Guest spawnsharks Posted June 19, 2004 Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 I just wanted to post my experience with installing Mandrake 10 OE on my VPR Matrix 170b4 (120-170B4 just to add the meta search)... I was reluctant to switch entirely over to Linux on my laptop because I am really new to Linux and fairly inexperienced with UNIX, or any command line work. However, I have been interested in learning, so I installed a dual boot in my desktop... that had it's own share of challenges so I found that I never choose to boot into Linux at all, and tha last thing that I feel I have time for is opening Linux for tutorial purposes.. so in an effort to give myself a "sink or swim" ultimatium, I ripped Windows out of my laptop and installed Mandrake 10. Now I HAVE to learn how to use this, or my laptop is worthless :) So.... Installed with the latest downloadable CDs... chose "remove Windows" Mandrake did a wonderful job formatting the HDD for me, no work on my part at all! Here is my list of what works and what doesn't, and I'll add my solutions to the problems as I fix them. Motherboard- Seems fine... turns on, fans spin, CPU is cool. VGA- Worked fantastic from the getgo.. ATi Radeon M7 detected, drivers exist. I have full hardware accellaration. Tux racer plays smoothly. Sound- Again, works fine out of the box. No hassles. PCMCIA- The only device I have for this is a USRobotics USR2410 wireless network card. I took it to my local cafe that has a wireless network, and was able to get on the network just by inserting the card and opening a browser. Done. Touchpad- This works fine as emulating a PS/2 mouse, but the tapping does nt work yet. I found the drivers for the model I have and have not yet installed them. I'm still unclear about the steps involved with installing a driver under Linux, but the howto section here seems very helpful. CDRW/DVD- I haven't yet burned a disk, but I ran quickly through the wizard as if I was going to and the drive shows up as a CDRW, so I assume that it will work. If not I will update this post... As for DVD playback... Totem seems to work, but the image quality is poor. I don't know if I have to change some settings or whatnot to get it clearer, I'll tinker with this later as well. LAN/NIC- Don't know... I'm not on a network at home. I'll take it to the library on campus and plug in one of these days. Again, I'll post any issues that I have. Modem- Does not work at all. No Dial up, although it reads the ID of the modem as Intel; more specifically, PCTEL 2304, I found quite a bit of information both here and at linmodems.com on this issue and it seems that it takes a bit of work to get it going. This is a major drag for me because I have dial-up at home. Again, I found the drivers, but am unsure of exactly how to install them. I'll update when I do. Power/Battery- The power monitor shows "plugged in" all the time, even on battery power. I accidentally let the battery run out and there was no type of power management working. The machine just turned off when the battery died. It seems that the flie with the power management profile is a blank document. I need this working as well so I don't lose information, or get stuck leaving the house with a 25% charge... more research ahead of me there. USB- works with the devices that I use. Plugged a Logitech mouse in and it worked fine. Plugged a USB drive in (jump drive) and it mounted just fine and all files were readable. Was able to cut, copy and paste to the drive and transfer from Windows to Linux without greif. So... I'm very happy! I only have two or three issues that seem minor, and I will be able to fix two of them (touchpad and modem) as soon as I learn exactly how to install a driver. I don't know if I need to compile the kernel now that everything is in place... I'm a bit confused here as well... when should one compile their kernel? Any other advice for a first-time Linux user? Lastly, I want to express my appreciation for this message board and to everybody that posts here. You have all been a great help, and by seeing that people post seemingly simple questions, I had the confidence to jump in headfirst into this project because I can find the answers to the basics. I'll keep this post going because I found only one other person trying to install Linux on this particular model and would like to offer help to others trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spawnsharks Posted June 19, 2004 Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 (edited) OK... in trying to solve the power issue... I discovered the "simple" solution of installing ACPI, and enabeling it at boot. I followed all of the procedures I could find, but when I try to enable Laptop Battery under KDE configuration, I get the following message: "Your computer seems to have a partial ACPI installation. ACPI was probably enabled, but some of the sub-options were not - you need to enable at least "AC Adaptor" and 'Control Method Battery' and then rebuild your kernel." I ran urpmi acpi acpid and it installed what I had asked for, ACPI was then avaliable in MCC->Services, but apparently, not everything installed as planned... Where are these option to be found? And which kernel rebuilding method should I use? Total new user here and I haven't a clue! Thanks Edited June 19, 2004 by spawnsharks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.