About a month ago I asked for help getting Linux to install on a HP laptop, model "compaq nc6000". I'm happy to report that I've finally got it working--more or less. Thanks to all the replies that came in and offers for help. The key thing that I was stuck on was the configuration of the wireless adaptor. It turns out there's a separate on/off button for the built-in wireless adaptor! Once I had that figured out, the rest went pretty smoothly. What follows is an email response I sent to someone who happened to be looking for help setting up Linux on a nc6000. It has more details. I'm offering it back in case it helps anyone else. -Jeff ------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I should report back on what I finally got running. I tried two distributions that worked. The first distribution is SuSE 9.0 Pro. It worked out-of-the-box: sound works fine, 10/100/1000 adapter works, and SuSE distribution comes with madwifi pre-compiled and installed with the distribution, so the wireless adapter works too. The downside is that the graphics support isn't that great -- there's no 3D support, and some applications won't run without it (some of the games I tried; can't remember which ones off the top of my head). The second distribution--and the one I picked--is Fedora Core 1. 3D graphics works (vesa device driver). Madwifi is not included, but I fetched the sources from CVS and built it myself. I guess the reason why I picked Fedora is because my company has a lot of enterprise RedHat experience and I wanted something similar. With both distributions, the key thing to remember to get the wireless adapter to work is to push the wireless button (located above the number keys, in the middle of a group of 3 buttons, with an icon that looks like a radio antenna). This is my first laptop and I didn't realize it had a separate button to enable/disable the radio transmitter. When the transmitter is on, a blue light will appear at the lower left edge of the case. It stays enabled through reboots and power cycles. After you install the madwifi driver, add the line alias ath0 ath_pci to /etc/modules.conf and then reboot. When the system comes up, automatic hardware discovery will find the adaptor and try to configure it as eth1. Let it do what it wants, then fix it after the system is up: remove eth1 from /etc/modules.conf, and move ifcfg-eth1 to ifcfg-ath0. (More about that last part in the next paragraph.) The wireless adapter device is called ath0. You can set up wireless keys, essid, and other parameters in the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0. See the ifup-wireless script in the same directory for the list of variables you can set. The commands /sbin/ifup and /sbin/ifdown are used to turn the device on and off. My parameters in ifcfg-ath0 are: DEVICE=ath0 ONBOOT=no USERCTL=yes ESSID=myessid KEY=mykey With USERCTL=yes, I can bring up the wireless up when I want without being root. I made the eth0 wired adaptor user-controllable as well. I have an Advanced Port Replicator, and it just works (external network, keyboard, mouse, monitor). The external video runs at 60Hz, however, which is annoying. Other notes: 1. Do not specify acpi=on as a boot parameter. It doesn't work in the 2.4 kernels and I"m not sure it's that much better in the 2.6 kernels either. The downside is that power management isn't perfect: when you unplug the power cord and switch to battery, the system thinks the battery level is at -1; in addition, the fan runs all the time. If you ignore the initial battery notification, eventually you will get a real notice that the battery is going to run out. I get about 3 or 4 hours of life out of mine before the notice appears for real. You have about 5 minutes to wrap up and shut down before you lose power. 2. Visit the fedora websites, especially fedoranews.org. They've got a great set of updates and articles on how to do stuff specifically for Fedora. The best one by far is the one that explains how to make up2date run faster. If you pick Fedora Core 1, be sure to read and apply this as soon as you have finished the install, before you do anything else. 3. Things I haven't figured out: -- how to turn off external speakers but let the headphones in the headphone jack still work. -- external buttons for volume and mute controls don't work -- where the real sound control application is hiding. I've run aumix -- haven't tried using the modem -- haven't tried using the SD media reader -- CD playing works fine. Haven't tried burning a CD yet. -- Can't get xine to work yet for playing DVDs -- How to get external video to run at a higher refresh rate than 60Hz -- Haven't tried any pcmcia cards I will probably try Fedora Core 2 (beta was just announced a few days ago) but I want to repartition first so I don't lose my working copy of Fedora Core 1. My final recommendation is this: focus on one thing at a time. At first there's so much that needs to get done, so make a check list and don't move on to the next thing until the first is finished. I made the mistake of bouncing around trying to fix one thing, then another, then going back to the first. I also made the mistake of spending too long to get Mandrake to work. I tried 9.2, Cooker 2003-12-31 and 10.0 Beta 1. The most recent (Beta 1) was actually the worst of the 3. My advice is to give up on Mandrake and try Fedora or SuSE. ---------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list