Doing a bit of an explore of the desktop environments on the Toughpad to see what's out there that's touch friendly. This is on Debian 12. I'll probably re-visit this when I move to Debian 13 in a few months time.

- #Gnome : tried both #X11 and #Wayland versions, Classic and the present UI… quite inflexible and the UI elements are practically invisible for driving with a stylus. On-screen keyboard is next to useless as it puts digits and symbols on separate pages and does not implement function keys or modifiers.
- #MATE : Seems to have limited screen scaling options and appearance customisation making stylus/touch operation tricky… but at least Onboard keyboard works.
- #Cinnamon : has the best built-in on-screen keyboard seen so far, but summoning it is not obvious and the layout is still sub-optimal for passwords (but ESC, function keys and modifiers are there!). You lose ⅓ of the screen to the keyboard, even if you're not using it.
- #XFCE seems to work pretty well, I was able to bump the size of the panel up a bit, it uses Onboard for the on-screen keyboard, seems to be the best so far.

Just waiting on #LXQT to install… we'll see how that is.

#Linux #Toughpad #Touchscreen #Tablet

I was planning on doing a back-up of the #Ceph cluster today in preparation of migrating it to a later release… but of course, I've misplaced the PSU for my external 4TB back-up drive.

I noticed it was getting pretty tight on space too, and given it's now 5 years old, figured it was time for a new one. I've got a 6TB one coming.

In the meantime, I had another crack at the Ericsson F5521GW 3G module in the Toughpad.

If I boot with init=/bin/bash on the kernel command line, then modprobe cdc-acm, I see 3 ACM devices appear, and I can use `screen` with them.

I managed to remove the old PIN code on the SIM card I have in there but couldn't get the GPS going, most I got out of it was a "Operation not allowed" error.

Doing this in early init seems to be enough to convince the module to stay enumerated. Something though, tells it to go bugger off early in the boot sequence unless I talk to it first.

A bit of a nuisance to be honest… but I'm somewhat closer.

#ToughPad #EricssonF5521gw

A bit more fiddling with the Toughpad today, I notice it has a WWAN module.

During boot-up, an Ericsson F5521gw quickly shows itself and enumerates a network device and some serial ports (CDC ACM).

But then, 5 seconds later, it deregisters itself. Quite why, I have no idea.

Now this is a 3G era card, so in Australia, is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine for Internet access… HOWEVER, it does provide a GPS module.

Now that *would* be handy.

https://sven-seeberg.de/wp/?p=614 and https://www.tjansson.dk/2009/01/using-the-builtin-gps-in-a-thinkpad-x200-under-linux/ suggest it can be done…

The problem is figuring out what makes it suddenly disappear. That second article points out a SIM card being needed, so I grab the old 3G era SIM from my old ZTE T83 phone, power the tablet off, stuff it in the SIM card slot, and power it back up.

No dice. It again says peek-a-boo, enumerating then disappearing.

I didn't keep the Windows 8.1 install, so I can't boot that to have another look.

For now, I've just turned it off in the UEFI BIOS. At least it's not drawing unnecessary power … but if anyone has any ideas as to what I can shoot that might be telling the 3G module to disappear… I'm all ears.

#ToughPad #EricssonF5521gw #gpsd #cdc_ncm #Linux

Have you ever want to learn how to swap the system board on a #Panasonic #ToughPad #FZM1 but were too afraid to ask?

Here’s my guide, just for you!

https://tigerstyle.co.uk/docs/MrJoshuaFZM1.pdf

#ToughBook