The short story: Almost everything works, after a little jiggery-pokery. The machine is nice and fast — with a Turion MT40 (2.2GHz) and plenty of memory it jolly well should be.
In summary:
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| Boot to command line | Out of the box |
| Networking: Wired | Need third party driver for the Agere ET131 |
| Networking: Wireless | Need Third party driver for Rt2500 (in Debian already) |
| X | You need to use the fglrx-driver package (or if it still hasn't made it into Debian, check out http://www.stanchina.net/~flavio/debian/fglrx-installer.html) |
| Camera | Not working. There're several starts at drivers on mediakey.de ; the one that seems most advanced is at http://www.actiongames.co.uk/m560x/index.php/Main_Page |
| SD/MMC reader | Now works out of the box with Debian kernel package 2.6.18-1 ! |
| Software Suspend | Sometimes works, but is unreliable. The new uwsusp mechanism is a lot more reliable than either swsuspend2 or the standard in-kernel version. |
| Infrared port | Something happens with this: xine responds in weird and wonderful ways when I point a remote control at the port. But I haven't yet had time to make it work right. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's managed to get this to work (email address at end of page). |
| Modem | Not tried. Who needs a modem if you have WiFi? |
| Bluetooth | Not installed |
After my trusty old Clevo P5800 (2GHz P4) died, I had to get something bigger and better, but not too much heavier. I chose the L715 from Microstar International because it weighs only a little over 3kg, and had the power I need to develop kernels and documentation, run simulations, etc.
The L715 as I bought it came with 1G memory, a MT40 processor (25W, 2.2GHz), 100G disc (although the disc is a bit slower than I'd like, only 5400RPM), built-in 802.11b/g, 17" WSXGA screen (1680x1050 pixels, 365x230mm), and dual-layer DVD burner. As it's a `barebones' notebook, your configuration could differ quite a lot from mine.
I downloaded the et131x driver from here to a different AMD64 box, and built the kernel module. I then transferred it on a USB key to the laptop, installed it, and everything started to work (hurrah!). Dunno what I would have done without the other box running a generic Debian kernel, though.
I was then able to complete the installation. Things not working now included the wireless driver, and X.
The wireless driver is easy to fix, assuming you have some networking capability, and have the kernel source and a compilation environment set up:
$ sudo apt-get install module-assistant
$ sudo module-assistant prepare
$ sudo module-assistant build rt2500
$ sudo module-assistant install rt2500
After that, I could push the `wireless' button on the keyboard
until the blue light came on, and then configure the wifi card
in /etc/network/interfaces as usual.
The Xorg X server doesn't work out-of-the box with the ATI Radeon Mobility X700. It doesn't detect the LCD display. You have two choices:
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,AUTO"in the Device section of
/etc/X11/xorg.conf or
apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
I did the latter; but the kernel module for DRI doesn't build at present.
In any case, I added explicit aticonfig lines when
entering laptop-mode. you can do:
aticonfig --lspto list the available power states; I added
aticonfig --set-powerstate=1for making the video card go into a lower frequency, lower power state when the AC power goes away, and
aticonfig --set-powerstate=3for full speed when on AC power. (These commands go into files in
/etc/laptop-mode/batt-startand
/etc/laptop-mode/batt-stop.) I also added
Option "VideoOverlay" "on" Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"because I'm more likely to use this machine for watching animations and videos than for games playing. The video card can give hardware support either for GL or do motion compensation (Xv), it can't do both at the same time.
The main problems are the keyboard, which feels funny, and I
keep mistyping stuff on, and the screen, which scratches
easily, and is
If you run with the performance governer all the time, the machine gets quite hot (ACPI reports 75C). Sometimes, the machine spontaneously resets because of this. The solution is to run the machine with the ondemand governer. Frequency changes seem quite fast; and the temperature when idle is then around 57C. I'm currently running with conservative in battery mode and ondemand in AC mode, for no particular reason.