samsung

Installing Custom ROM on Galaxy S4 International from Ubuntu

Or as an alternative title "Liberating your Galaxy S4 Hardware from Samsung Bloatware". Unfortunately there is lots of (ad-infested) blogs and forums with dodgy pieces of information on this topic and I found it pretty hard to get descent concise information. So hopefully this might help some poor Linux User liberate their phone. Whilst this has been tested on a Samsung GT-I9505 S4 International LTE device (JFLTEXX series) it should be applicable to other similar Samsung phones that are not fastboot capable (ie. all but the Galaxy Nexus range).   by  Janitors  NOTE: If you have encrypted your device do yourself a favor and do a factory reset BEFORE you start the process (otherwise you will be stuck in a boot-loop as the encryption key will be gone and the device will not start without it). See note below to recover to stock Samsung image if you need to. Rooting This area is the hardest to get decent (Ubuntu relevant) information. However (contrary to some forum entries out there) Heimdall is the most workable solution to use from Ubuntu - binary .deb packages are available from https://bitbucket.org/benjamin_dobell/heimdall/downloads. There is both a commandline package as well as a GUI available for Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 as well as other Linux distros. Note [2014-11-24]: Had to upgrade my daughters S4 Mini and I noticed that Heimdall is now in the default UBUNTU Repositories. You can install simply by 'sudo apt-get install heimdall-flash' now. Make sure the device has Developer mode enabled Go to Application…

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Chromebook tips to get started

Just got myself (actually it's for our Office Manager back in OZ) one of these Chromebooks while in Europe (since Google Australia with their absolutely hopeless hardware strategy do not seem to be able to ship any devices - Nexus 4 anyone ?) . Since the first days turned out to be a bit of a frustrating experience, I thought I share some of the findings as I had a hard time finding much useful info on troubleshooting ChromeOS. Wireless Connection (WIFI) Do not use WPA (or for that matter WEP) connections with ChromeOS. I had extreme difficulties browsing webpages on the Chrombook. Some pages would load, some pages would not load at all. There seemed to be no consitency to it as some would load one day, but not another. Somewhere in the Google Groups there seemed to be people reporting issues with wireless connections using WEP. It turned out that the Wireless Modem Router (Telekom Austria supplied Pirelli PBS modem) where I was staying was set to WPA encryption only by default. Once I figured out how to set the unit to WPA2 (which these days should really be the default anyway) things started to actually work consistently. Check the sections below (specially chrome://diagnostics) to see how you can find out what's going wrong. However to save some trouble & frustrations, before you do anything make sure your Chrombook connects using WPA2 ! Terminal CTRL+ALT+T will launch the Chrome Shell which is a slightly odd and very cut-down…

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Galaxy Nexus Firmware Upgrade on Ubuntu (manual)

As a Galaxy Nexus Owner I have been waiting for months for an OTA (over the air) upgrade to the factory installed Firmware (4.0.2). I am finally sick of waiting and complaining to Google (an absolute lost cause). 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…

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Accessing Samsung Galaxy Nexus as USB Media Device Ubuntu 12.04

To use a Samsung Galaxy Nexus as a media device (MTP) there is a utility called gMTP. 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.

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Installing Samsung Multifunction Printer – Ubuntu 11.10

Getting Multifunction Printers to scan under Linux can be a bit of a pain. The Samsung SCX-3400 I had to install recently was no exception. Here are the necessary steps I had to perform: Ignore all Samsung Provided CD's and downloads. They do not work under Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) Add Samsung Unified Driver repository http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/smfpv3.html Install Samsung drivers and libsane-extras Edit sane configuration files vim /etc/apt/sources.list #add the Samsung Unified Driver Repo deb http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/ debian extra wget http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/suldr.gpg apt-key add suldr.gpg apt-get update apt-get install samsungmfp-data samsungmfp-driver samsungmfp-network samsungmfp-scanner samsungmfp-configurator-data samsungmfp-configurator-qt4 libsane-extras The following sane config files need to be modified (add lines) /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf # Samsung SCX-3400 usb 0x04e8 0x344f /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules # Samsung SCX-3400 ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="344f", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes" The entries above are for the SCX-3400 model. To find the USB ID's for other models use sane-find-scanner Thanks to the following Ubuntu Forum participants for providing some the tips: http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/installation-samsung-scx/

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