Ubuntu 10.04 on Motion Computing M1400 Tablet PC

So, a friend of mine donated a few M1400 Motion Computing tablets to my collection a few months ago and I've finally got around to playing with them. I think they're more of a boutique item (Pen tablet PCs), rather than "really" something useful, but playing with them may prove interesting.

First off, these things are a bear to boot anything off USB cdrom or USB hard/flash drive. After a minimal search via Google, the consensus looks to be that booting off a firewire drive to be the easiest, so I dug out my old-trusted FW CD drive and plopped an Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD into it.

It booted fine and selected the Try option, rather than install. After a few moments, video blanked out and no more CDROM activity. Lol.

Guessing it's a video driver fubar, I Googled some more and found the following boot option will get you going: i915.modeset=1
by the way, if you are using other video chipsets, here's a brief common list of what you can use:
* Older Intel video card: i915.modeset=1 or i915.modeset=0
* nVidia: nomodeset
* Generic: xforcevesa


Just add this to your list of boot options at the end and you'll get the lovely Gnome Desktop (Or KDE for those running Kubuntu - Which I prefer, myself).

After install, I'll add it to my /etc/default/grub and will run: update-grub

I let you know my mileage on this laptop, after installation is complete and I've played with it, a bit.

By the way: The pen actually worked while booted on the live cd, without any modification or manual loading of Wacom drivers. Sweet.

Mac OSX Leopard & Xnest" OMG-WTF-LOL!

Why, oh why, has my Xnest gone away when upgraded to OSX 10.5? Not that I enjoy running X remotely, from my servers, but on occasion, it's required (thanks, stoopid Oracle and your sh*tty install routine).

If you want/need Xnest on your OSX Leopard desktop, you can accomplish it, this way:

First: Get Xcode: http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/

Second: install MacPorts: http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/MacPorts-1.5.0/

Third: Install git, and development tools:

(from teminal window)
sudo port install pkgconfig automake autoconf libtool git-core
Install X.org libraries: (45 minutes)

(from terminal window)
sudo port install xorg-proto xorg-libX11 xorg-libxkbfile xorg-libXfont xorg-libfontenc

Forth: Get X server source from git and build it: see instructions on X.org wiki.

Fifth: Run configure as follows, NOT as how stated on X.org wikki:
./configure --prefix=/usr/X11 --enable-xnest=yes --with-mesa-source=`pwd`/../Mesa-6.5.2

Sixth: Continue with the rest of the source instructions as directed in the wiki page.

Seventh: Copy the new Xquartz binary over, then copy the Xnest binary as well:
sudo cp hw/xnest/Xnest /usr/X11/bin/

Eighth: Copy the manpage:
sudo cp hw/xnest/Xnest.1 /usr/share/man/man1/

That's it. Good luck. I suggest backing up, before doing the above.