Hello, I would like to share my experience with installing Debian Linux on Compaq mentioned in topic, aka P500. 1. Skill level needed to install Debian Linux: moderate 2. Process of installation: I inserted Debian x64 CD1, then proceeded. It hanged once, but next time it went fine. After restart it wasn't able to start X, though. 3. Further configuration: a) I instantially started moving to SID from stable. One of the first moves was installing kernel 2.6.22 instead of 2.6.18 b) Installing binary nvidia drivers was relatively easy (m-a a-i nvidia) c) Very annoying hang ups, relatively often. Messing with kernel command line options. Started with acpi=off, then added irqpoll, went through apicmaintimer. Eventually I stayed with noapic, which is recommended for many boards on many places in internet. Still hangups. d) Disabling bcm43xx kernel driver for wireless adapter and using ndiswrapper instead. It healed hang ups. Probably chipset is not working with the first one yet. e) Continuing move to SID. Without hangups it went smooth. f) Installing special keys. A lot of googling. Volume/Mute started to work after installing hotkeys* packages. For brightness I had to modprobe video (ACPI thing, not automatically detected)
What worked out of the box: a) touchpad, mouse b) network adapter (forcedeth) c) sound (microphone not tested, though) What is still waiting: a) trying suspend to ram and to disk b) trying switching video output between S-Video, external monitor and internal monitor c) getting the rest of special keys to work (couldn't find a good working example, though) d) tweaking energy saving (cpufreq, powerd?), laptop mode tools already configured e) mplayer in chroot for non-free codecs f) minor issues with network: - despite installing laptop-net, system still waits some seconds during boot for obtaining IP address (DHCP) on LAN, while cable is unplugged - with ndiswrapper I have to manually modprobe ndiswrapper/ifup wlan0 - with ndiswrapper in /etc/modules wifi light was always on, ignoring wifi switch position That's all for now - I wanted to share my experience and ask others about their opinions with Debian on this computer. Regards, Robert -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
