I got HP Pavilion zt3000 in Sept 2004, with Windows XP Home preinstalled. I installed Fedora Core 2 from the CDs with no serious problem. A number of WWW pages provided useful hints:
Writing this page I used the page 1 as a template.The bottomline: I like this laptop and it works well with Linux. Later, I upgraded to FC4 and FC6 (see below).
Processor | IntelŪ Centrino™ Mobile Technology IntelŪ PentiumŪ M 1.5 MHz |
Memory | 512 MB DDR SDRAM (two slots, 2 GB max.) |
Harddisk | 60 GB (4200 rpm) |
Display | 15,4" WVA WSXGA+ Widescreen (1680x1050) |
Graphics Card | 64MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON™ R250 9000 M9 |
CD | DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive |
Network Interfaces | built-in V92 modem, built-in 10/100 LAN Ethernet, built-in Intel Pro Wireless 2200 802.11b/g WLAN |
Here is the output of lspci -v.
I made a double boot machine. In order to shrink the XP partition I used Partition Magic. But first I had to run defragment and chkdsk /f 3-4 times.
I booted with the CD, selected graphic screen (1400x1050) and chose "Manual Installation". Before going to "Druid" I went into the console, called fdisk /dev/hda and repartitioned the disk as follows:
Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 1530 12284968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 1530 1543 105840 83 Linux /dev/hda3 1543 1665 982800 83 Linux /dev/hda4 1665 7296 45231480 5 Extended /dev/hda5 1665 2517 6841768+ 83 Linux ....... etc ..............
Then I returned to "Druid" and assigned filesystems to the partitions. The rest went smooth, apart from the offered choice of the screen resolution, which missed the 1680x1050 value. I selected the standard LCD screen at 1400x1050 for that moment, and changed it later.
I upgraded all FC2 packages including the kernel.
Subsystem | Status | Efforts | |
---|---|---|---|
Display | 3 | 1 | |
VGA output to projector | 2 | 2 | |
Ethernet | 3 | 0 | |
built-in WLAN | 3 | 2 | |
PCMCIA WLAN Orinoco | 3 | 2 | |
Sound | 3 | 0 | |
Sound buttons | 0 | 0 | |
USB | 3 | 0 |
Here is the file xorg.conf.
It did not work out of the box, and required a couple of hours of work. I had to copy the ipw2200 driver (I started with IPW2200-0.7, then used the next version 0.8 when it appeared a week later) and the appropriate firmware (see the same site), compiled it following the instructions from the package. The firmware had to be copied to a place used by hotplug: /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/ . There was no need to recompile the kernel. I used the system-config-network tool to set up the ifcfg-eth1 configuration file. I did not install the driver to /lib/modules/..., but load it every time explcitly, using the tools provided with the driver (load / unload ).
I encountered a problem with the driver version 0.7. It worked fine in some environments (at home and in my office) where there was only one access point nearby. It did not work in the conference room, where several accesss points are visible. It saw the access points, but indicates a very low signal and fails to connect. With Windows XP (this is a dual boot laptop) there was no problem with wireless connections in these locations, the reported signal is strong. This problem, fortunately, was fixed in the driver version 0.8!
Eventually, it works fine. The file ifcfg-eth1 looks as follows. The KEY is kept in the file keys-eth1.# Intel Corp.|Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG DEVICE=eth1 ONBOOT=no BOOTPROTO=dhcp NETMASK= # HWADDR=00:0e:35:XX:XX:XX HWADDR= DHCP_HOSTNAME= IPADDR= DOMAIN= USERCTL=no PEERDNS=yes GATEWAY= TYPE=Wireless IPV6INIT=no ESSID=XXXX CHANNEL= MODE=Managed RATE=AutoThe result of iwconfig eth1 is here:
eth1 ieee 802.11b ESSID:"XXXX" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain" Mode:Managed Channel:6 Access Point: 00:E0:63:XX:XX:XX Bit Rate=11Mb/s RTS thr:off Encryption key:XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:restricted Power Management:off Link Quality:92/100 Signal level:-213 dBm Noise level:-144 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:3 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:4
It works fine now.