I just wanted to update my experience with my Blackberry Playbook.
Since installing and using Linux Mint 13 (after my upgrade from Ubuntu
10.10 to 12.04 failed and would no longer boot), I have found that
networking in general works a lot better and now other PCs on the
network can see my main PC (now running Mint) in a file manager,
something which would not work at all with Ubuntu.
And I can now connect my Playbook to my Mint PC via a USB cable and it
just works for accessing the files, i.e. I can enter something like
smb://169.254.69.181 and Mint can see the Playbook's files and add to
them or delete them, etc.
I am surprised that if it works in Mint that these things never ever
worked for me in Ubuntu. Now I am glad that Ubuntu messed up so that I
could use Mint and find it better. And it is based on Ubuntu, so I am
getting the best of Ubuntu and the best of Mint.
On 15/06/12 14:34, David King wrote:
I recently purchased a BlackBerry PlayBook. It's a great tablet, but
it seems that RIM are not that Linux-friendly. Their OS is based on
QNX, a Unix-type OS, so I thought they might at least have some Linux
understanding.
I can connect the PlayBook to Ubuntu via wifi, no problem, I can just
enter smb://192.168.1.11 (i.e. the PlayBook's IP address) and I can
see all the files on there in Nautilus. I had enquired about this with
RIM support and they could only tell me how to do it in Windows and
Mac on their website, and suggested the Mac way for Linux. I suggested
they add that it works for Linux too on their website, which they are
considering.
But to do much more with the PlayBook, I have to connect it to a PC
(or Mac) via the USB cable.
There does not seem to be any way to get this to work in Ubuntu, but
if anyone knows how, let me know. The USB connection is necessary to
do a system backup and for installing .bar files onto the PlayBook
(apps converted from Android apk files).
I need to do it in Windows. So I used Windows in VirtualBox, connected
the PlayBook via USB and Windows could see the PlayBook, but would not
install the drivers. I contacted RIM tech support and they said the
drivers are on the PlayBook and the Windows PC should automatically
install the drivers. But in VirtualBox this is not working.
Any ideas how to overcome this problem? I have an old Windows XP disc
somewhere. If I can find it, I can install it onto an old PC and try
that, but until then the only way I am running Windows is via VirtualBox.
Anyone else had any experience with using the BlackBerry PlayBook?
David King
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