New (old) toy: Samsung Galaxy p7300 (8.9" tablet)

Last September I bought an used tablet in the hope to make Plasma Active run in it and also to read some .pdf files when I am on bed and when travelling. The four things I really like in this tablet is:

1. Its 8.9" screen size, which is the perfect size in my oppinion. 7" is too small and 10" is too big and heavy;
2. 6000 mAh battery, which should last 10 hours playing video;
3. 3G support;
4. Good screen contrast, it helps when reading under sunlight.

Now the things I do not like:

• It suffers from the eMMC bug :-( so there is a risk that it bricks forever.
• It does not run ordinary Linux distributions. Remember: Android is Linux, just not an ordinary Linux distribution. Well, that is expected, most tablets also show this problem;
• Proprietary port and no USB. You can easly buy a OTG adapter, which I did, so this is not a big deal;
• Comes with Android 2.3. I upgraded it to Android 4.0.4 (Ice Screen Sandwich) last weekend and in this post I going to show you how to do. Unfortunately it seems this tablet is never going to receive any other Android upgrade, so ICS is the lastest Android we can get unless someone can port the drivers (specially the 3G modem driver) to Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean).

To upgrade the tablet to ICS P7300XXLQ6_P7300OXALQ6_ATO:

1. root the tablet using these instructions. This is easier to do than it sounds.
2. Download the firmware from here and follow these instructions. Unfortunatelly the Odin programa needed in this step run only in Windows. I tried to use Reimdall, but it does not recognize my tablet.
3. Follow these instructions to root the new installed ICS firmware.

Plasma NM 0.9.0.6

Plasma NM 0.9.0.6

SHA256Sum: 13fd521abd065117b6bd8091b038d0a7f1270defc24ac501fce54f9c491a4a23

Update: the fix for bug 299863 caused a regression and I really recommend using Plasma NM 0.9.0.7 instead of this release.

Changelog:

. fix password dialog for VPN connections. This same fix probably fixes this crash too.
299863: add mechanism to validate EAP methods' settings. The first one implemented is for TLS, which requires the identify field to be filled or it will crash the edit dialog. Now the Ok button in edit dialog will be disabled if the identify field is empty.
. correctly detect if 802-1x security setting is enabled or not.
310496: fix settings window too small when opened from tray icon.
310988: add MD5 and GTC options to WPA2 Enterprise's TTLS setting dialog.
. fix crash when saving WirelessSecuritySetting.
309262: fix importing of CISCO vpn pcf files.
308630: correctly handle bad certificates in openconnect vpn connections.
308777: make systray icon go passive (hide itself) if there is no network interface available.
308722: update systray icon even when not in a panel containment. This is usefull when using systray widget outside a panel.
. make version string selectable by mouse in the kcm.
308293: fix crash when deleting connection.
308125: fix crash on NetworkManager restart.
. pre-fill secrets in password dialog for wifi connections.
307710: add warning when storage mode is kwallet and kwallet is not enabled. The warning will be printed in ~/.xsession-errors.

The following languages have more than 80% of strings translated:

ca cs da de el es et fi fr hu it kk km lt nb nds nl pl pt pt_BR ro ru sk sr sr@ijekavian sr@ijekavianlatin sr@latin sv uk zh_TW

Also read some usefull information about Plasma NM in my past posts.

Workaround for vpn problem with NetworkManager

Some people have approached me about problems to activate vpn connections using Plasma NM. I have just found a workaround that enables vpnc (Cisco VPN) connections to work: just remove the /usr/libexec/nm-vpnc-auth-dialog file that comes with networkmanager-vpnc package. Yeah, that sounds strange but it works here. That seems an upstream problem, maybe that dialog is not working properly and yet blocking the dialog from Plasma NM. Do the same for the other vpn types, the workaround should work for them too.

Update: Ok, I think I have found the real problem and pushed a fix for it in Plasma NM's repo. I will release a new Plasma NM tar ball once the fix is confirmed. It is odd that the change was not required before and now it is, however the change makes sense.