Sylvania G NetBook gOS report

[theoak]

1) Using the pre-installed gOS 2.9, WIFI only works if I am within 10
feet of my router. I called Sylvania's tech support, and they said
this is a known issue, and expect to have a better driver within a
week or so. They told me to install the latest ISO from their site,
but it did not help with this. I installed Windows XP and WIFI works
great with good signal strength and range, so this is not a hardware
issue.

2) Youtube videos are very choppy in gOS, but are very smooth in
Windows, so maybe a little more work needed in video driver? (That is
just a guess.)

3) I installed sun-java plugin, and went to their java plugin test
page at www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp and the NetBook locked
up tight, and would not respond. I finally held in the power button to
turn it off, and tried again, with the same results.

4) I downloaded gOS 3.0 beta (dated Aug 07, 2008, and it would not
finish booting, so I don't know if it fixes the WIFI issue.

These are not meant to be complaints, but just making the developers
aware of problems needing work. I look forward to a perfected version
of this beautiful OS.

[theoak]

Update on gOS 3 beta:

I re-downloaded the ISO, and burned a new disk. This one does boot, so
the other CD I made was bad, or else the ISO was corrupt.

ISSUES:

1) I get no top bar (the one with the gOS applications menu, and
network applet) so no WIFI
2) The bottom right gadget is just a white box that says, "0: error
loading gadget."
3) There is no mouse cursor, or more accurately, it is invisible.
Using the synaptics touchpad results in icons zooming and so forth,
but I can't see the cursor.

[onekidneyjoe]

Hi, i'm new to this group.
I was just wondering how you update. I ordered that netbook today. Do
you have to buy an external CD/DVD rom drive or something. Is there an
update manager that can upgrade the OS like in Ubuntu?
I actually ordered two of them. One for a friend for school, and one
for myself to help her out if she runs into problems.

[mahjongg]

This is a beta version, therefore updating is temporarily disabled, as
the updates (which come from Ubuntu, not gOS) might (probably will)
break the install. It's expected that the final release will have a
working updater again.

Note that I'm not connected in any way to GoodOS, this is just my
understanding of the situation at the moment.

[frank754]

The bottom white box probably covers 2 or 3 other google gadgets. Even
on larger computers, it does that. You need to drag them apart and
spread them out on the screen. The one for news ticker is a bit buggy,
that's probably the one that gives an error. Once you drag it you can
see a little box with a couple symbols on top. One of these will
delete it. Also the gadgets may move around a bit unit a few x
restarts or reboots, then they should stay put.
As far as the cursor goes, it doesn't install correctly on the
Sylvania G, so it's invisible. With the touchpad or an external mouse,
get all the way into the upper left corner to the G menu, and click.
You can "feel" your way into the pull down menu, and go to terminal.
Once in the terminal, do gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and a a line
in the "Device" section:
Option "SWCursor" "1"
and restart X, then you will have a cursor.

To install via cd, you will need to buy an external USB cd drive, then
it should boot from that easily to install the OS.

[theoak]

It appears that the Realtek rtl8187 USB WIFI card does not have a
reliable Linux driver. WIFI will only work if I am within 10 feet of
my router. If I walk to another room with it, the connection drops.
I've googled til my fingers are bleeding, and only find people
"trying" to use this WIFI chipset. (Try googling for, "ubuntu rtl8187
help".)

Tech support says that this is a known issue, and they don't know when
they will have a Linux driver that works. They suggested trying WPA
encryption instead of WEP, but that didn't help. They also suggested
installing Windows XP. (GRRRRRRRR........) Funny, but their website
says that they don't support Windows XP on this device. Apparently
they don't support Linux either!!

Also the video driver does not seem to support acceleration.

Has anyone gotten their WIFI or video acceleration to work with this
NetBook?

[jop...@gmail.com]

I've installed the Sylvania ISO (2.9 M) on my Everex Cloudbook (almost
the same as the gNetbook from Sylvania). I had a the little problem
with the purple flicker screen, but after you install everything with
SafeMode video, things are okay. I have the top bar (with the wifi
icon) and noticed that the Wifi is now using ndiswrapper with the
Windows rtl8187 driver (unless I'm wrong, but surely looks like it in
dmesg). Anyhow, with this new gOS image (when compared to the
original 2.0 that came with the Cloudbook), the range is now very good
(sitting outside on the balcony and still have no problem with the
connection which was impossible before).

Now, the only real problem that I have is that the CPU detected (Via
C7) is only clocked at 600 MHz and the speed step functionality is not
working (can't scale from 400 to 1200 MHz as it is supposed). To fix
this, it seems that I must recompile a kernel... As for the video
acceleration ? This is after I get the C7 working the way it should.

[Amin]

> Now, the only real problem that I have is that the CPU detected (Via
> C7) is only clocked at 600 MHz and the speed step functionality is not
> working (can't scale from 400 to 1200 MHz as it is supposed).

There is a solution to that. I have purchased a Sylvania G as well and
learned a few things..
Go here: http://www.a110wiki.de/wiki/CPU
Consult the section on using the backport for the 2.6.24 kernel.
You’ll need to install the e_powersaver.ko file yourself; I placed
mine in lib/modules/<kernelversion>/drivers/cpufreq/
You might need to install build-essential so you can build the module.

> > It appears that the Realtek rtl8187 USB WIFI card does not have a
> > reliable Linux driver.

Yea. Mine works OK, but I use Xubuntu.

>
> > Tech support says that this is a known issue, and they don't know when
> > they will have a Linux driver that works. They suggested trying WPA
> > encryption instead of WEP, but that didn't help. They also suggested
> > installing Windows XP. (GRRRRRRRR........) Funny, but their website
> > says that they don't support Windows XP on this device. Apparently
> > they don't support Linux either!!

Jeez. Yea, I can do WPA2 and everything, but sometimes I get
intermittent flakiness.

> > Also the video driver does not seem to support acceleration.

Well it does, and it doesn't. VIA has closed source drivers, but I
don't think they have some available for our kernel version. The
openchrome project won't give you 3d (yet).. good news is VIA just
released some drivers (including our graphics chipset) as opensource
so hopefully our time will come.

[Amin]

> Is there an update manager that can upgrade the OS like in Ubuntu?

I'd hope so, since gOS is a ubuntu variant, but I wouldn't trust it
beyond grabbing a few extra packages.

I didn't have an external drive, so I went hardcore and used PXE to
install a minimalist copy of XUbuntu. It rocks, but I still have some
of the same hardware problems that some of you guys have. If you want
to do PXE easily, install this software package I wrote and follow the
instructions:

http://github.com/aastaneh/easypxe/tree/master

Hope that helps. The real question is: does gOS have a PXE install
environment??

-Amin

[pastorgo...@gmail.com]

RE: Sylvania Gnetbook

I recently went into synaptic and did a check for updates, and applied
the marked files/programs.
NOW, I lost the network icon and the battery icon on the taskbar.
I found an alternate battery indicator, but I cannot get to a network
icon:
When I go to network under user/applications, I cannot modify the
screen, and I cannot find a way to discover available wireless
networks.
Can anyone help me out?

Gordon

[Emily]

If anybody finds a good way to get the wireless working, please let me
know. I got mine last night and I'm about ready to toss it... I can
view maybe one web page and then it flakes out totally. Argh...

On Sep 26, 12:07 pm, "pastorgordon1...@gmail.com"