[conspire] Elise's laptop

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Sun, 2017-09-03 at 21:22 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Elise Scher (elise.scher01 at gmail.com):
> 
> > Hi Rick,
> >      I am about to look at Little Blue. HP Stream. Model 11-r010nr,
> S/N
> > 5CD5387LQL, P/N N5X86UA#ABA. I will take pictures of bottom and send
> to you.
> 
> Hi, Elise!  Thanks for the mail (and photos).  Seems like a really
> nice
> little notebook.  And light!
> 
> Some notes in passing about the wee beastie:
> 
> Intel Celeron N3050 'Bay Trail' (dual core) 1.6 GHz, which is 64-bit
> (yay!)

Funny that you put the exact processor model in your post, yet say that
it is Bay Trail, and nobody but Dana thought to question this. For those
following at home, he found that the N3050 is Braswell, not Bay Trail.

> Probably comes with either 2 GB or 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM -- but best to  
>    assume it's 2GB, which is a pity and (with the CPU) makes this a
> bit
>    challenging to get decent performance on modern desktop Linux
> Comes with an SSD, not a hard drive (might be on account of limited
>    space inside, but that's fine).  SSDs are awesome.  Capacity
> probably 32GB.

It was 2GB/32GB.

> 11.6" LED screen able to do 1366x768 pixels
> Intel 'HD' integrated graphics
> Wireless chip: 802.11bgn (but this is an option, hence might be 
>   present, or might not), probably Broadcom BCM43142, driver name
> 'wl'.

This model had Realtek wireless, which was recognized out of the box,
but could hardly pick up any kind of signals until Dana found that the
hardware was capable of two antennae, and the Linux driver was
attempting to use _only_ the wrong one. He mentioned some kind of kernel
module option that corrected the issue, allowing it to connect without
the Edimax.

> Some touchpad or other
> 1 x USB 2.0 port
> 1 x USB 3.0 port
> 2.6 pounds
> no optical disc included
> fanless design (hence silent, which is excellent)
> Memory slot is said to be 'not user accessible', which only
>    means it's a bit more trouble to get to than usual.
> Slot for several types of flash media (SD cards, etc.)

I saw only a MicroSD slot.

> Some audio chip, not well documented

Realtek.

> HDMI video port
> headphone + microphone combo jack
> apparently has _no_ ethernet LAN port
> probably includes a webcam
> there's Bluetooth, but getting it going requires some work
> 
> This wee beastie was marketed as a 'cloud computing' appliance, not
> really as a standalone computer.  They loaded it with Window 10 Home 
> and included a one-year subscription to MS Office 365 Personal, where
> the MS-Office applications mostly run off of Microsoft's cloud
> computing
> cluster, and by default your data files would live there, too (if I
> recall correctly).  
> 
> Basically, it's a lightweight 'cloud' appliance bitty-box, like a
> Google
> Chromebook but bundled with Microsoft 'cloud' subscription stuff.
> 
> However, have no fear:  This machine has (probably? maybe?) enough
> grunt
> for a reasonably modest Linux desktop distribution like Linux Mint,
> though it's certainly not a _fast_ machine by 2017 standards.  You'll
> need to be a little careful not to burden it with too heavy-weight
> desktop software.  Make no mistake, though:  The CPU is a bit anemic
> by 2017 standards.
> 
> Here's a slightly sobering article about installing desktop Linux on a
> similar HP Stream 11 model:
> http://thepurdman.com/install-galliumos-linux-on-hp-stream-11/

I had not looked at that article until now, and it seems to be about a
unit that was not identical (Broadcom wireless vs. Realtek). I didn't
even think to check whether Elise's has any Bluetooth that would need
firmware. Also, knowing that person's reasons for choosing GalliumOS
instead of the more mainstream distros would've saved some time.
> 
> I need to explain that article's main points:
> 
> 1.  He found it necessary for performance's sake to skip the
> heavy-weight Linux distros like Ubuntu _and_ even the main Linux Mint
> variants.  He went with a lighter-weight variant of Xubuntu, the 
> XFCE4 Desktop flavour of Ubuntu called 'GalliumOS'.  XFCE4 is less
> stressful on hardware than any of the GNOME variants in Mint and
> Ubuntu.

In particular, GalliumOS is tailored specifically for hardware that
shipped with ChromeOS, with a number of hardware tweaks to that effect.
Through experimentation (below) we saw that the merit of an XFCE-based
system lighter than Xubuntu.

> 2.  After experimenting, he also gave up on the internal wifi chip and
> bought a $9 USB-wifi adapter off Amazon that works better.  
> https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY
> He says the notebook's internal chip just isn't very good, with range
> and dropout problems.  It is a very good idea to have in your
> possession
> any such software at the time of Linux conversion, so you might wish
> to
> order such a thing now.

He might not have given up on it if he had Dana look at it. While Elise
said that she would probably use the Edimax anyway because it seemed to
work a bit better, thanks to Dana, it's no longer an absolute
requirement.

> Even better than XFCE4 for a relatively low-end notebook would be a
> distro furnishing the nice but modest LXDE desktop environment, such
> as
> _Lubuntu._  I will probably make a point of having the latest Lubuntu
> for x86_64 around, too.

To measure how light in resources a system would need to be, I started
by booting a 64-bit Ubuntu MATE Edition 16.04.3 live image. It seemed to
support the hardware well, and Elise said it was quite a bit faster than
the stock Windows 10, but still a bit too slow, and allowed only one
Firefox tab to be open in the 2GB RAM. Next, I pulled up a 32-bit
Lubuntu 16.04.3 live image, but Dana and I failed to get the EFI to boot
it in Legacy BIOS mode, required for the 32-bit image. Next up, Rick had
downloaded the 64-bit Lubuntu 17.04 "alternate installer" image, which
installed but had inoperable networking, which among other things,
prevented the installation of SynClient GUI for the touchpad. I figured
that we already saw the network operate in 16.04 but not 17.04, so it
would make sense to install 16.04, and we opted for a step up from LXDE,
which is XFCE, coming full circle. After installation completed, I had
time only to install the packages zram-config and intel-microcode before
handing the rest off to Dana while Rick and I went to help Elise with a
car problem.

Elise had also brought with her at least five (!) other computers, of
which we had time to examine in depth only two. She had installed Ubuntu
10.04 (32-bit) on an HP ProBook with 4GB RAM, a 250GB disk, and a Core
i5 CPU of the Sandy Bridge generation, where it could not drive half the
hardware in the machine. With Ubuntu's switch to GNOME 3 from Unity next
month, Dana decided to download a 64-bit image of Ubuntu GNOME Edition
16.04 onto a USB stick, which installed uneventfully. The other machine
had 1GB RAM (apparently expandable to 2GB in theory), an 80 GB disk with
no bootable OS, and the AMD TL-50 Turion64 CPU with an nVidia
northbridge and integrated GeForce 6150 graphics, where Elise reported
previous graphics corruption. Dana booted that same GNOME Edition stick
on it, and there was indeed intermittent texture corruption using
Nouveau. Given the limited RAM, Rick downloaded a Debian 9 image, from
which the intention was to install a base system and then manually add a
light GUI. However, Debian installed XFCE without being told, which to
our amazement worked well. I added the ZRam script from the Debian wiki,
and the last thing we did was add the b43 firmware for its Broadcom
wireless. An additional two laptops were left largely untouched with
Windows 7, and a Raspberry Pi was never retrieved from her car. It
should be noted that other people brought just as many computers
yesterday, if not more all together, and non-computer issues were
addressed too.