(Update Nov 22: I've changed a lot of the info below. For now, bear with me and the strike throughs, as I get a new article written)
Mostly works.
Here are the specs. Note that I'm using Ubuntu Dapper Drake 32-bit for now. I will move to Debian ASAP.
UPD: Moved to Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 64-bit. Waiting for Debian Etch AMD64.
UPD: I've tried getting an external monitor to work, with no success.
What works:
- All of the keyboard keys including special "multimedia" keys. Some issues with status updates (blue leds don't turn orange :) )
- Monitor comfortably displays "1280x800" using the nv opensource driver. But it wasn't autodetected, and I had to write out frequencies to the xorg.conf file (though they were automatically detected).
- HDD, RAM, CPU everything work fine, though I get messages of "BIOS BUG detected" during bootups.
- Bluetooth.
- UPD: Wireless works with ndiswrapper and 64-bit Broadcom drivers. bcm43xx does not work.
What doesn't (yet) work:
Headphones (ouch!), even with the latest and greatest ALSA, though they're working on it.Headphones now work, with stock alsa-1.0.13, but snd-hda-intel requires the disable_msi=1 parameter eliminate an irritating looping and to have headphone support. As a side effect, I don't seem to need noapic anymore. Sound is terrific on these speakers though.- Broadcom Wireless LAN has "issues", ad-hoc networking wasn't possible, I'm waiting for my wireless account to test out "managed" networking. I'm using the bcm43xx driver for which my card is "unstable". ndiswrapper refuses to take a 32-bit driver, and picks the 64-bit one and then complains. Don't ask why.
- Wired ethernet worked perfectly,
and then decided it wouldn't work without noapic. This seems to have thrown out the CPU frequency daemon out of gear. - Suspend and hibernate have issues.
What wasn't tested:
The Card reader (update: I did try this with one card, but nothing happened), the expansion slot, the modem, external monitor and S-Video.
And yes, Compaq expects you to have Windows and IE to test for updates. Ouch!
It's not smooth sailing yet, but there are a lot less issues than I'd been brought up to believe.
Ask for more details, if you need any.
4 comments:
I too have the same laptop. I tried 64bit versions FC6, F7, Edgy and Feisty. But not satisfied as some or the other bug come up or 64bit FC6 and F7 are bit slow then Ubuntu. I am thinking to install AMD64 Debian Etch now. Do you think its a wise decision and will support everything in my laptop. I basically use it for computational purposes and now days less interested to play with different distros. And one more thing about "ACPI reporting that the processor supports 8 speed steps" in my laptop when i run $cat /proc/cpuinfo i get steppings=2. My laptop gets heated up very quickly also. Does Debian has good power management support? Please mail me 'manu.gvm@gmail.com'
Hmm .. no, Debian Etch is not a good choice for a laptop, not unless you're prepared to compile lots of additional stuff. Debian Lenny (testing) or Sid (unstable) are much better in my opinion. However, their out-of-the-box experience sucks. In particular, multimedia keys are not mapped in, speedstep modules are not loaded, etc.
I would recommend Ubuntu Feisty, which only has problems with the sound card and WiFi, both of which are fixable. For Alsa, you can compile the latest version from alsa-source package, or easier, just upgrade your kernel to 2.6.21, which works without problems.
I've also tried the next version of Ubuntu, the Gutsy Gibbon (Tribe 1), and it pretty much works well without any problems. There does seem to be problems with WiFi, but I can always use ndiswrapper for that.
The speedstep is indeed only two steps, despite the reporting of ACPI (which is largely broken on most laptops). The temperatures are usually 38--41 on idle in an AC room, and upto 70 when compiling linux.
Good luck!
was very late in replying. But thanks for the help. I have shifted back to Fedora 7 itself :).
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