TomTom Home on Linux

Today I tried (again) to get my TomTom One GPS to connect to my linux system. And failed.

Experiment 1: Can the laptop's gpsd read the device as a dumb GPS?
Well, no. GPSD can't locate the device at all. I suspect that's because the TomTom One isn't GPS dongle, it's a full system on it's own. And it doesn't know to pass-through the raw GPS data to simulate a dongle.

Experiment 2: Can TomTome Home 2.8 (for controlling the device, uploading new maps, etc) be installed on Ubuntu 11.10?
No. The available TTH 2.8 clients are for Win and OSX only.

Experiment 3: Can TTH 2.8 be installed on Ubuntu 11.10 using Wine?
Sadly, no. The install itself went poorly. On several attempts, only one was successful. Due to two bugs (some custom jiggery in the TTH does in the Windows Registry, and a bug with Wine support for USB) the device cannot be recognized, loaded, or interacted with.

Experiment 4: Can TTH 2.8 be installed on Ubuntu 11.10 using a Virtual Machine?
Yes. I use a Virtualbox XP VM. TTH 2.8 installed perfectly first time. The device, like all USB devices in VB, must be manually added in the VB 'Device" menu. After that, control of the device was perfect.

Installing Xubuntu 9.04 on an emachines E625-5192

Received my new laptop today - I need it for the fall, and got it a little early due to a sale.

What went well: I created a set of Restore DVDs (in case I want Windows back), then removed windows and installed Xubuntu 9.04 full-disk. Copied over my old /home directory, and installed all my favorite apps. E-mail, web, games, .bashrc, most dektop settings, etc. transferred without a hiccup. Recreated my crontab. Wireless networking and video work great. Built-in card reader reads all cards from my cameras and phone. Machine is noticeably faster. FN-key brightness control works. FN-key multimedia controls work.

Solved Problems:

Sound was tinny and a bit faint. Headphone jack works, not tinny, but low volume. Solution: Adding the following lines to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
somwhat improved speakers and fixed the headphone jack.

# Added by me on <date> while troubleshooting audio
options snd-hda-intel model=6stack

The Volume-FN keys didn't work. Solution: Mapped FN-audio up, down, and mute keys by mapping them to aumix using these instructions.

The suspend FN-key didn't work. Solution: Enabled it in the gnome-power-manager preferences. It was set up to work out-of-the-box, but disabled by default.

DVD: DVDs play only after changing CDROM permissions after each disc insertion. Workaround: Created an alias in .bashrc as the 'fixcd' command

TomTom GPS automatic update doesn't work on Linux - Win and OSX only. Department of Defense forms and other applications are Windows-specific. Workaround: Installed a Virtual Machine (VM) to host an occasional-use XP instance.

Phone-made .3g2 video files play with weird audio - need a way to convert them. Computer .wma songs don't play on phone - need a lossless storage format, and a way to convert them to .mp3. Workaround: Upload videos to YouTube instead of the local hard drive.

Need password to restore from suspend (Xubuntu issue, not hardware-related). Workaround: Remove the screensaver package.

Unsolved Problems: No built-in webcam. Keyboard is different, and will take time to get used to - many typos in the meantime.