Fedora on a x86 (AMD) Tablet - the good the bad and the ugly

[Fernando Cassia]

I've been enjoying my 'new' (It's actually a bit old, being based in the
original AMD Brazos platform, z01 CPU, but still, dual-core and updated to
8GB RAM, purchased late 2012 and only having had time to play with it
now)....

The good news: Fedora boots fine and runs smoothly, BUT!...

1. The Gnome 3.x "hitting the top-left corner" system works and seems
designed with a mouse in mind, NOT touch. If I touch with the finger in the
upper left corner of the screen, 99.1% of the time (rough estimate ;) ....
NOTHING HAPPENS. That surely is because the "focus point"of the "hit" is
too narrow for a finger. In other words, it's expecting the mouse pointer
to be at 0x0 (or 1x1) pixel coordinate for a splt second before invoking
the gnome screens. With a finger hit, surely one fat finger translates to
coordinates 0-40 x to 0-40y.

It doesn't matter if I just position the finger in the corner, or if I try
to emulate the mouse action of doing a small travel with the finger and
"hitting" the corner. It only works on about 1 in every 20 tries.

So, how to fix this? how to make the "invocation area" bigger?

2. The unit comes with 3 sensor keys (virtual buttons drawn over the right
edge of the touch screen), that provide the following functions:

a. O-Easy (on Windows, this calls a custom MSI app that allows you to,
among other things, easy one-touch enable-disable of several tablet
components, ie WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, cameras, etc). Before OS loads,
"O-easy" is mapped in the BIOS to the ENTER key, which together with the
volume up/down buttons on the side (mapped to cursor up/down) allow
navigating the Win7 boot menus without  a keyboard and before the OS loads.

b. Home (used to minimize everything and get a look at the desktop, pressd
again, maximized apps return)

c. Hang. This simulates a Ctrl-Alt-Del. Used with win7, it's very handy to
invoke the Win7 task manager when a misbehaving app needs to be killed.

Well, on Fedora 'virtual keys' (a) and (b) do nothing, but (c) is the
worrying one as it sends Fedora on the awful standard Ctrl-Alt-Del "system
is shutting down in 60 secs..." dialog unles you cancel it.

I've been reading complaints about this default Ctrl-Alt-Del behaviour in
Linux since at least 2005... Isn't it time to change the dialog that AT
LEAST lets the user choose between many options, one of them being
"shutdown/reboot and another Start Task Manager?". It would be a great step
forward on the usability angle, specially for people coming from Windows.

(and not to mention on this table when you can simply invoke a shumtdown if
you're not paying much attention and tap into the Hang virtual button with
the corner of your hand while grabbing the tablet...

ANY IDEAS of how to fix/improve any of the points raised above is of course
welcome.

The good:

1. I can do everything I used to do with a netbook, with a tablet.

2. I can run Virtualbox!. Try VBox on a ARM/Android based *TOY*

Final question: is F18/F19 SSD aware, or is there any manual tweak I must
take into account? (wrt flash device life, filesystem used (ext2 to
minimize writes, perhaps?)

FC

PS: Tablet is a MSI WIndpad 110W, AMD Brazos z01. Still available in
Canada* (it was also in Amazon.com until December '12, that's when I bought
it, as it was the only non-Intel, x86 tablet that provided the best
price/performance -$450-550 and expandability -up to 8GB ram unlike its
only competitor at the time the Acer Iconia Tab W500).
* http://www.shopbot.ca/pp-msi-windpad-110w-msi-price-325350.html

-- 
During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary
act
- George Orwell
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