Ubuntu Lucid Works on the MSI Wind U100

The MSI Wind U100 netbook has been plagued by a bug in the Ubuntu Karmic kernel mode setting (KMS) that causes the screen brightness to flicker upon startup. As a result of this, I've been running Ubuntu Jaunty which continues to run well.

This past weekend I decided to download the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha3 release and give it a try. I can confirm that based on booting a Live USB, the screen flicker issue has been fixed on the U100. Good news for the MSI Wind owners out there!

So if you're one of the Wind users that's been avoiding the update to Karmic, things are looking good for installing Lucid.

Comments

15 Responses to “Ubuntu Lucid Works on the MSI Wind U100”

1. anonymous says:

   March 19, 2010 at 9:19 PM

   The issue's fixed? Yahoo! I have an MSI Wind U100 and I am running Jaunty. I've decided that instead of always updating my distro, I'll just install LTS releases, like Lucid!

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     March 19, 2010 at 11:31 PM

     I've been running Jaunty on my U100 as well. I just finished downloading the Beta1 release of Lucid, so maybe I'll try it in live mode again tomorrow.

     Reply
2. Bruce McL says:

   March 20, 2010 at 11:31 PM

   There is another issue with Ubuntu 9.10 and the MSI Wind U100. It involves USB ports and the webcam. Does the webcam work in 10.4? Are the USB ports live and hot pluggable after the computer starts up?

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     March 21, 2010 at 2:26 AM

     I'm posting this from a live session of the Lucid beta1. USB seems to work fine, both for the boot drive and inserting additional USB drives.

     I installed cheese to try out the webcam. No luck there. There may be a work-around, I don't know. It certainly seems to be a usable desktop at least. We've got a month to go before the final release, so hopefully the devs will get it figured out before then.

     Reply
3. droetker says:

   April 7, 2010 at 5:13 PM

   Here the camere (cheese, skype video) runs fine.
   everything runs fine, usb, sound, suspend, etc.
   EXCEPT compiz.
   the intel driver seems not to work here... this is a near-beta2

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     April 7, 2010 at 10:14 PM

     Everything is working for me now, including Compiz. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you. I'm assuming you have the same Intel GMA950 video.

     Reply
4. Kyle says:

   April 21, 2010 at 10:29 AM

   Exciting news for me and my Wind!

   In my house, the main day-to-day problem is the time it takes for the Wind to connect to the home wireless network when opening up from suspend. In Windows on the same netbook the connection is almost instantaneous, but in Karmic it's like a 10-second wait--which leads my wife to constantly shift us back to Windows.

   I haven't found any solution to this, but I would love to know if the connection is quicker in Lucid.

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     April 21, 2010 at 11:02 AM

     Yes, the wireless connection does seem to be much faster in Lucid. Many times it'll be connected as soon as I'm logged in.

     I was using wicd instead of NetworkManager on Jaunty which was much faster at connecting. Wicd will start connecting during boot while NetworkManager was waiting until log-in to start connecting. It looks like NM may have changed to the wicd approach for Lucid.

     Reply
5. abry says:

   May 5, 2010 at 2:40 PM

   Just updated to lucid unr on my msi wind - screen is still flickering

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     May 5, 2010 at 6:42 PM

     Do you have the latest BIOS updates? I read on the Ubuntu Forums that some people had problems until updating their BIOS. I updated mine previously due to issues I was having with the card reader.

     Don't know if doing a fresh install would be any better. Have you booted up to a Live USB to try it out?

     Reply
     • abry says:

       May 8, 2010 at 11:42 AM

       No, I did not do the bios update. I am using mivvy m310 - it is branded msi wind in Czech republic. Only difference is 2 gigabytes of RAM and mivvy logo at booting screen. I read that update from msi works ok - but mivvy officially does not provide the updates so i dont want to loose varanty. I just try debian lenny- stable is ok (but kernel needs update to get wifi working), debian testing filckers as well.

       I read here (in czech) http://cs.wikiversity.org/wiki/Mivvy_m310#BIOS that mivvy has also a bit different marked alternative keys (presed with fn) that stops working when bios is updated. But my keyboard looks exactly the same as here http://extranotebook.cnews.cz/galerie/y_frame_index.php?1 Friend of mine has new model of mivvy m310 with bigger hdd - and her enter key is only one row large. Like in this picture http://img.linuxexpres.cz/web/hardware/mivvy-m310/1.jpg. But blue fn marks seems the same. Are yours blue keys at the same positions as in the picture? Does all of them work after bios update?

       Reply
       • Linerd says:

         May 8, 2010 at 11:53 PM

         My keyboard looks just like the one in the 3rd link and as far as I can tell without being able to read Czech, it's the same as the layout listed in your first link. The 2nd link didn't work for me.

         All of the blue key functions seem to be working as far as I know. I haven't hooked up to an external monitor to test [Fn]+[F2]. And [Fn]+[F10] has never worked in Linux for "eco mode", but all that does is set the CPU to the slowest speed which happens anyway when the CPU is idle.

         If it's any help, my computer is the MSI wind U100-432US if you want to look up the specs. My BIOS version is 4.6.3. The video chip is the Intel Mobile 945GME.

         Reply
         • abry says:

           May 9, 2010 at 12:11 PM

           Here is corrected gnome-power-manager for karmic - works great in karmic - deb file and source. I took modified file gpm-brightness.c from source and replaced the original one in version 2.30 and recompiled and it works in debian without flickering. So it probably will work in lucid without bios update too.

           http://linux.bitbaro.hu/en/2010/01/22/msi-wind-u100-and-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala/comment-page-1/
6. goog1jh says:

   August 20, 2010 at 3:20 PM

   Yeah! The screen-flicker is gone...but _now_ I can´t connect to WPA/WPA2 (mixed-mode) WiFi.. does anyone (did) have the same problem and/or has an advise for me? thanks in advance! cheers

   Reply
7. Barista Uno says:

   September 22, 2010 at 9:36 AM

   I have Lubuntu on my MSI Wind U100. This thing ROCKS, more than the Peppermint One Respon that it replaced.

   Reply