Nokia’s Booklet 3G takes the lowly netbook to new levels of sophistication with (among other things) an aluminum chassis, HDMI port and SIM card slot.
Unfortunately, it runs Windows.
Even worse, booting into Linux is not only trivial, but it seems thus far to be nigh impossible. I’ll take you through what I’ve done to date — if this keeps up my Booklet is going straight back to Nokia with a failing grade for software freedom.
Life without Walls™? Yeah, not so much…
So my collection of super-fast SD cards was instantly rendered useless when a helpful stranger on FriendFeed informed me that I couldn’t use them to boot Linux. Furthermore, it was suggested that I disable the built-in 120GB hard drive altogether, which resulted in this:
It’s a step in the right direction, at least…
Next, I made no less than four bootable USB sticks, using the two methods immediately available to me:
- UNetbootin on my existing Linux netbook;
- A manual data dump via the Terminal on Mac OS X.
But nothing took. In fact, the furthest I got with any bootable Linux distro was this, the splash screen for Moblin:
Sadly, choosing ‘boot’ produced only a blank screen with a flashing cursor.
Luckily, I’ve a few more tricks up my sleeve — tune in tomorrow to see what I try next…
Best Buy > Mobile Phones & Office > Mobile Phones > Mobile Broadband > Embedded Mobile Broadband > Product Info
The OS is embedded in the hardware. It will not boot any other.
Best Buy > Mobile Phones & Office > Mobile Phones > Mobile Broadband > Embedded Mobile Broadband > Product Info
The OS is embedded in the hardware. It will not boot any other.
Hmmm… I’m looking at that very link and can’t see where’s that’s written.
Do you have an exact quote from that page?
Hmmm… I’m looking at that very link and can’t see where’s that’s written.
Do you have an exact quote from that page?
http://imgur.com/Tf4B3
http://imgur.com/Tf4B3
Ok, I get you now…
I think it’s a case of Best Buy not knowing where else to put this, seeing how they might not have a lot of other laptops/netbooks with the ability to take a SIM card.
The fact that disabling the hard drive also disabled Windows would seem to counter your theory, though there may well be something else in the ROM that would prevent a proper Linux boot. We’ll see.
Ok, I get you now…
I think it’s a case of Best Buy not knowing where else to put this, seeing how they might not have a lot of other laptops/netbooks with the ability to take a SIM card.
The fact that disabling the hard drive also disabled Windows would seem to counter your theory, though there may well be something else in the ROM that would prevent a proper Linux boot. We’ll see.
Andrew,
What happens when you go into the BIOS and change the SATA drive to “compatible”? I’ll bet you $1 (US).
Andrew,
What happens when you go into the BIOS and change the SATA drive to “compatible”? I’ll bet you $1 (US).
Andrew,
What happens when you go into the BIOS and change the SATA drive to “compatible”? I’ll bet you $1 (US).
There’s no such option, near as I can tell…
If it helps any, the BIOS manager is made by these guys:
http://www.phoenix.com/
There’s no such option, near as I can tell…
If it helps any, the BIOS manager is made by these guys:
http://www.phoenix.com/