Jun 21 2006

Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06) on a HP Compaq nx7000 laptop

Published by Ivan Groznii at 11:28 pm under Linux How-To |

Ubuntu symbol
Linux can be problematic to install on laptops. However, on a 2 year old Compaq nx7000, barring two minor hiccups, it was extremely easy.

My laptop has the following specification:

1. Centrino (1.5) processor

2. ATI Radeon 9200 (64 MB Video RAM)

3. 1.2 GB of RAM (after having installed a 1 GB RAM module - relatively inexpensive)

4. 80 GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM hard drive (I replaced the 4200 rpm Hitachi Travelstar with this)

5. Intel 802.11b wireless card.

6. Soundblaster compatible sound with special “media” keys to raise or lower volume and mute sound.

Some items I added myself - unsatisfied with the speed of the in-built wireless card, I bought the following PCMCIA wireless card - a US Robotics Wireless Turbo PC Card (Model 5410).

Most of these items work straight out of the box on the installation of Ubuntu, including the special media keys (it should be mentioned that these keys do not work with the Xubuntu or Kubuntu variants). The two exceptions were the additional Wireless card, which required the following minor adjustment -

Go into Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

Type:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

Enter your password; Gedit, a text editor will boot. Then add the following line to the document:

options acx firmware_ver=1.2.1.34

Save the file and close Gedit down. Reboot.

The card should be working now, but it will not be your default interface until you set it up under System > Administration > Networking; to make doubly sure, unconfigure the eth1 interface which is likely to be the native wireless chipset. Also ensure the wireless monitor is picking up on the card by double clicking on it. The US Robotics card should be the wlan0 option.

The other hiccup has to do with 3D acceleration. The latest ATI drivers do not function with it; the native ati driver installed with the OS should be fine for the moment until ATI corrects the problem. Overall however, the experience was easy and it appeared to outperform a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS X on most tasks - though I must emphasise getting the new hard drive and additional memory certainly added to the laptop’s abilities.
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2 Responses to “Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06) on a HP Compaq nx7000 laptop”

  1. # Marcon 22 Jun 2006 at 1:47 am

    Ubuntu does an impressive job of hardware detection. I wonder if I can sneak it on to my wife’s laptop :-)

  2. # Ivan Grozniion 22 Jun 2006 at 7:32 am

    I will be writing a post on Linux Eye Candy; with sufficient goodies, it’s easy to show anyone that a switch to Linux is actually an upgrade. :)

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