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Notes on installation and compatibility of Ubuntu with Hewlett-Packard laptop computers.

Summary

Details

HP nx9110

see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HPNX9110 for details!

HP (Compaq) NX5000

• Bluetooth works out of the box.

• Had to replace ipw2200 kernel drivers and firmware with latest from http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ to get Wireless working.

• Have not tried CD burning, IrDA or IEEE1394.

• Conflict between HAL and onboard network card (Broadcom 4400). Either disable D-BUS (sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d dbus-1 remove) or stop hotplug from loading the driver by adding b44 to /etc/hotplug/blacklist.

• VBIOS needs to be patched to enable 1400x1050. Download and compile 855resolution then do 855resolution 4d 1400 1050.

• Cannot wake from suspend.

HP (Compaq) nx6110

Bugs

• Wireless LED is not working

• Often when having returned from suspend to RAM video playback causes X to go in a crash loop; only way out is Alt+SysRq+s (for sync) and then Alt+SysRq+b (for reboot) (or holding the power button to reset the machine)

Works

• Suspend to RAM
• Touchpad (incl. 3rd mouse button, scroll region)
• Speaker mute when headphones are jacked in
• Keyboard triggered Suspend to RAM (Fn+F3)
• CD burning, some notebooks have a DVD-RW burner, it also works
• Audio recording
• Battery status
• CPU frequency scaling
• Ethernet
• USB
• Wireless (Intel IPW2200, there exists a variant of this notebook with broadcom wireless)
• Suspend to disk
• Externa Monitor, only with dapper

Not tested

• Modem
• Firewire

(by MarkusBertheau2)

HP nc6120

• Go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HPNC6120 for a more detailed description of the nc6xxx series' key features.

• Installed version is HP-Ubuntu (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/custom/20050516/hoary-install-i386.iso)

• To get Hibernation (Suspend to disk) to work, I had to change the last line of /etc/default/acpi-support to:

STOP_SERVICES="mysql irda-utils"

• The Ipw2200 adapter disconnects itself from the network during work. I found a solution to this bug here:

  http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=167782&postcount=46

It is tested to work with kernel version 2.6.10-5-386 (installed ver reported by synaptic: 2.6.10-34.2). Even the blue led is working now!

• 3d accelleration is working, but only with MESA libraries. This has an impact on the performance.

• Cd-Burning is working (speed: 12x after removing autostart of nautilus burn:// in system -> settings -> changeable media)

• 6in1 Card reader doesn't work because there are no drivers available at the moment.
• Not tested yet: DVD-Writer, Modem, PCMCIA.
• For questions: mail to phen at gmx dot de

HP Pavilion DV1066ea (DV1000 series)

• Most things seem to work out of the box, or with minor tweaking
• Sound, 1280x768 screen, wireless, 10/100 Mbit LAN, synaptics touchpad, 3D acceleration, CPU frequency scaling, CD/DVD rewriter all work well
• Modem not working, though not much time has been spent working on it.
• In common with several other HP notebooks, noapic is needed at boot-up to prevent random freezes.

• There's a small write-up on the install with more details at http://www.dbg400.net/dv1066ea.html

• Upgrading to Hoary adds suspend to RAM and suspend to disk.

• Wireless + WPA works well in Breezy & Dapper

HP pavilion ZD7320ea (ZD7000 series)

• Warty works mostly out of the box
• Touchpad works with the configuration detected during the installation. It behave strangely sometimes though.

• Widescreen can be easily configurated with XFree nv driver with the following in addition to the default configuration set during the installation

  Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "widescreen"
   HorizSync 30-64
   VertRefresh 50-100
   Modeline "1440x900" 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 +HSync +VSync
   Option  "DPMS"
  EndSection
  Section "Screen"
   Identifier "Laptop Screen"
   Device  "NVIDIA Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go 5200]"
   Monitor  "widescreen"
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection "Display"
    Depth  24
    Modes  "1440x900"
   EndSubSection
  EndSection
  Section "ServerLayout"
   Identifier "Default Layout"
   Screen  "Laptop Screen"
   InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
   InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
   InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
  EndSection

  I did not manage to have nvidia proprietary 3D driver working.
• Didn't try IrDA, Modem, Wifi and Suspend to disk (yet)
• Sound is working with alsa. But the quality is not very good (while it is very good under W(tm). Probably a config problem...
• Used to face problems to umount removable devices because of 'fam' (set by default install). Removing 'fam' (sudo apt-get remove fam) solved the problem.

• Some help can be found and requested at 'http://www.zd7000forums.com/viewforum.php?f=12'

HP pavilion ZD7150ea (ZD7000 series)

• Hoary works out of the box. I downloaded the ISO, booted it with the 'expert' parameter. The reason why is just that I wanted to see the works and not just the quick-install. No special apic,acpi parameters were needed!
• Touchpad works without any problem. I installed Ubuntu with an USB-mouse from Logitech plugged in for convenience and it works withou a hitch, scrolling everything.

• The default nvidia-driver detected everything perfectly and also started with the correct default resolution 1440x900. I used the guide on www.ubuntuguide.org to install the nvidia binary drivers. Installed without any problems and then I used this guy's http://excidium.net/zd7010-linux.html Device config to get the correct resolution.

• Ethernet-networking wasn't nearby but a Wifi-AP was. I had downloaded the ndiswrapper-deb and had the Broadcom-files on an USB-stick. I then used one of the simple HOWTOs from the forum and everything worked flawlessly.
• ACPI - NO PROBLEM! The hibernation sequence is a charm. It takes about 20-30s to shutdown and then when you restart, you are presented with GRUB. You choose your kernel-line and voíla! You're back at your Gnome-desktop. No GRUB-editing needed for me. Suspend-to-RAM has to be enabled according the ACPI-faq. No problem using it. Everything wakes up without problems, even the WLAN works within a second.
• Problems not yet solved: The battery applet in GNOME isn't being updated when running on battery. There is an ugly workaround one could use. If you issue 'acpi -V' in a console, the state is updated. If someone knows a 'clean' solution, please let me know.

NEW:Breezy fixes this problem, no need for that ugly hack. Still not working: Built-in CB710 cardreader.

HP Pavilion ze2308wm (ze2000 series)

Works out of the box 100% (if you don't count the modem) with Breezy and mostly with Dapper

• Wireless (bcm4318 chipset) under Dapper requires either bcm43xx or ndiswrapper to be disabled (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx). Use the drivers from here: here for either module. From my experience, ndiswrapper seems to work better and more reliably, at least as of this writing.

• Modem seems to be only partially supported, played around with it in Breezy and got it to dial, but never would handshake.
• My laptop doesn't have the built in card-reader, so that may have issues (as others have reported here)
• Battery applet doesn't show time remaining, but it doesn't under Windows either, so this is most likely a hardware issue.

HP Pavilion ze4950ea (ze4900 series)

Everything working fine out-of-the-box with some minor Wifi issues.

Wireless Issues

Wireless works out-of-the-box, yet there are three annoyances:-

• Wireless LED is not working by default, although the wireless on/off button is working. Refer to this entry for a fix.

• Finally, there's a firmware error which appears and causes it to disconnect which can be fixed. Refer to this post for a fix.

Not tested

• Modem
• Firewire (IEEE1394)
• DVD Burning (CD Burning is working fine)
• PCMCIA

HP pavilion zv5242qv (zv5000 series)

Generaly works out of the box with the Hoary preview

• pcmcia slot acts like it's working but no cards will return "ident" info from cardctl
• touchpad works, but sometimes on boot it fails. log off/on fixes

• [GeForce4440Go] 440 Go 64M with 1280x800 works out of the box, but the official nvidia driver requires some tweaks

• broadcom wireless works with ndiswrapper. used "wifi-radar" for wlan config and profiles
• 5n1 memory card reader doesn't work, seems to be unsupported in the kernel.
• extra buttons can be configured, including volume controls

Note that not all zv5000's are quite the same

Note: Try for zv5000's PCMCIA in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts lines 'include port 0x3000-0x7fff' and 'memory 0xe8100000-0xe97fffff' (reboot required).

From unknown Tue May 17 19:59:13 +0100 2005 From: Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 19:59:13 +0100 Subject: HP NX6110, Celeron M360, Broadcom wifi Message-ID: <20050517195913+0100@www.ubuntulinux.org>

Hoary install worked OK. Wifi needed to be setup according to ubuntu ndiswrapperhowto using the windows drivers on the HP driver CD, now OK. Suspend freezes the machine - no other problems so far. Recommend.

Note: according to this (http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/58780) HP is offering a version of Ubuntu which supports all the hardware in the following laptops: nx6110, nc6120, nc6220, nc6230 and nc6000 (get it here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/custom/20050516/hoary-install-i386.iso)

hp Compaq nc6220

generally works out of the box with Hoary.

... but xorg only displays 1280x1024 - the LCD can do 1440x1050 so everything looks a little blury.

How to fix:

• download 915resolution from http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/download.html and compile

• run: /usr/sbin/915resolution 32 1400 1050
• restart the X-Server: kill $(ps -ef | grep /usr/X11R6/bin/X | awk '{print $2}')

• login and resize the Display through -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution to 1440x1050 and suddenly you can see clearer, now

• write a neat little start-up script to run 915resolution before gdm starts.

done.

HP pavilion zv6000 Series

Wireless and Video requires some special handling with breezy amd64 kernel.

Install

• Pass linux noapic debian-installer/framebuffer=false to the kernel when booting the installer

• Use an ether cable or a wireless PCMCIA if you want to network before seting up the ndiswrapper

• The graphical login will fail: Add 'Option "NoAccel"' (minus the single-quote marks) to the Device Section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• The hardware clock is too fast: Add 'no_timer_check' (minus the single-quote marks) to each kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Wireless with ndiswrapper

• The amd64 kernel with ndiswrapper needs the 64bit windows drivers from https://www.synapsenow.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/WLAN_Broadcom_BG(3.100.64.0_logo).zip

• ndiswrapper 1.5rc2 was needed

• Follow the instructions at http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=25683

WXGA Video

The xorg ati (radeon) drivers and vesa stretch 1027 to 1200. Both the xorg that ships with breezy and the update have a bad libdri.a. Also video playpack under Totem or gxine kills X under the radeon and vesa drivers. As of November 2005 (xorg 6.8.2-77, fglrx64-6-8-0 8.18.8-2), the ATI drivers with an older libdri.a are required to fix the video. some details of the fix are discussed at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=78466. If the ati installer cannot build the driver, use alien to convert fglrx64_6_8_0-8.18.8-1.x86_64.rpm to a deb.

• Download the amd64 driver from www.ati.com and install it

• Get a copy of http://mail3.mpr.org/mlomker/libdri.a.gz and replace /usr/X11R6/lib64/modules/extensions/libdri.a

• Revise your /etc/X11/xorg.conf device section by setting the driver to "fglrx":

• Revise your /etc/X11/xorg.conf Module section:

  Load    "dbe"   # Double buffer extension
  Load    "freetype"
  Load    "type1"
  Load    "glx"
  Load    "dri"
  Load    "ddc"

CategoryLaptop