Showing posts with label touchscreen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label touchscreen. Show all posts

Monday, May 9, 2022

Ubuntu 22.04 desktop review and apps to install

 

Ubuntu 22.04

This new version of Ubuntu installs without a glitch in my Yoga 920, I setup this device with dual boot with windows 10, see install ubuntu on yoga 920

On this version of Ubuntu the touch screen works flawless, the screen goes black before it rotates but it works without a glitch. Both my Logitech K810 keyboard, M557 and M720 mice work great with Ubuntu. On the M557 even the mouse windows key works.

Fn+Space - turn on the keyboard light with 2 levels

Track pad, Track pad lock button, Windows Key, Vol Mute/Up/Down , Airplane plane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Camera button, Lock Screen, Brightness buttons, PrtSrc, Power button, Camera recording works all works out of the box.


I normally install Signal, Spotify and Chromium all available on Ubuntu software store app installed by default.
 
I also normally install Slack, Zoom, Skype to allow me to work, these apps are great if you work on a corporate environment and you needed it for your work.

I never took time to setup the finger print scanner on the Yoga 920, but out of the box is not working.

The "Gnome Boxes App" that allows you to run virtual machines in Ubuntu is more user friendly to use in this version, you can create a VM in seconds, it downloads the Operating system for you and boots right into the OS.
For Windows you need a ISO image and some drivers but is also pretty easy too, I have a blog-post describing the process here.

Touch Screen

Gnome is a great interface for touch screens, it works really well, if you use a mix between keyboard mouse and touch screen actions the default setup works really well.

Firefox the default browser is great when using the mouse and keyboard, but is terrible when using a touch screen, so if are finger friendly you need to install chromium. Chromium works really well while using your fingers.

If you use laptop in tablet mode, you need also need to install chromium and enable the screen keyboard in accessibility mode.


With Chromium and the on screen keyboard, you can consume content from websites like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook watch in tablet mode and all works great out of the box.

HIDPI


If you have a HIDPI laptop like the Yoga 920 that can do 4k in 14 inches of screen, the new Ubuntu supports  fractional scaling. This allows you to tune the fonts and windows scaling a bit more at the expense of CPU/battery.

I normally run my Yoga 920 at 1080p which is great for 14 inches screen, to save battery, but some times I change it to 4k, it I'm editing images or watching some videos in 4k, since you get more pixel area for the images.

Things todo after install is finished


Open "Ubuntu Software" App and select the applications you like the best.


Here is a list of Apps that I like to install in my laptop

Gnome new tools

sudo apt install gnome-console gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweaks gnome-text-editor

You probably can remove gnome-terminal and gedit, since the new tools replace are good replacing for these.
 
Add tray Icons support 
 
sudo apt install libayatana-appindicator3-1 gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1 gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

Video/Images

obs-studio - screen recorder
kazam - screen recorder
peek - screen recorder
mypaint krita pinta gimp - Image editors
blender - 3D modeling
kdenlive - Video editor
pitivi - Video editor
flowblade - Video editor
handbrake - multi-threaded video trans-coder.
flameshot - take a screen shot
shotcut - Video Editor
Rawtherapee - Image Editor

Sound

audacity - Sound editor
audacious - Audio player
soundconverter - Sound Converter

Tools

stacer - System analysis
htop - System analysis

Vpn

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn-gnome

Proton Vpn How to
 
https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-openvpn/

Games

steam - game engine, game store tons of games available.

For codecs needed for Video and Sound Install


sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

To run other Linux Instances or windows vms [and see my other blog post how to setup windows].

sudo apt-get install virt-manager gnome-boxes

Install Apps command line

sudo apt install mypaint krita pinta shotcut blender kdenlive pitivi flowblade audacity kazam stacer htop flameshot gimp steam audacity audacious handbrake soundconverter obs-studio peek

Open Ubuntu Software

Configuration:

Install GNOME Tweaks

Messenger:

Install Spotify
Install Signal
Install Slack
Install Skype

Video Calls:

Install Zoom

Firefox Plugins

To enable touch screen support: simply edit /etc/security/pam_env.conf and add MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 DEFAULT=1 then reboot.
 
Disable all tracking Cookies - https://privacybadger.org/
HTTPS only - https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Firefox private Network VPN - https://fpn.firefox.com/vpn

Running with Wayland

using pipewire for sound

systemctl --user status pipewire pipewire-session-manager

sudo apt install pipewire pipewire-audio-client-libraries pipewire-audio-client-libraries libspa-0.2-bluetooth libspa-0.2-jack pipewire-media-session wireplumber
 
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/pipewire/examples/alsa.conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf /etc/alsa/conf.d/
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/pipewire/examples/ld.so.conf.d/pipewire-jack-*.conf /etc/ld.so.conf.d/
systemctl --user --now enable wireplumber.service 
sudo apt remove pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

reboot to replace pulse with pipewire

add this to your ~/.profile to change firefox to use waylnd for rendering

export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1


On chrome change

chrome://flags/#enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer -> Enable

chrome://flags/#ozone-platform-hint -> Auto

 

You can run chrome like this to get video decoding accelaration.

google-chrome --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

References:





Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Ubuntu 20.04 running on Lenovo Yoga 920 with HiDPI and touch screen support

I resized the windows partition to the minimum necessary (100G), disabled secure boot and I also remove bitlocker key encryption on windows drive, this allows Ubuntu to see that partition and allow windows to boot with secure boot disabled, without complaining.

This makes everything go easier if you want to keep windows around on the same disk and dual boot with Ubuntu, you should do this it helps a lot. Even after you disable this, you can re-enable it back, both secure boot and bitlocker key encryption.


Before installing you install windows updates, resize your windows partition. Installing all windows updates will not allow you to gain as much space as possible. After resizing the windows partition to the minimum size you want, install all windows updates, bios and driver updates.

I upgraded all windows updates to the latest version and all drivers to the latest version and upgraded the bios on windows to the latest version before installing Ubuntu, I don't think this makes much difference but at least I did it to make sure I have the latest firmware on all components and latest bios before installing Ubuntu.

To get to the bios press and hold Fn+F2 (bios) or Fn+F12 (USB boot devices), or insert a clip on the small orifice next to the power button while the laptop is powered off.

Everything else seems to be working fine.

Works:
  • all special keys
  • keyboard lights
  • bluetooth, WiFi
  • trackpad
  • touch screen
  • keyboard and mouse pad are disable in tablet mode
  • camera
  • hibernate
  • hidpi
  • pen works like a mouse, but there no apps on Ubuntu that I know that use the pen, using gnomes-boxes I tried windows 10 using sketchbook and it is slow, but it works fine.
  • screen rotation works while in tablet or tent mode.



Not Working:fingerprint reader
  • fingerprint reader

Dual Boot Setup
  • Before installing any windows updates, bios or driver updates, resize your windows partition in windows to the minimum size you want, otherwise windows updates might constrain the amount of free disk space you can reclaim. I reduced the windows partition size (to 100Gb) using Disk Management utility to the desired capacity to make space for Linux.
  • https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/shrink-windows-10-partition.html
  • Disable secure boot in bios, use your windows bitlocker key from windows website to be able to boot windows and after that remove secure block key encryption from you windows partition. This will make it much easier, see online instructions is easy. (optional step)
  • Download and install all windows updates. The pre-installed Lenovo service utility prompts to update the firmware.  I went ahead with it.
  • To get to the bios press Fn+F2 (bios) or Fn+F12 (USB boot devices), or insert a clip on the small orifice next to the power button while the laptop is powered off.
  • Boot with Ubuntu Live-USB from USB 3.1 port. I installed Ubuntu in the UEFI mode.
  • Using the installer, I created 2 partitions. (root installation, /home) and perform Ubuntu installation.
  • The dual boot setup is now ready! Upon rebooting, the UEFI boot menu shows options to boot into Linux or windows. With Kernel 5.04 in Ubuntu 20.04. (only fingerprint reader is not working out of the box)

Touchpad




I increased the speed, enabled "tap to click", "two finger scrooling". and on gnome-tweak enabled click method to "fingers".

References:

https://www.scrye.com/wordpress/nirik/2017/11/02/lenovo-yoga-920-the-overdetailed-fedora-linux-review/

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Ubuntu 17.10 running on Lenovo Yoga 920 with HiDPI and touch screen support


I resized the windows partiton to the minimun necessary (100G), disabled secure boot and I also remove bitlocker key encryption on windows drive, this allows Ubuntu to see that partition and allow windows to boot with secure boot disabled, without complaning.

This makes everything go easier if you want to keep windows arround on the same disk and dual boot with Ubuntu, you should do this it helps a lot. Even after you disable this, you can re-enable it back, both secure boot and bitlocker key encryption.

Before installing on windows updates resize your windows partition, installing all windows updates will not alow you to gain as much space as possible. After resizing the windows partition to the minimium size you want, install all windows updates, bios and driver updates.

I upgraded all windows updates to the latest version and all drivers to the latest version and upgraded the bios on windows to the latest version before installing Ubuntu, I don't think this makes much difference but at least I did it to make sure I have the latest firmware on all components and latest bios before installing Ubuntu.

To get to the bios press and hold Fn+F2 (bios) or Fn+F12 (USB boot devices), or insert a clip on the small orifice next to the power button while the laptop is powered off.

On reboot, it seems I had no wireless. A simple blacklisting of the ideapad_laptop module, for now, gets things working.

Everything else seems to be working fine.

Works:
  • all special keys
  • keyboard lights
  • bluetooth, WiFi
  • trackpad
  • touch screen
  • keyboard and mouse pad are disable in tablet mode
  • camera
  • hibernate
  • hidpi
  • pen works like a mouse, but there no apps on Ubuntu that I know that use the pen, using gnomes-boxes I tried windows 10 using sketchbook and it is slow, but it works fine.


Not Working:fingerprint reader
  • fingerprint reader
  • screen rotation not working, while in tablet mode.


Dual Boot Setup
  • Before installing any windows updates, bios or driver updates, resize your windows partition in windows to the minimun size you want, otherwise windows updates might constrain the amount of free disk space you can reclaim. I reduced the windows partition size (to 100Gb) using Disk Management utility to the desired capacity to make space for Linux.
  • http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-shrink-windows-10-to-make-space.html
  • Disable secure boot in bios, use your windows bitlocker key from windows website to be able to boot windows and after that remove secure block key encryption from you windows partition. This will make it much easier, see online instructions is easy. (optional step)
  • Download and install all windows updates. The pre-installed Lenovo service utility prompts to update the firmware.  I went ahead with it.
  • To get to the bios press Fn+F2 (bios) or Fn+F12 (USB boot devices), or insert a clip on the small orifice next to the power button while the laptop is powered off.
  • Boot with Ubuntu Live-USB from USB 3.1 port. I installed Ubuntu in the UEFI mode.
  • Using the installer, I created 2 partitions. (root installation, /home) and perform Ubuntu installation.
  • On reboot, it seems I had no wireless. A simple blacklisting of the ideapad_laptop module, for now, gets things working. "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf"
  • The dual boot setup is now ready! Upon rebooting, the UEFI boot menu shows options to boot into Linux or windows. With Kernel 4.13 in Ubuntu 17.10, most of the things work out of the box as a laptop. (only fingerprint reader and tilt sensor for tablet mode are not setup out of the box)
  • I haven't yet fiddled around to see if it correctly works in the tablet mode.

Touchpad


I increased the speed, enabled "tap to click", "two finger scrooling". and on gnome-tweak enabled click method to "fingers".

References:

https://www.scrye.com/wordpress/nirik/2017/11/02/lenovo-yoga-920-the-overdetailed-fedora-linux-review/

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Ubuntu 17.10 review. Running with hidpi, touch screen and wayland support

Ubuntu GNOME 17.10



I think Ubuntu GNOME is the best flavor of Ubuntu if you are running in HiDPI mode 3200x1800 with a touchscreen. All screen captured images are at HiDPI resolution.

Since I prefer the standard gnome-session experience, I installed the "gnome-session" package and rebooted the system. And on the cog icon next to the sign in button, select the "GNOME" instead of ''Ubuntu" option before clicking the sign in button.

sudo apt install gnome-session

Touchpad


I increased the speed, enabled "tap to click", "two finger scrooling". and on gnome-tweak enabled click method to "fingers".

Touch support

Ubuntu gnome support for touchscreen is pretty good on the desktop.
Chromium browser supports touch screen very well and much better than Firefox without any plug-ins.
In my Yoga pro 2, the windows key on the screen panel works as the windows key on the keyboard.
Screen rotation is supported on the new gnome and disables the keyboard when the yoga is used as a tablet, but not the touchpad, side lock rotation button works to lock the screen in a certain rotation.

Screen HiDPI support

Ubuntu will boot with full resolution HiDPI and touch screen support enabled, brightness keys, resolution keys and, option keys to turn off the screen, all work.

You can change the resolution in the settings to another resolution in case you don't want to use HiDPI, selecting 1920x1080 that should give you a good scale ratio on the Yoga Pro 2.




Software

Ubuntu uses Firefox as the default browser, I installed chromium since I like it better, I also changed the default to be the native gnome experience which I think is better than the Ubuntu changes made to gnome-shell.

I also installed most of Gnome apps, Gnome games, gnome-boxes and Virtual Machine manager, described in the last section to have some relaxing and productivity apps. I have done a blog post earlier on how to install windows on gnome-boxes and make run as fast as possible with virtio drivers.


I also installed Skype, Spotify and Google Chrome browser and all applications work well in the new Ubuntu 17.10.

I setup Cisco VPN using open connect with support for "Cisco Secure Desktop trojan" to access my company VPN, all is working great.

Ubuntu is using Wayland graphical server by default and I don't notice much difference between Wayland and Xorg, seems a bit slow with 2 monitors, but It might be because of hi-dpi on both screens since before I was using 1080p resolutions.

I also installed gnome-tweak and added the minimise button to all windows, as you can see from the screenshot.

Camera, Sound, Keyboard, Sleep, Wifi, Bluetooth, USB3

Camera, sleep, wifi, Bluetooth, USB3, side sound button up/down, keyboard background light works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, airplane mode, all work as expected.

Fn key to show all screens works but it is a shortcut to Activities menu so you don't have to use the touchpad.

Tweaks to make some Apps work better with HiDPI 

Firefox, Chromium, Google Chrome, Skype, Thunderbird, Cheese, totem work great in HiDPI.

Blender, Gimp, Spotify, VLC, Pinta do not support hi-dpi properly.

Download links for Chrome, Spotify, Skype:

https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html
https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/
https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/

Work arround for Spotify:

Add --force-device-scale-factor=1.5 (or whatever fits your UI scale) as a command line option.

You could edit /usr/share/applications/spotify.desktop or wherever the .desktop file is located and change the line with Exec= to:

Exec=spotify --force-device-scale-factor=1.5 %U

Signal Messenger:
curl -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install signal-desktop





Get Chrome, Skype, Spotify from their websites, the download is well supported on Ubuntu.


Chromium supports the touchscreen better than Firefox if you wish to use it with the touchscreen, Chromium is the better choice,

If you use a HiDPI monitor such as Retina display together with another monitor, you can use AutoHiDPI add-on in order to automatically adjust  layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting for the active screen.

If you use the touchscreen you should install Grab and Drag add-on to make Firefox more tablet friendly.

Reference for other applications on HiDPI

archlinux HiDPI documentation

Console

Configure larger font on tty console, leave all settings as they are, but for font select Terminus, and on the last one, where you can choose the size 16x32, and then reboot.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Does not work out of the box

The Fn key to disable track-pad function on my Yoga Pro 2 does not work on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu extras and tools

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

### DVD support
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

### Gnome utilities
sudo apt install pithos adwaita-icon-theme-full vlc bijiben polari gnome-weather epiphany-browser p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller htop dconf-editor gnome-backgrounds gnome-bluetooth gnome-boxes gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-logs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-online-accounts gnome-photos gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sushi gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-weather frogr vinagre ghex chromium-browser gnome-todo solaar




### Simple Games
sudo apt install gnome-chess five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-klotski gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sudoku gnome-mahjongg gnome-tetravex iagno lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop






### Video Editing, Flowblade video editor,Blender
sudo apt install openshot openshot-doc flowblade blender
sudo apt install kdenlive

### Video Editing Openshot
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install openshot-qt

### pitivi
### As user run 
flatpak install --user http://flatpak.pitivi.org/pitivi-master.flatpakref

### Install cinelerra
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cinelerra-ppa/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cinelerra-cv

### Lightworks
### https://www.lwks.com/
### download and get the deb from the website
sudo dpkg -i lwks-14.0.0-amd64.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install

### Other tools
sudo apt install clementine  picard

### Image editing
sudo apt install darktable gimp krita pinta blender

### Run windows or other linux versions inside Ubuntu
### See my other blog post on how to run Windows 10 inside gnomes-boxes
sudo apt install gnome-boxes
sudo apt install virtualbox

### Gnome development tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-builder glade gitg ghex

# flash
sudo apt install flashplugin-installer


Sunday, April 23, 2017

Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 running with HiDPI and touch screen support

Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 running with HiDPI and touch screen support










See my previous post on how to install Ubuntu on Yoga Pro 2 for Ubuntu GNOME 16.10.

I think Ubuntu GNOME is the best flavor of Ubuntu if you are running in HiDPI mode 3200x1800. All screen captured images are at HiDPI resolution.

Touch support

Ubuntu gnome support for touch screen is pretty good on the desktop shell.
Chrome browser supports touch screen very well and much better than Firefox without any plug-ins.
The windows key on the screen panel works as the windows key on the keyboard.
Screen rotation is supported on the new gnome and disables the keyboard when the yoga is used as a tablet, side lock rotation button works to lock the screen in a certain rotation.



 What works

Almost everything works great out of the box, there isn't many changes you need to do.
UbuntuGnome ships with gnome 3.24 and will boot with full resolution HiDPI and touch screen support enabled

Screen HiDPI support

Brightness, resolution keys, option keys to turn off the screen  all work.

You can change the resolution in the settings to another resolution in case you don't want to use HiDPI, selecting 1920x1080 that should give you a good scale ratio on the Yoga Pro 2.

Camera, Sound, Keyboard, Sleep, Wifi, bluetooth, USB3

Camera, sleep, wifi, Bluetooth, USB3, side sound button up/down, keyboard background light works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, air-plane mode, all work as expected.
The windows touch logo on the touchscreen works, small side lock rotation button works.

Fn key to show all screens works but it is a shortcut to Activities menu so you don't have to use the touch pad.

Does not work out of the box

The Fn key to disable track-pad function.

Tweaks to make some Apps work better with HiDPI 

Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Cheese, totem work great in HiDPI.

Get chrome from google web site, or use chromium

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Chromium/Chrome  supports the touchscreen better than Firefox if you wish to use it with the touchscreen Chromium is the better choice.

Skype for Linux Beta works great in Hidpi.

For Thunderbird  works great in Hidpi.
Firefox

Open Firefox advanced preferences page (about:config) and set parameter layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 2 (or find the one that suits you better; 2 is a good choice for Retina screens).
If you use a HiDPI monitor such as Retina display together with another monitor, you can use AutoHiDPI add-on in order to automatically adjust  layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting for the active screen.

If you use the touch screen you should install Grab and Drag add-on to make Firefox more tablet friendly.

Reference for other applications on HiDPI

archlinux HiDPI documentation



Console

Configure larger font on tty console, leave all settings as they are, but for font select Terminus, and on the last one, where you can chose the size 16x32, and then reboot.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Ubuntu extras and tools


sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

### DVD support
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

### Gnome utilities
sudo apt-get install adwaita-icon-theme-full vlc bijiben polari gnome-weather epiphany-browser p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller htop dconf-editor gnome-backgrounds gnome-bluetooth gnome-boxes gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-logs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-online-accounts gnome-photos gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sushi gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-weather frogr vinagre ghex chromium-browser gnome-todo




### Simple Games
sudo apt-get install gnome-chess five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-klotski gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sudoku gnome-mahjongg gnome-tetravex iagno lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop





### Video Editing
sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-doc
sudo apt-get install kdenlive

### pitivi
### As user run 
flatpak install --user http://flatpak.pitivi.org/pitivi-master.flatpakref

### Flowblade video editor
### https://code.google.com/archive/p/flowblade/downloads
### sudo dpkg -i flowblade_0.12.0-1_all.deb
### sudo apt --fix-broken install

### Install cinelerra
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cinelerra-ppa/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinelerra-cv

### Lightworks
### https://www.lwks.com/
### download and get the deb from the website
sudo dpkg -i lwks-14.0.0-amd64.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install

### Other tools
sudo apt-get install clementine minitube picard



sudo apt-get install blender

### Image editing
sudo apt-get install darktable gimp krita pinta

### Run windows or other linux versions inside Ubuntu
### See my other blog post on how to run Windows 10 inside gnomes-boxes

sudo apt-get install gnome-boxes
sudo apt-get install virtualbox

### Gnome development tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-builder glade gitg ghex

# flash
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer


References

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI and touch screen support

Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI and touch screen support









See my previous post on how to install Ubuntu on Yoga Pro 2 for Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.

I think Ubuntu GNOME is the best flavor of Ubuntu if you are running in HiDPI mode 3200x1200. All screen captured images are at HiDPI resolution.

Ubuntu 16.10 is not released yet, the screen shoots are from a daily build, 16.10 it is scheduled to be released in Q4 2016.

Touch support

Ubuntu gnome support for touch screen is pretty good on the desktop shell.
Chrome browser supports touch screen very well and much better than Firefox without any plug-ins.
The windows key on the screen panel works as the windows key on the keyboard.
Screen rotation is supported on the new gnome and disables the keyboard when the yoga is used as a tablet, side lock rotation button works to lock the screen in a certain rotation.

Yoga Keys boot key


F12 - Boot menu to select booting from usb drive
F2 - Bios Menu

Power down the computer. Push the “novo” button ounce or press F2 while booting to force the computer to enter into BIOS menus. Disable “Security Boot” and disable “Lenovo Fast Boot”. Leave UEFI option turned on since Ubuntu supports UEFI out of the box.

I also enabled the Functions keys in the BIOS by default but this is a personal preference.




 

Install

Format your flash drive with a single FAT32 partition.  Copy the contents of the Ubuntu ISO (use your favorite archiving tool - 7zip for example) or CD to it.  Use a recent 64-bit Ubuntu version.

That's all you need to do.  No need to use a special tool. You can also use Ubuntu tool to create a UEFI bootable flash drive.

Note: Avoid using something like Unetbootin to create a UEFI-bootable flash drive, it does not work.

Plug the USB flash drive on the laptop. Use the USB 2.0 port on the Yoga pro 2 to plug the usb flash drive. I had problems with the USB 3 port using a USB 3 flash drive, seems to me it was un-mounted during the installation process, when installer was setting up the drives.

Select the partition size for Ubuntu let the Ubuntu Gnome installer re-size your windows partition. Grub will have an option to boot windows after the install is done and will setup Ubuntu as the default OS.

Note:
The default options will work fine, there is no need to setup custom partitions. But if you want to setup new partitions here is what I did. I deleted all windows partitions since I don't run windows and created EFI 512 Mb partition (this is where the EFI code looks for the kernel to be loaded on boot, the installer allows you to create this partition with a special type), I also created a swap partition of 9Gb since I have 8Gb of physical memory, a 15Gb partition for the OS "/" and a the rest for home "/home".
.

What works

Almost everything works great out of the box, there isn't many changes you need to do. UbuntuGnome ships with gnome 3.20 and will boot with full resolution HiDPI and touch screen support enabled

Screen HiDPI support

Brightness, resolution keys, option keys to turn off the screen  all work.

You can change the resolution in the settings to another resolution in case you don't want to use HiDPI, selecting 1920x1080 that should give you a good scale ratio on the Yoga Pro 2.

Camera, Sound, Keyboard, Sleep, Wifi, bluetooth, USB3

Camera, sleep, wifi, Bluetooth, USB3 and side sound button up/down works. Keyboard background light works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, air-plane mode, all work as expected. The windows touch logo on the touchscreen works, small side lock rotation button works.

Fn key to show all screens works but it is a shortcut to Activities menu so you don't have to use the touch pad.

Does not work out of the box

The Fn key to disable track-pad function.

Tweaks to make some Apps work better with HiDPI 

Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Cheese, totem, vlc work great in HiDPI.

Get chrome from google web site

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

If you use a HiDPI monitor such as Yoga Pro 2 display together with another monitor, you can use AutoHiDPI add-on in order to automatically adjust layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting for the active screen. Set Pixel Ratio to 2x and HiDPI screen with to 3200, on the plug-in settings page.

If you use the touch screen you should install Grab and Drag add-on to make Firefox more tablet friendly.

Chromium/Chrome  supports the touchscreen better than Firefox if you wish to use it with the touchscreen Chromium is the better choice.

Run chromium at device scale in case it starts with big fonts.

chromium-browser --force-device-scale-factor=2

For Thunderbird see Firefox. To access about:config, go to Edit → Preferences → Advanced → Config editor.

Skype is a Qt program, and needs to be configured separately. You cannot change the DPI setting for it, but at least you can change font size. Install qt4 and run qtconfig-qt4 to do it.

Clementine is not scaled properly.

Reference for other applications on HiDPI

archlinux HiDPI documentation

Console

Configure larger font on tty console, leave all settings as they are, but for font select Terminus, and on the last one, where you can chose the size 16x32, and then reboot.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Ubuntu extras and tools


sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

### media players, gnome,vpn and compression tools [lots of packages for these]
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4 icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 mpg321 libavcodec-extra openconnect network-manager-openconnect-gnome openvpn easy-rsa network-manager-openvpn-gnome

### DVD support
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

### Gnome utilities
sudo apt-get install adwaita-icon-theme-full vlc clementine minitube bijiben polari gnome-weather epiphany-browser p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller htop dconf-editor gnome-backgrounds gnome-bluetooth gnome-boxes gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-logs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-online-accounts gnome-photos gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sushi gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-weather frogr vinagre ghex chromium-browser picard gnome-todo

### Simple Games
sudo apt-get install gnome-chess five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-klotski gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sudoku gnome-mahjongg gnome-tetravex iagno lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop



### Run windows or other linux versions inside Ubuntu 

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

### Gnome development tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-builder glade gitg ghex


USB 3 ethernet adapter


I got a USB 3 Ethernet adapter at frys, it works great. I'm also using a SIIG USB 3 hub with power adapter to plug a logitech USB sound bar, the USB 3 Ethernet adapter, a wireless mouse dongle and a external disk 60 Gb SSD.

Links to the hardware:

http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Multimedia-Gigabit-Ethernet-UE3000/dp/B00DWXV4SY

http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-7-Port-USB-3-0-Adapter/dp/B00AAHLWA0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404719193&sr=8-1&keywords=siig+usb+3+hub

Wifi network card upgrade [not recommended, only do it if you need dual band wifi]

I also upgraded the wifi network card to a intel dual band, link to amazon and Youtube video.

Spec: 7260NGW Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 802.11ac, Dual Band, 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0

sudo lspci -v
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev 6b)    Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
    Capabilities: [154] Vendor Specific Information: ID=cafe Rev=1 Len=014
    Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

Works great.

References

Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support
Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support


Monday, February 15, 2016

Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI and touch screen support

Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI and touch screen support








See my previous post on how to install Ubuntu on Yoga Pro 2 for Ubuntu GNOME 15.10.

I think Ubuntu GNOME is the best flavor of Ubuntu if you are running in HiDPI mode 3200x1200. All screen captured images are at HiDPI resolution.

Ubuntu 16.04 is not released yet, the screen shoots are from a daily build, 16.04 it is scheduled to be released in Q2 2016.

Touch support

Ubuntu gnome support for touch screen is pretty good on the desktop shell.
Chrome browser supports touch screen very well and much better than Firefox without any plug-ins.
The windows key on the screen panel works as the windows key on the keyboard.
Screen rotation is supported on the new gnome and disables the keyboard when the yoga is used as a tablet, but sometimes screen does not rotate, I'm still trying to figure out what is wrong.

Yoga Keys boot key


F12 - Boot menu to select booting from usb drive
F2 - Bios Menu

Power down the computer. Push the “novo” button ounce or press F2 while booting, to force the computer to enter into BIOS menus. Disable “Security Boot” and disable “Lenovo Fast Boot”. Leave UEFI option turned on since Ubuntu supports UEFI out of the box.

I also enabled the Functions keys in the BIOS by default but this is a personal preference.

Create to boot USB disk


Format your flash drive with a single FAT32 partition.  Copy the contents of the Ubuntu ISO (use your favorite archiving tool - 7zip for example) or CD to it.  Use a recent 64-bit Ubuntu version.

That's all you need to do.  No need to install a boot loader or use special tool.

You can also use Ubuntu tool to create a UEFI bootable flash drive.

Note: Avoid using something like Unetbootin to create a UEFI-bootable flash drive, it does not work.


 

Install

Create a USB boot drive with another Ubuntu machine, plug the USB stick on it. Use the USB 2.0 port on the Yoga pro 2 to plug the usb key, I had problems with the usb 3 port using a usb 3 stick, seems to me it was un-mounted during the installation process, when installer was setting up the drives.

Select the partition size for Ubuntu let the Ubuntu Gnome installer re-size your windows partition. Grub will have an option to boot windows after the install is done and will setup Ubuntu as the default OS.

Note:
The default options will work fine, there is no need to setup custom partitions. But if you want to setup new partitions here is what I did. I deleted all windows partitions since I don't run windows and created efi 512 Mb partition (this is where the efi code looks for the kernel to be loaded on boot, the installer allows you to create this partition with a special type), I also created a swap partition of 9Gb since I have 8Gb of physical memory, a 15Gb partition for the OS "/" and a the rest for home "/home".

After installation

UbuntuGnome ships with gnome 3.18 and will boot with full resolution HiDPI and touch screen support enabled.

What works

Almost everything works great out of the box, there isn't many changes you need to do.

Screen HiDPI support

Everything works, brightness, resolution changes, even the option keys to turn off the screen and brightness. Video driver works great.

You can change the resolution in the settings to another resolution in case you don't want to use HiDPI, selecting 1920x1080 that should give you a good scale ratio on the Yoga Pro 2.

Reference for other applications on HiDPI:
archlinux HiDPI documentation

Camera, Sound, Keyboard, Sleep, Wifi, bluetooth, USB3 works

Camera, sleep, wifi, Bluetooth, USB3 and side sound button up/down works. Keyboard background light works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, air-plane mode, all work as expected. The windows touch logo on the touchscreen works.

Fn key to show all screens works but it is a shortcut to Activities menu so you don't have to use the touch pad.

Does not work out of the box

The small side mute button, Fn key to disable track-pad function.

Tweaks to make some Apps work better with HiDPI 


Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Cheese, totem, vlc work great in HiDPI.

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

If you use a HiDPI monitor such as Yoga Pro 2 display together with another monitor, you can use AutoHiDPI add-on in order to automatically adjust layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting for the active screen. Set Pixel Ratio to 2x and HiDPI screen with to 3200, on the plug-in settings page.

If you use the touch screen you should install Grab and Drag add-on to make Firefox more tablet friendly.

Chromium/Chrome  supports the touchscreen better than firefox if you wish to use it with the touchscreen Chromium is the better choice.

Run chromium at device scale in case it starts with big fonts.

chromium-browser --force-device-scale-factor=2

For Thunderbird see Firefox. To access about:config, go to Edit → Preferences → Advanced → Config editor.

Skype is a Qt program, and needs to be configured separately. You cannot change the DPI setting for it, but at least you can change font size. Install qt4 and run qtconfig-qt4 to do it.

Clementine still show interface with icons that are not scaled properly.

Console

Configure larger font on tty console, leave all settings as they are, but for font select Terminus, and on the last one, where you can chose the size 16x32, and then reboot.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Ubuntu extras and tools

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

### media players, gnome,vpn and compression tools [lots of packages for these]
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 mpg321 libavcodec-extra openconnect network-manager-openconnect-gnome openvpn easy-rsa network-manager-openvpn-gnome

### DVD support
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

### Gnome utilities
sudo apt-get install adwaita-icon-theme-full vlc clementine minitube bijiben polari gnome-weather epiphany-browser p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller htop dconf-editor gnome-backgrounds gnome-bluetooth gnome-boxes gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-logs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-online-accounts gnome-photos gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sushi gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-weather frogr vinagre ghex chromium-browser picard gnome-todo

### Simple Games
sudo apt-get install gnome-chess five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-klotski gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sudoku gnome-mahjongg gnome-tetravex iagno lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop



### Run windows or other linux versions inside Ubuntu 

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

### Gnome Tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-characters

### Gnome development tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-builder glade gitg ghex


USB 3 ethernet adapter


I got a USB 3 Ethernet adapter at frys, it works great. I'm also using a SIIG USB 3 hub with power adapter to plug a logitech USB sound bar, the USB 3 Ethernet adapter, a wireless mouse dongle and a external disk 60 Gb SSD.

Links to the hardware:

http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Multimedia-Gigabit-Ethernet-UE3000/dp/B00DWXV4SY

http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-7-Port-USB-3-0-Adapter/dp/B00AAHLWA0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404719193&sr=8-1&keywords=siig+usb+3+hub

Intel Video drivers [not recommended]

Follow the link https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads.

Wifi network card upgrade [not recommended, only do it if you need dual band wifi]


I also upgraded the wifi network card to a intel dual band, link to amazon and Youtube video.

Spec: 7260NGW Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 802.11ac, Dual Band, 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0

sudo lspci -v
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev 6b)    Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
    Capabilities: [154] Vendor Specific Information: ID=cafe Rev=1 Len=014
    Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

Works great.

References

Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support
Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support
Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support


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