Replaced with Atheros chipset based WiFi card, 8€ on eBay
Lithium-Ion Battery
Works
Charge status displayed correctly
Realtek ALC880 Sound Card
Works
No special procedure required during installation
SD card reader
Works
No special procedure required during installation
Synaptics touchpad
Works
Vertical scroll enabled
This laptop also has 6 USB ports, 1 IEEE1394 (firewire), an
infra-red receiver to be used with a Packard-Bell remote control
(optional), S-Video out (not tested with Linux), VGA video out (not
tested with Linux).
This laptop is (still) operating under Kernel version 2.6.20.16.
Basic Installation of Linux Mint:
Why to use Linux Mint: it's a good-looking Ubuntu based
distribution with restricted drivers and codecs already installed and
with some exclusive features like mintMenu (an all-in-one menu similar
to SuSE's Slab menu), mintUpdate (package update tool), mintDisk,
mintBackup...
Installation is very simple and recommended fon non-experienced users
Setting up additional features for Linux Mint 3.0
I tried in many ways to get the Ralink WiFi card working
correctly. The device was recognized, wireless networks were seen and
network manager showed signal strength, but it couldn't log into the wireless network. I replaced the card with a cheap Atheros-chipset mini-pci card, I enabled its restricted driver and got the card working (although network manager doesn't show correctly the signal strength: it never indicates more than 65-70%, even @ a 15 cm distance from router).
By installing Ati 8.42.3 closed FGLRX driver and modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf as follows:
I finally got 3D effects enabled and I
got Compiz-Fusion running succesfully. Beryl (any version, also the
stable 0.2 one) will freeze the desktop when rendering 3D.
There is a topic on the Ubuntu forum to get this driver up and running.
You can also find an italian howto here.
Unresolved issues
Couldn't get Suspend-to-Disk to operate correctly (never tried seriously, though).
More Specific Information:
lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:10.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
00:10.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
00:10.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
00:10.4 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller
00:11.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
00:19.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation M5249 HTT to PCI Bridge
00:1b.0 Ethernet controller: ALi Corporation ULi 1689,1573 integrated ethernet. (rev 50)
00:1c.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.1 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.2 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.3 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 2.0 Controller (rev 01)
00:1d.0 Audio device: ALi Corporation High Definition Audio/AC'97 Host Controller
00:1e.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation PCI to LPC Controller (rev 31)
00:1e.1 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:1f.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c7)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
