I splurged recently and purchased a new laptop. I've been eyeing them for well over a year, comparing models, features, and prices. My budget was limited, so as much as I might've liked a full desktop replacement, I knew I was going to end up with a desktop supplement.
My old laptop, a Compaq Armada 7370DMT is about six years old. It's a Pentium 233Mhz, 96 megs of RAM and a 4GB hard drive. No USB; no built-in wireless; the built-in pointing device is non-functional; and the battery holds about 40 minutes of charge, if I'm lucky. I spend about five minutes unpacking all the necesary junk just to use this old clunker: power cord, Orinoco wireless card, serial mouse.
I looked long and hard at several Winbook laptops with AMD64 processors. I thought a 64 bit CPU might be a nice thing to have; but I ultimately decided that I didn't need that kind of power right now. Moreover, Debian GNU/Linux, my preferred Linux distribution, does not have a full AMD64 port just yet. Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me too much, but several missing components from the experimental AMD64 port are rather important to me: the Flash plugin for Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice. It's possible to run both of these, by use of a 32 bit chroot environment, but that's way too much hassle for me right now.
I purchased an Averatec AV4270-EH1. After charging the battery, I set to installing Debian. I began this process around 9:30 PM. I've installed Debian many times, and felt confident that I could work through any hiccups that might occur along the way.
The first hiccup was that the Debian installer's 2.6 kernel does not support Serial ATA drives. This lapotp has serial ATA drives. So I was unable to use the installer's 2.6 kernel. The installer's 2.4 kernel worked just fine for installing the base system. After install, I pointed /etc/apt/sources.list at the Unstable repository for Debian, executed apt-get -u dist-upgrade, and finally tried to install the latest 2.6 kernel. It would never install for me. The 2.6.14 kernel installation complained that there was no suitable mkinitrd tool. Searching for the error message led me to this post which in turn pointed me toward this post which states that this is a known problem with Debian Unstable.
I'm really tired of compiling my own kernels. I did not want to download and compile a kernel. I just wanted to use my new laptop. Looking ahead, I saw that I'd also need to compile the Intel PRO/2200 wireless drivers for the built-in WiFi. And who knows what sort of struggle I might have had with X.org.
So I gave in, and around midnight downloaded a copy of Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger). I burned the CD, and booted the laptop. The installer asked me which network card (wired or wireless) I'd like to use for the installation. The entire install process went by without a hitch. I rebooted, the system configured a bit more stuff, and then I was presented with the Ubuntu login screen (in all it's wretched brown).
I logged in. It played a little song for me. The fonts looked nice. The trackpad worked. In the panel was an applet telling me that my power cord was plugged in. The wireless network worked without any fiddling on my part. A small window appeared in the upper right corner to tell me that new updates were available for some of my packages. I clicked the flashing icon, it downloaded and installed the updates, and then the icon politely went away.
It would have taken me a long time to install, configure, and tweak a Debian system to work as well as Ubuntu has worked. I used the laptop all day yesterday, and experienced no trouble at all. Today I realized that the laptop display was only 1024x768, instead of the 1280x800 that it was supposed to be (and which was defined in /etc/X11/xorg.conf). I found several suggested work-arounds, including compiling X.org's xorg server from scratch, along with the appropriate driver for the i915GM video card in the laptop. No thanks. The reason I use a distribution like Debian (or Ubuntu) is because I want to rely on the expertise of other people who have the time and talent to do those compilations for me.
Thankfully I found 915resolution, a little utility to dynamically remap segments of your video BIOS to support additional resolutions. I downloaded that, and executed./915resolution -l
to see a listing of the available video modes. I selected one from the list that I would not be using (a higher resolution than my laptop supports), noted it's mode number, and then used that mode number for my selected resolution: ./915resolution 58 1280 800
I restarted my X server, and enjoyed my new widescreen desktop. Since 915resolution is a dynamic process, the trick is lost upon reboot. I placed 915resolution in /usr/local/sbin, created the following script and saved it as /etc/init.d/915resolution:
#! /bin/sh
PATH=/sbin:/bin/:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
PROGRAM=/usr/local/sbin/915resolution
NAME=915resolution
REPLACE=58
HORIZ=1280
VERTI=800test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
set -e
case "$1" in
start)
log_begin_msg "Setting i915 BIOS resolution..."
$PROGRAM $REPLACE $HORIZ $VERTI
log_end_msg 0
;;
stop)
;;
*)
log_success_msg "Usage: $0 {start|stop}" >&2
;;
esacexit 0
Next I executed sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d 915resolution start 6 2 3 4 5 .
to ensure that the BIOS would get twiddled early in every runlevel, to ensure that X would always present me with the widescreen desktop. It works. I am happy. One modest tweak for a fully configured, ready-to-use desktop system.
I followed the instructions for Ubuntu Restricted Formats to get MP3 playback working. It works just fine -- I can enjoy all of DrBacchus' podcasts on my laptop. I followed the instructions for DVD support, but have had less success. Totem recognizes that a DVD is available, but doesn't play it. Mplayer does play a DVD, but it lacks DVD menu support (I think I need to install one of the Mplayer front-ends).
In the past I've expressed some reservations about Ubuntu. It's not clear to me what will happen should Canonical run out of money. Nor is it clear what might happen should Mark Shuttleworth become fickle. And I'm not entirely thrilled with how Ubuntu submits patches back to Debian. So it's possible that Ubuntu will be replaced by Debian on my laptop; but for now, I'm quite glad to have a fully operational GNU/Linux system.
Congrats on the new laptop...That Armada wasn't a leftover from XC days and the Lynx project, was it? Timing seems about right? :-)
Yes, the ol' Compaq is the very same one that travelled around the world with me. I'm awfully sentimental toward it, and I doubt even now that I'll get rid of it. It might be ancient, and lacking in almost every significant way for a modern computer, but it's a workhorse that has served me well! ;)
For the record, I got DVD playback working correctly with totem-xine.
And might I say that the Ubuntu Blog on wordpress.com is a great resource!
Skippy, you might just need to install libdvdcss2 and a few other not-so-free packages to get dvd playback working. It works for me, so far :)
Try using Xine as your DVD player and make sure to enable DMA on your DVD drive.
Although your startup script obviously worked, Ubuntu has already done that work for you! After setting a custom Mode using the way you described, you simply need to add those values to /etc/default/915resolution, restart X, and hey presto it sticks!
(for the sake of posterity, here are the relevant lines:
MODE=58
XRESO=1280
YRESO=800)
have fun
dave
Just wondering I heard that averatec has bad build quality.
Do you find that to be true?
I want to buy a cheap but decent laptop with complete linux support (Gentoo or any other distribution). And the only thing keeping me from averatec is build quality.
Here I found a nice averatec 13.3 inch laptop for $800 http://www.samsclub.com/eclub/main_shopping.jsp?coe=0&oidPath=0%3a-23542%3a-23589%3a-43881%3a-43983%3a-43985%3a-43989%3a955791&mt=a&n=0&BV_SessionID=_SC_0370762985.1135800863_CS_&BV_EngineID=cccladdgigjlmidcfkfcfkjdgoodflf.0
I think it is a good buy.
any reaction welcome
Yevgeniy: I've not experienced anything problematic yet. The laptop I purchased is not a tank (like my old Compaq Armada 7370DMT), but neither does it feel like a plastic toy. It's lightweight, reasonably quiet, and has a good looking display.
I didn't know too much about Averatec before purchasing, but this was the laptop that offered me the features I wanted within my pricepoint. So far, I'm quite satisfied.
Nice to hear. The Turion at the moment seems to be the cheapest system available to me, the centrino is over $1000.
With the sams club offer (3 year warranty for $80) it comes out to be $900 with warranty. I love sams club. I will have the new laptop in a couple weeks need one more paycheck... LOL I am only a teen...
I'll chime in on Averatec, I have the 4265. On the whole, I'm very happy with the purchase. As Skippy said, it's a decent lightweight laptop. I bought it after reading several reviews on the web specific to running Linux.
The only "problem" I've had is the fact that suspend-to-ram performs terribly when it comes to the battery. I've suspended late at night (1am) with 60% battery life left, to wake up and find the battery drained. As a result, I have to hibernate; takes a few more secs, but I can live with it.
Oh, and I've noticed that both under Ubuntu and WinXP, after hibernation my USB mouse will not respond until I yank it and plug it back in. This is the first I've seen of this behavior, on any modern OS, any platform, so my assumption is that the hardware is flaky somehow.
Overall, I'd say it's an enjoyable little machine and a very good value.
dave
Dave: I've just recently discovered the battery hit when using suspend-to-RAM. As long as I keep it plugged in, it's fine; but that rather defeats the purpose of suspend to RAM, eh?
I also discovered that when waking up from suspend-to-RAM, the firewire interface goes wonky. In order to pull video in from my camcorder (using Kino, or dvgrab), I need to reboot if I had previously suspended to RAM.
Hi, excuse my english.
I yesterday install unbutu 5.10 in my averatec av4270-eh1. all is fine.i never use unbutu or debian before. i usually use mandrake or slakware :/
before i install mandrake 10.1 and the video dont work because mandrake use a version of xorg 6.8.99.9
My question
in the install i never see askme the root pasword!, i reinstall and same. probably the is a stupid question but... what is the root password in my laptop??? :)
rogelio: Ubuntu does not provide the root account with a password, because you're not supposed to ever log in as root. Instead, you use the
sudocommand to perform all adminsitrative tasks.See this page for details. And check here and here for additional documentation. Finally, be sure to check the Ubuntu Guide for specific help installing applications.
oK, thanks.
I go now to config the 915resolution and the wireless.
Skippy,
Thanks for writing your experiene on Averatec. I am right now installing Ubuntu 5.10 on my Averatec4265. I just felt courageous to attempt it eventhough I did not see any past success attempts. Some readers of your blog seem to have had success here. I hope mine works too.
Thanks for your 915resolution tip.
Sham
I purchased an Averatec 3270-EH1 Dec 2005. Seems similarly equiped as yours. My beef with Averatec is that xp is offered only in the special recovery partition used with Phoenix Recover Pro. Currently I only need xp for tax software!! and have no need for it, otherwise.
What have others done? How small can I make xp? what can be safely deleted? Is there a way to archive that recovery partition on a cd or dvd (I own Ghost and have Gnomebaker), so that it can be reinstalled if necessary later?
BTW...My linux of choice is Elive...Debian with Enlightenment...elivecd.com
revdjenk: in theory, Ghost should be able to make a copy of the recovery partition, which you could then burn to DVD, or stick on some external media somewhere. I don't know how big the partition is, though, and I've never used Ghost in this way. So all I can offer is encouragement, but not any kind of assurance.
If you only need Windows for one application, it seems rather wasteful to dedicate an entire partition to it. Why not invest in VMware, and use Windows inside that? Then you could partition the whole drive as you see fit, make regular snapshot backups of your Windows VMware image, and avoid all the pain of dual-booting!
Well, that would be a great idea, but this crippled xp is installed from this special partition (about 3gig) how do I use VMware with that?