The NOOKcolor from Barnes & Noble is an Android tablet computer that’s been turned into an e-book reader with the capacity to show pictures, store contacts, browse the web and play some video files. B&N has released an SDK and plans to compete simultaneously with the iPad and Kindle with this one device when they add a Google Marketplace app. That’s supposed to happen early next year.

All this is very exciting but it’s not why I bought it, I bought it because the NOOKcolor had been rooted, or modified to give its owner near complete control over the software. It also helped that others posted videos that showed some of the things a rooted NOOK color could do. So, within a couple hours of my purchase, I had rooted mine(thanks to the nookdev team!) and was off to load it with games and apps.

Finding these packages is tricky and for someone used to Synaptic, this process feels like an unsettling scavenger hunt. One must read wikis and forums to navigate the many places where the apk packages are available. After trying unsuccessfully to get many of the apks I wanted, I went and asked some free software friends who pointed me to F-Droid. F-Droid is an “app store” of sorts with the sole purpose of distributing free-as-in-freedom software to Android devices.

Among the apps I’ve grabbed from F-Droid are:
* Tiniest Open Source Violin – it’s just what it sounds like
* androidVNC – lets me view my desktop’s screen using the VNC protocol
* gvSIG Mini Maps – Similar to Google Maps, allows me to use multi-touch to move around many different map sources
* Jamendo – Download free music from the free culture crowd
* StatusNet – a client for identi.ca and other status.net microblogging sites

After loading up what I wanted, I looked for more. I learned of a couple of other lists of free software for the Android platform at https://wiki.koumbit.net/AndroidFreeSoftware and http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki/ListOfKnownFreeSoftwareApps (the second of which I will probably help extending starting with this post). You can also search places like Google Code and github for other free software Android apps. Here are a couple more I’ve loaded from their Google Code sites…
* daap-client – I can listen to my entire music library that’s hosted on my server
* android-vlc-Remote – allows you to control VLC(the awesome media player) on another computer and even browse for files to play via HTTP

Of all the apps I’ve loaded I would say the daap, VLC, and gvSIG are my favorites. It truly is an exciting time so check out the NOOKcolor… it’s only $249 and the hacking opportunities are endless. It’s also a great front where the software freedom battle can be waged early and with great impact on the quickly growing mobile and tablet markets!

Thunderbird 3 brings one rather annoying change: the default search delivers confusing search results formatted into separate tabs sorted by relevance rather than date. To use the old style search, just click the icon on the left of the search box and choose anything other than the top option(“Search all messages”). Whew. That was a close one.

As a side note, I’m not sure if it’s my new machine or new operating system (GNU/Linux vs. XP) but this “classic style” search seems a lot faster to me in Thunderbird 3.

The following is what I did to get Ubuntu 10.04 x86(32-bit) running properly on a Sony VAIO VPCF121GX PCG-81114L. This laptop is currently sold at Costco but shares the same body with many other VPCF12***X models. Sony has an annoying way of putting two model numbers on their laptops. I had more luck once I used the one on the bottom (PCG) rather than the one on the screen bezel(VPC).

I’m not sure if these instructions will work for other models but please comment if it works for you. When booting from a 10.04.1 livecd or a default install I wasn’t hearing any sound, couldn’t use the touchpad, could not resume from suspend. I’ve solved 2.5 of 3 problems so far(mic still doesn’t work).

Sound

To fix the sound not working, alsa needs to be updated via a backported package. This package is for my current kernel of 2.6.32-24 though you’ll want to make sure you get the corresponding version for your kernel.

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-`uname -r`

I wrote mostly above because the microphone still doesn’t work on the laptop. I’ve not tried any external mics or usb headsets yet but will update this article if I do find a solution.

Touchpad

This laptop uses and Alps Synaptics touchpad which is fairly common so I don’t really understand why Ubuntu doesn’t support it. The problem appears to be with the auto-detection of the touchpad(lots of Macintosh messages show in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log). To get the touchpad working:

1. Run: sudo vi /etc/default/grub and modify it so the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line looks like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”i8042.nopnp”
2. Run: sudo update-grub
3. Reboot.

Suspend

I wasn’t able to resume from suspend until I loaded the latest Nvidia driver. This laptop has an Nvidia GeForce 310M and I found the driver on a forum post. I still cannot switch to other consoles with Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] so hopefully a future version of their driver will fix that. You can get the driver via ftp from:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/256.44/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

This is a shell script(a 24mb one at that) so you’ll need to open a terminal and cd to wherever you save it and then:

chmod a+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

At this point you need to switch to root at runlevel 3. As root at the console I did this by typing:

init 3

Then I was able to login, sudo su to root again and run the driver installation script with:

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.44.run

Now my suspend works!

I’m starting to believe in the power of audio to spread GNU/Linux. The nice thing about podcasts is that you can absorb them while doing other things but you can learn a lot. If you’re like me, you login to Youtube to check out some videos and you end up shifting over to some other page midstream. So you miss part of the video and basically you’re then listening to a (poor) podcast.

Why now? Well I fired up iTunes a couple weeks ago and searched for ‘Linux’. I then found some great podcasts: The Linux Action Show, LUGRadio, and The Linux Link Tech Show. There’s only one way to say it: Linux is cool software. You need to know about cool software so check these out!

Linux Action Show – quite entertaining, co-hosts Bryan and Chris have a good comedic chemistry and talk about Linux from a developer and systems integrator point of view. They do the news on their bi-weekly show, answer listener questions and offer reviews of hardware and software in the GNU/Linux community. Thanks to Bryan for the Linux is cool software idea. http://linuxactionshow.com

LUGRadio – this one’s from Britain and features four guys who have various perspectives on Linux(Jono is the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical). What’s nice about this one is that they have more hosts and seem to delve deeper into the aspects of community, freedom, and the direction various free software projects are going. They’re also hosting LUGRadio Live at the Metreon with exhibits and speakers on April 12-13th, 2008 so that might be fun to check out if you’re going to be nearby. Full access is $10 only available in advance(or free if you come from far away). http://lugradio.org

The Linux Link Tech Show – This the longest running Linux podcast or so they claim. They’ve had an impressive list of interviews in the past and this show feels quite down to earth with less of a radio show feel. http://tllts.org/

Enjoy and if you know of any other Linux/FOSS podcasts I should check out, leave a comment.