HOWTO : ECS LIVA Mini PC Kit on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

ECS Liva Mini PC kit is the smallest x86 PC in the world so far. The BIOS is UEFI, so that only Ubuntu besides Windows 8.1 can be installed on it. I select to install with LVM.

You may need a powered USB hub to connect the keyboard and mouse as well as install device (such as USB DVD-ROM or USB pendrive). Since it comes with 32GB/64GB eMMC (SSD drive), you may required to connect to an external hard drive for more storage.

The maximum power consumption is about 12W under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

The sound and network device are working out of the box. However, the wireless and bluetooth devices do not work properly even you download the wireless driver from the official site (it is still beta at the moment).

After some tries and fails, I finally make the wireless device working. However, the bluetooth device does not work at the moment.

How I make the wireless device working? Here you are :

Step 1 :

Write down the MAC address of the wireless card.

Step 2 :

Download the beta driver from the official site. Extract it and go to ~/Downloads/Ubuntu/WLAN.

Rename the "brcmfmac-sdio.txt" to "brcmfmac-43241b4-sdio.txt".

mv brcmfmac-sdio.txt brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt

Change the "macaddr" at brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt to the previous written down MAC address.

e.g. macaddr=24:0a:64:4c:43:34

Step 3 :

Move the /lib/firmware/brcm directory to another place.

sudo mv /lib/firmware/brcm ~/Downloads/

Step 4 :

Install git package.

sudo apt-get install git

Download the wireless firmware.

cd ~/Downloads
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

After that copy the ~/Downloads/linux-firmware/brcm to /lib/firmware/.

sudo cp -R ~/Downloads/linux-firmware/brcm /lib/firmware/

Copy the brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt to /lib/firmware/brcm/.

sudo cp ~/Downloads/Ubuntu/WLAN/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt /lib/firmware/brcm/

Step 5 :

Comment out the blacklist.

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Locate "blacklist bcm43xx" and make it to "#blacklist bcm43xx".

Step 6 :

Reboot the box.

However, the wifi signal is not very strong indeed.

Remarks

You may need to do some changing on the box with the following package :

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra
sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

To increase the performance, you need to NOT to use SWAP.

sudon nano /etc/rc.local

Insert the following before "exit 0" :

sysctl -w vm.swappiness=0

Then, reboot your box.

For the video playback, you are required to install the following packages.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sander-vangrieken/vaapi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mplayer-vaapi gstreamer1.0-vaapi gstreamer1.0-libav libva-intel-vaapi-driver vainfo mencoder-vaapi

That's all! See you.

Link : 10 things to do after installing Ubuntu



Update

3rdman have an alternative way to fix the wifi problem.