Linux on Laptops
Or, Why I Had to Leave Fedora Behind
I've had an interesting few years with GNU/Linux, starting with a Red Hat 5.2 CDROM that I bought from a CS geek at the University of Waikato for (I think) NZ$10. Late nights were had downloading packages from the internet, using crusty dialup. New Zealand hasn't come much further, I have to note, as Telecom enforced a 'smoke signals only' bandwidth restriction until very recently.
Thankfully, I've been associated with universities for most of that time and I made great use of their massive data pipelines to download progressive Red Hat distributions and the odd SuSE on the side. GNU/Linux has come a long way from the days of getting a GUI to run if you were lucky, but there are some problems that continue to dog Free Software. Not least of which is uncooperative behaviour from hardware vendors, many of whom won't release hardware specs so we can't get full use of the electronics that we have paid good money for.
So anyway, Fedora. It's done me well. I still have an installation (FC3) running in the lab being a stable little server. I spent a lot of time getting it to work on this laptop, a rough record of which you can find here. But it's time that this marriage comes to an end. A cute, mature and well-developed distro kept on popping up in conversation (in real life and on the web), and I decided to make my acquaintence with it. Its name is Ubuntu, and it's in its 6th incarnation (6.06 to be precise), codenamed Dapper.
As with all new relationships, it takes some time to get things right, to find a common footing, see eye-to-eye, to properly mix your metaphors. First impressions count though, and my first impression of Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire 3023WLMi was very good indeed.
And thank goodness, the Ubuntu designers have stuck with apt and Synaptic for .deb package management - made better by automatically recognising Ubuntu installation media! Neato! It's far easier to use than the yum/yumex alternative, quicker, more intuitive and functionally powerful. Isn't this exactly what GNU/Linux should be?
I now have Ubuntu Gutsy on my Acer Aspire 3023WLMi. Unfortunately the hardware is giving up. A hint for free - dont try to epoxy resin case cracks without first removing the LCD screen. While the screen looks sealed, it's not. Anyway, I now have an interesting light effect where the resin has seeped into the back of the unit...
Gutsy is a major advance on previous distributions, especially because the display adapter (ATi X700) and WiFi (Broadcom 4318) work using the default drivers installed by the Restricted Driver Manager. Most other issues have been solved, so it took the folowing email (and submitting my PhD thesis) to get around to updating this page.
Ubuntu 7.10 on Acer Aspire 3023WLMi, my experience Lucasz Sokol Hi, your page has been of great help to me :) when I tried to set up a linux distro on my laptop. Just yesterday I have received Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) CD free :) (no, I'm not affiliated ;)) and gave it a try. LiveCD bootup went normally, although the drive was coughing heavily. First ever time I had Linux installed on my laptop around 1 year ago, but the distro was too demanding (time-wise)- well many things were better, but in the version I installed, XOrg was not yet modular... and so I could not even think of having the graphics supported as I want it. Oh well, there comes Ubuntu. So I did have the 6GB (resized the windows D: partition earlier) and decided to give 5.5GB to Ubuntu and the rest to swap. (my previous install used to have swap-on-file, but this was sub-optimal due to hibernation). After install, first boot. And... black screen. WTF ? Alt+F1 has shown the console though. And, there it was : at every bootup the fsck was called to check the windows partitions. Fixed by disabling it in fstab later on. Drums, user, password, chime, there we are :) The Desktop :) Update check, update, reboot. Blank (black) screen. No logo. Alt+F1 - console shows the bootup process. Desktop. Voila. Restricted drivers manager shows up. Installing ATI fglrx, bcm43xx (btw, they could actually try to replace it with b43 already, the authors try to drop the bcm43xx (I'm subscribed to the bcm43xx mailing list)), don't need the modem, so OK, not installing. dmesg has shown at some point MP-APIC BUG but then from the messages it was seen that a workaround has been put in place. Good. (tried the idea of adding the boot parameters (to grub.lst)) but it changed nothing (I'm talking about the disable_timer_pin_1 and so on, it does nothing in this kernel version probably). Being curious, yet when the LiveCD was in, I tried to insert my camera's SD card to the reader... and it worked :) Out Of The Box. No special setup required. GOOD :) The wireless, though, didn't. Reading your description of Ubuntu On Acer, I tried to do sudo modprobe acerhk and sudo echo 1 > the/weird/path/to/wireless/led and it worked (the led that is) One remark : when installing a Restricted Driver for the bcm43xx, the program went up with ready site to download the firmware from - use that one. When I tried later on with bcmwl5.sys from the windows/system32/drivers, the bcm43xx-fwcutter complained that it cannot support v4 firmware. Well then. I sticked to the wl_apsta.o from the location the config has provided. But it still cannot be simply clicked on and enabled the hardware, unfortunately... because the Network Manager comes into way ( I think) What you need to do is you need to right click on the NM applet, select 'manual configuration', then highlight the 'wireless network connection', click 'properties', un-check the 'enable roaming mode', enter your SSID, auth type and password, make it use DHCP, and accept all those. After that, the NM shows my wireless network name, and the link quality (I'm about 1m from my AP) of 60-75%, but the dmesg says eth1 : link not ready :( and that's the end of it :( no transfer at all. But bear in mind, without the steps reproduced above (in Roaming Mode) the dmesg says 'Open Authentication completed with (my AP mac)' and nothing else happens, t.i. it does not ask for password or anything... So it is 0:2 for the laptop for now (on the older Linux installation I tried to do the same, only without NM, but to no success). I even read what the 'sudo modinfo acerhk' says and tried to modprobe it with automatic wireless hardware activation. With the very same effect. So it is 0:3 to the laptop for now - but I will keep fighting. Looking through the dmesg, I've seen messages stating that the FireWire port has been found and recognized - don't have the hardware to check it though - but we might now set the outcome to 2:3 to the laptop (2 is for the SD and FireWire, 3 is for acerhk, ati and bcm43xx) Oh, forgot to say - with fglrx installed in place, when I try to use the Compiz (installed by default :) ) by going System->Preferences->Theme : Desktop Effects, setting the desktop effects to highest (or to middle grade, anything but the simplest), doesnt work - I get a complaining dialog, that 'Composite extension is not present' and ... that's the end of it - that's why ati is included in the 3 for the laptop above. Will try to fight this difference off ;) with AIGLX maybe, and will try to go for b43 - we will see :) It is just there on my laptop no more than 12 hours ;) and most of it I had to go to sleep :) So methinks, we might name it a tie : 3 (SD, Firewire, heatsink) for me, 3 (bcm, acerhk and ati) for the laptop. Will fight till the end (of the laptop's life ;) ) In the end I will win anyway ;) or maybe a bit earlier ;) or the end comes earlier 'cause I win. ;) (please edit this letter heavily if you wish to put it onto the website :) for the sake of the readers)
Sorry Lucasz, it's verbatim :-P - Your English is fine.
Thanks for all your good work, Sorry for my less-than-perfect english ;) Regards, Lukasz
This goes very well. Just make sure that you select safe graphics mode at the startup screen. I guess that the ordinary boot tries to start graphics hardware acceleration, but it doesn't work (you can Ctrl+Alt+Fn to get another tty login screen though). You get the bongo drums and the twinkling triangles and the yummy chocolate colour scheme. Installation goes without too much of a hitch, though because I have a bit of a funky partitioning scheme (with WinXP on a couple, and Linux on a couple) I did crash it once. I think that was my fault...
I've had a go with the Edgy installation as well; the Desktop distribution couldn't handle my fairly simple partitioning scheme and crashed, while the Server distribution handled it fine - which is good because I really wanted a LAMP setup. Only problem was that X wasn't installed by default, so after getting a basic install sorted I had to run,
~$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
which takes quite a while to complete, even on a good broadband connection.
LCD Screen, 3D acceleration (and Xgl/Beryl!), Synaptics touchpad, sound, wired networking, wireless networking (increasingly well), USB ports, DVD-RW, CPU frequency scaling, PCMCIA slot, card reader (reported).
FireWire (untested), infra-red port (untested)
I just use the one that comes with the distribution. No, actually the next one that was released, which is only a couple of minor versions newer. It's got the bcm43xx driver in it (for WiFi), but I'm hanging out for later kernels where bcm43xx has been improved. Support for most things is native and sets up automatically. Make sure you also get the kernel-headers and a few development tools (gcc et al.) because there is a bit of compiling required to get a few things going. Every time you update your kernel you will have to recompile and reinstall things that require custom kernel modules, including the ATi accelerated graphics drivers and acerhk. It's handy to keep all that stuff (plus good instructions) in one place for convenient access.
I use the accelerated driver from ATi. You can't just run the installer as per FC4, instead you have to generate a set of .debs that you then install (follow these instructions). My standard test is to run glxgears in a terminal (you should get 4000+ FPS), then play a round of Planet Penguin Racer. I get 60-125 FPS when running PPRacer in a standard GNOME login, and about half as many FPS on an XGl-Beryl login. The Beryl Wiki suggestst that AIGLX is a better alternative to the ATi drivers, however, I've found it easier to get the ATi drivers going than any alternative.
There was a crappy Australian kids' TV program in the 90's where they made the kid contestants answer trivia questions, then do 'physical challenges'. My mate Rob showed me the video of XGl, which was in effect, a physical challenge. The gauntlet was thrown. Thankfully there were really good instructions on how to get it to go on the Ubuntu wiki. I followed those. Sweet as. Flicky desktops, rubber windows, all sorts of things to impress your friends! (Try running glxgears, then Alt+Tab, then Alt+Ctrl+arrows...)
Compiz has been superseded by Beryl, so the best way forward is to go to the Beryl Wiki and follow the instructions there to the letter. I have it working so that Xgl is set up as a session option at the gdm login screen, then start Beryl through beryl-manager (beryl-manager-Select Window Manager-Beryl).
Ubuntu Dapper has perfect support for the touchpad, including multi-finger tapping, scrolling and click-to-drag. Hooking this into XGl-Beryl makes for cool useability!
This one's tricky. There are a couple of different solutions - the kernel module (bcm43xx) or ndiswrapper. I'm mucking around with the kernel module since it will only get better and seems like the best way forward. Ndiswrapper worked very well for me under FC4, but I've decided to go for bcm43xx under Ubuntu. I also use NetworkManager and its GNOME interface, nm-applet which you can install off the CDROM. To me, WiFi should be constantly aware of available networks and connect you to the best one that you have access to (or the one of your chooosing).
Once again, the Ubuntu wiki came to the rescue. Use these instructions and ignore the stuff about ndiswrapper. Basically said, get rid of all traces of ndiswrapper, remove any references to eth0 and eth1 in /etc/network/interfaces and install the correct firmware with bcm43xx-fwcutter. I use bcmwl5.sys and bcmwl5.inf from Acer-Europe, because that's the driver that came with my hardware.
Finally, you need acerhk. This little driver was originally designed to make the special buttons on Acer notebooks work - the email and internet buttons among others. I realised that you may need acerhk to turn on your WiFi hardware by simulating a WiFi button press. So, download acerhk, compile and install it according to the INSTALL instructions. You'll have to make sure that a proper build environment is installed, including kernel headers, gcc, bcc and other bits and pieces. Keep installing stuff with apt-get or Synaptic until the acerhk compile works with no errors. To make the wireless card (bcm4318) work in my notebook I have to run the following commands (while NetworkManager and nm-applet are running...):
~$ sudo modprobe -r bcm43xx ~$ sudo modprobe bcm43xx ~$ sudo modprobe acerhk ~$ echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled [wait a few seconds for acerhk to activate the card and for NM to do a scan]
nm-applet should now light up with flicky green lights and at least see your AP. If not, try right clicking on the nm-applet connection icon and disabling wireless and networking, then re-enabling them. Sometimes it takes a few tries. The WiFi light on my notebook lights up and flickers with network activity. It's useful to remove all encryption from your AP before testing this as WEP, WPA et al. introduce a whole layer of unhelpful complexity at this stage. If you're not sure whether NM can see your AP, run
~$ iwlist eth1 scan
Which should give you something like
~$ eth1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:11:F5:B3:B3:B9
ESSID:"kangarouter"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
Mode:Master
Channel:10
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:54 Mb/s
Extra: Rates (Mb/s): 1 2 5.5 6 9 11 12 18 24 36 48 54
Quality=100/100 Signal level=-157 dBm
Extra: Last beacon: 160ms ago
If you get anything else, like, 'no scan results', something has gone wrong.
As an aside, if you run:
~$ echo 0 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled
When your WiFi card is associated and you are downloading something, network traffic ceases without losing association (at least, over short periods). If you echo 1 it will start again, pretty much instantly.
I have got WPA (Personal) working reasonably well. Looks like you have to manually remove and re-insert the kernel module each time you change AP's. I've found the debug mode of NetworkManager helpful to see what state the WiFi card is in, and to pick the appropriate time to run the above commands (in a separate terminal window). To get the debug mode, open a terminal, stop and restart NM by issuing the following:
~$ sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager stop ~$ sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon
There's a good NM FAQ at this site. Also, if you change the password on the AP, you need to change it in your keyring by running System - Administration - Keyring Manager (deb package gnome-keyring-manager), or else NM gets confused and won't update the key with the new one all by itself. These are still early days for WiFi on Linux, but there's lots of community involvement that you can be part of by testing programs and submitting bug reports, making the programs develop faster and better.
There is another way to get NetworkManager, nm-applet and bcm43xx playing well together on the bcm4318 chipset, and it is to use bcm43xx-firmware_1.0-0ubuntu5_all.deb, without acerhk. So, install NetworkManager, nm-applet and this firmware package, remove ndiswrapper and references to eth0 and eth1 in /etc/network/interfaces and reboot. It works for me. If you try this firmware, please email me with your experiences so that I can strengthen or remove my recommendation. Don't bother with the 1.1 version of the firmware .deb package if you come across it; it won't install as it has a wee anaphylactic reaction when it contacts your bcm4318!
If you haven't left the land of the long white smoke signals (AKA Aotearoa/New Zealand) for places with proper broadband and still require dialup, or want to use last-Millenium technology (i.e. fax) you'll need to get your modem going. I haven't bothered with this (why would you kill trees sending a fax when email is fast, cheap and tree-huggingly non-paper-wasting?) because I do it infrequently enough that I can tolerate doing it with WinXP. If you are in need of a working modem, you'll probably need to visit Linuxant and follow the instructions on my old page.
Ubuntu just does this, using the powernowd daemon and powernow-k8 kernel module for AMD K8 processors. You can monitor your CPU frequency using the GNOME-panel CPU monitoring applet.
I have had a report that powernowd may cause system crashes in Ubuntu Dapper. If you are having random hangs or crashes, try disabling powernowd and see if the crashes continue
Ubuntu just does this as well, with a dinky little icon indicating battery charge status in the panel.
I download my digital pictures off compact flash using a PCMCIA CF adaptor. Ubuntu recognises the hardware but doesn't properly mount the CF card as a drive, so you have to make a mount point somewhere convenient...
~$ mkdir /media/cf
... and mount the card manually:
~$ sudo mount /dev/hde1 /media/cf
You can now access the CF card by navigating to /media/cf. You can add this line to /etc/fstab to get automatic mounting of your CF card (make sure the mount point exists!):
/dev/hde1 /media/cf vfat defaults,user,noauto 0 0
I haven't tested this because my camera uses compact flash cards, but if you use one of the other types of card then try inserting your card then:
~$ sudo modprobe tifm_sd
This has been reported to work on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy), but it should go on 6.06 (Dapper) as well.
The Aspire 3023 has a few special buttons on it, which do things like open your email and web clients. To make these buttons active, you have to install acerhk. The mail and web buttons are mapped correctly, but if you want to change them or add bindings to the other keys then you can do so under System - Preferences - Keyboard Shortcuts. The &euro and $ keys next to the arrow keys don't work at the moment. It's a known bug so should be mapped in future versions of hotkey-setup (an Ubuntu package). acerhk is also useful for getting WiFi to go, so it's worth putting in the small effort to compile and install it.
This is here for comparative purposes
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01) 00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI-X Root Port 00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5a38 00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5a39 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller 00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11) 00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge 00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4378 (rev 02) 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 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE) 06:05.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) 06:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller 06:06.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller 06:06.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller 06:06.4 Class 0805: Texas Instruments PCI6411, PCI6421, PCI6611, PCI6621, PCI7411, PCI7421, PCI7611, PCI7621 Secure Digital (SD) Controller 06:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
Questions? email me
This file last modified 1438hrs 10 December 2007 © Michael Doube 2004-2008 :: Designed to be interoperable and standards-compliant. Looks best with Mozilla Firefox