On my HP 6400 Kubuntu 7.10 runs very smoothly. Nearly everything is out-of-the box. It seems to be that there are more than one hardware release out there, so please be careful and test Linux at a store on this Laptop. Read the details:
Disclaimer
This page is nothing more than my personal experiences with my notebook. This is nothing official from any vendor! I am not responsible for anything you do with your hard- and software. For any support contact the respective vendors! Please respect the legal notice.
- Who should read the following description? The machine runs mostly „out-of-the-box“. All the rest is due to you. Be willing to learn, follow instructions form Ubuntu geeks, accept to fail and start again. At least you should know:
- How to operate apt or Adept Manager
- Read Readme-Files and HowTos
- Read Error-Messages and use search machines to find a solution
A good resource for hints, tips and questions is http://ubuntuforums.org/
Preparations
Do not forget to make a backup of your harddisk, especially when you want to keep an existing W*-Operating System that already contains data. You can even use a (K)Ubuntu Live system and dd for this..
Installation of Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
The installation of Gutsy is performing absolutely fine. In my notebook there is a Core Duo CPU, so I used the 32-bit version of Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php)
++ Graphics card — Intel i945
The only thing that did not work was the correct screen resolution (1280×800), after editing the xorg.conf everything was fine. It is not a big deal, if you like my xorg.conf is here. If you have an older Linux distribution or hardware release you may have to use 915resolution.
Also my LCD in the docking station 1280×1024 and external VGA e.g for video projectors are supported. Sometimes older video projectors do not support all resolutions, so use kcontrol and switch it to 1024×768 for the presentation. If the picture is cloudy switch to single monitor only press fn+F4 key two times.
+ Power management — ACPI
Battery sensor works, screen power save and automatic shutdown on low energy level. Furthermore the ACPI controlled key as describes in paragraph Keyboard.
++ Suspend to ram
Works as designed, I do not know if really every device is up and running again after suspend but it seems so USB, network, no complains from my side.
++ Suspend to disk, hibernate
Works as designed, check suspend to ram. Honestly I have to say suspend to disk with 3 GB main memory is nearly as fast as boot from scratch 🙂
++ Synaptics touch pad and mouse knob in keyboard
Also my external mouse ist running.
++ USB
Wonderful.
++ Keyboard
Nearly complete, turn up and down the sound, mute, dim display, help and battery. Switch WLAN on and off works for me, but it is reported not to be stable. To be honest I do not use it. There is a presentation button, which gives a correct keycode (xev) so you could assign it to OpenOffice.org.
++ Network
Both network adapters work out-of-the-box.
++ Audio
Runs.
+ SD/MMC card reader
After a bios update to version F.0B it work, but it is fussy on the right SD-Card. Out of my collection two cards are not accepted.
? Bluetooth
Be aware I have a special customized version without Bluetooth!
? Modem
I do not know, I did not tried.
? Smart-Card reader
I have no use for it.
? Fingerprint reader
I have no use for it.
? PCMCIA
Seems to work, I did not checked carefully.
Any hints?
Please send me any hints, new tips, report errors, etc. via comment below. Please no support requests, thanks!
Links
Good starting points for Linux on Notebooks/Laptops are:
Werner,
Thanks for your report. I have tried earlier versions of Ubuntu up to 6.06 without success on my nc6400. The first distro that installed without any problems was Debian Etch, which I’m using at the moment. However, since then, I’ve tried both 7.04 and 7.10 Kubuntu. 7.04 doesn’t finish installing, but 7.10 runs very nicely from the live CD. It has a few features that Debian lacks, such as showing the two processors and two batteries (I have the optional travel battery). With Gnome I was getting about 2 hours from the two batteries, from Windows XP -four hours and now with KDE on Etch about 3 hours – sometimes more.
With Kubuntu many more things work with the first installation. With Debian Etch I had to install extra drivers to get everything working – most recently the ipw2945 modules, so now it is working. I don’t have any blue tooth devices, so I haven’t tried to get it working.
Kevin