Ubunut 18.04 on toughbook cf-31

So I got my hands on a nice Toughbook CF-31 (more specivic CF-31SFLAX1M) and wanted to run Linux on it. I went for the Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS) and this is what I got.

Worked out of the box:

Wifi
USB
SD-Card reader
Functionkeys (except Screenbrightness, the sound ajustment is a bit slow)
Keyboard
mousepad
cpu fan
battery charging and everything
Lan

Works after some modifications:

Sound:

to geht some audio output I had to make the modifications descriped here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/linux-ubuntu-touch-pad-sound-fix-cf-31-mk2.813539/
After that internald Speaker and Headphone Jack worked finde.

Screen Brightness:

That one took some time. In the end I figured that when I adjusted my screen brightness it adjusted the falues in /sys/class/backlight/panasonic but my hardware was using the falues from /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight
I found no way to change that but I found this script here that'll just sinc the two falues:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/104...-sys-class-backlight-to-solve-brightness-prob
To make it permamnent use a cronjob as described here:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/run-bash-script-as-root-during-startup-linux/
Works for me now and I can tell you it's a real pleasure to work outside with this amazing screen.

Screen resolution:

By default I was just able to set the screen resolution to 1024 x 768 but I wanted it to be 1200 x 900 so I could fit more contend into the relativly small screen. To get that screen resolution just copy

into ~/.profile
the command to do that would be

save & reboot tada
you can find more detailed instructions about adjusting screen resolutions here:
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2017/04/custom-screen-resolution-ubuntu-desktop/
For editing the .profile I recommend to skip the sudo. I tried with sudo and after login just got a screen that wasn't doing anything.

touchscreen (editted after some helpfull commentens I recieved in this thread)

First Press F2 after you switched your CF-31 on to enter your BIOS and make sure your on

and

Afterwards you need to calibrate your screen. Therefore add a script containing

to your auto-startup. You can do that by using a cronjob as you did before with the screenbrightness issue.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/run-bash-script-as-root-during-startup-linux/

Bluetooth:

After connecting with my bluetoothspeaker it just disconnected right away. That seems to be some problem related to Ubuntu using the wrong bluetooth protocol.
What fixed it for me was this:
https://freedompenguin.com/articles/how-to/ubuntu-bluetooth-headphones-fix/

Microphone:

This took me some while. Everytime I pluged in a Microphone I just got some static noise (the CF-31 has no internal microphone). After a lot of fidelling around I found out that you can only use condenser microphones with the CF-31 and not the a lot more common dynamic microphones. This is a hardware issue not a software one! (details can be found in the CF-31 manual)
Anyway after getting a small condenser microphone everything worked find. It's no bug but I added it anyway so maybe it can save you some time figuring that one out.

Not tested:

HDMI Port
VGA Port
Sim Card Slot

All together: It took some time but it's really an amazing peace of hardware.

 

Nice write up with all the links included.

Touchscreen needs calibrated and then the calibration info saved to the proper location.

 

Hello and thank you.

In my opinion he touchscreen problem isn't a calibaration problem. The screen acts absolutely the same under a windows 10. So i guess this is some kind of hardware driver problem i haven't been able to figure out yet.
Anyway I calibrated the screen under linux and windwos with no significant change in behaviour.
My next try would be installing a windows 7 on an extra SSD Caddy and trying to install some drivers. Maybe this will help. Sadly there are no drivers available for Windows 10.
If I'm able to solve the issue I'll let you know but I have to admit that the touchscreen isn't my highest priority.

 

It is a calibration and or a bios setting issue.
Not a driver issue.
Set it to tablet in bios.

Been down this road before.
Running mx 18 on 3 different Toughbooks.
MX and ubuntu are both Debian based.

Win10 wants a tablet setting in bios. Many threads in this forum document this.

 

Ok, I switched to Tablet Mode.
Result in Ubuntu: No reaction to touch what so ever.

I got no working windows caddy at the moment but I remember from testing befor that under windows it didn't matter weither I used touchscreen or tablet mode. Same behaviour with the smaller area where the cursor can actually go (as described above) in both settings. But I can't reproduce that now.

I think I went for the touchscreen mode cause it's working under both systems.

Anyway I tried to figure out which serialport my touchscreen is using, (as suggested here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touchscreen).
I can screen ttyS0 and ttyS1 using sudo (without sudo it says "[screen is terminating]"). I don't get any feedback from touching the screen.
Form ttyS2 on sudo isn't helping either. The result is always just "[screen is terminating]".

So I'm kinda stuck cause I can't find out which serialport to set the driver to.
If you can offer any help you'd be very welcome.

 

Excellent write up.i don't use Ubunut myself but others will find this very helpful. Thank you very much.

 

download a liveiso of mx18 and boot from the usb you create

Just checked my CF D1 with M18 on it.
bios set to auto-it choose tablet.

No extra drivers loaded or needed.
All toughbooks I load linux on need calibrated. Usually before calibration, they don't respond to the entire screen.
Outer 1/2 inch or so.

xinput calibrator needs to be run and the output saved.

Info is usually saved in
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf:

 

For touchscreen, try making a script with this content, and adding it to startups:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Coordinate touch panel to screen
xinput set-prop "Fujitsu Component USB Touch Panel" "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" 1.075, 0, -.03, 0, 1.1, -0.07, 0, 0, 1

 

@ Shawn: I'll try the LIve System when I find the time to do so.

Meanwhile Ubuntu can't find my touchscreen:

produces

Which hasn't been the case on touchscreen mode. But the calibration didn't help there anyways. Ubunut just doesn't automatically recognize my screen on touchscreen mode.

@ theoak2: I just ran your command without using a script

this is what I get:

which makes sense cause this is my output from lsusb:

Also there has been no USB touchpanel under touchscreenmode. So I guess this calibration isn't the one I need on my system.

@ User32: Well screenbrightness works just fine with my fix. No need to work with drivers and kernel parameters. But thanks anyway.

 

Try:

Code:

xinput list

to see if your touchpanel has a different name.

Go into BIOS and set touchscreen for opposite of whatever it is and try again.
Also those coordinates are for default resolution (1024x768)

 

One more thing: there is a setting in the "advanced" tab of BIOS settings to enable or disable touchscreen

 

Do you have xinput showing in package manager?

 

@ theok: In the advanced section I'm on touchscreen: enable
This is my output from xinput list

At the moment display is set to Touchscreen Mode: Tablet Mode as suggested by shawn.

When I change to Touchscreen Mode: Touchscreen Mode this are my resulsts I get from xinput list

so now I got the Fujitsu Component USB Touch Panel

And when I now use your command from before

I got a nice callibrated screen.

It's seems I have been to stupid to callibrate my screen correctly. You never stop learning.
Thank you all for your help.

I'll edit the first post to make the result more easy to find for other user with the same problem.