version_number]-linux-i586.bin

Note: you obviously need to also maintain the Java6 updated manually.