bgola

Last week I got a HP 2133 mini notebook for me to use on presentations, college, meetings, events, etc. It’s a very nice toy with 1Gb RAM, a 1.2 GHz VIA Processor, 120Gb of storage, Wifi and bluetooth. Well, it’s very handy and the keyboard is amazing… except for the key, that is a little smaller than the on in my “official” notebook, and I always try to press it in the wrong place

But… I’ve spent a lot of time to make it work with my Ubuntu. Why? Mainly because of the freakin’ VIA proprietary video driver. So I decided to write here some tips about how to get Ubuntu working on the 2133 (after trying to configure the xorg.conf for 3 hours because I hadn’t made a backup of the one that was working ).

The problem I have is that the desktop is bigger than the screen. Oh, you say, it’s just the Virtual xorg.conf Option.

IT’S NOT. Damn it!

Thanks to VIA there is a driver option called PanelID. This option is “well documented” in the README file.

The first thing you need to do is to tell the driver that your PanelID is 17. Why? I really don’t know. PanelID 17 means, accordingly to the README, that your display (or your Panel) resolution is 1024×600. The problem is that I want my resolution to be 1280×768 (which is supported by 2133). Anyway, using option “PanelID” 17 solves the problem partially, the desktop isn’t bigger than the screen anymore.

BUT… it thinks that your resolution is 1024×600 (because of the PanelID option, probably), so try to imagine what a 1280×768 desktop looks like in a 1024×600 display (or panel, whatever). The result is that you can see 3/4 of your Desktop, but your pointer “sees” the “panel” borders (i mean, it can’t go any longer than the screen limits).

To solve this problem you need to tell the X server that you have a Virtual display of 1024×600 (yes, you’re lying!!!) so it will arrange your 1280×768 desktop inside this virtual display of 1024×600. To do this you need to add the line

Virtual 1024 600

in the Display subsection of the Screen section.

Your xorg.conf will look like this (the relevant sections only):

Section “Device”
Identifier “via-P4M900 Device 0″
BoardName “Chrome9 HC IGP”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Driver “via”
Option “Monitor-LCD” “HP-2133 LCD”
Option “PanelID” “17″
Option “NoDDCValue”
EndSection
…
Section “Screen”
…
Subsection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×768-60.0″
Virtual 1024 600
EndSubsection
…
EndSection

If you have any trouble with the video (or anything) trying to install Ubuntu on the HP 2133 Mini, leave a comment and I promise I’ll TRY to help