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Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty on ASUS A6J Laptop

Technical, Linux/Unix, 684 words   English (US)

Ubuntu Linux on ASUS A6J

I’ve been really pleased with the ASUS A6J since the day I got it which was almost a year ago. Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 and Edgy Eft 6.10 both worked great directly from installation but Feisty 7.04 has been plagued with problems after problems on this laptop.

Follow up:

Specs of my ASUS A6J

  • Centrino Core Duo 1.6ghz
  • 1 Gig ram
  • 80 Gig hard drive
  • Nvidia GeForce Go 7300
  • DVD dual layer DVD RW with Light scribe
  • Gigabit wired ethernet
  • 802.11a/b/g Wireless

Output of lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 110M / GeForce Go 7300 (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
04:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
04:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
04:01.2 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 17)
04:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 08)

Stuff that Worked

In general, most stuff worked well but the following are some of the stuff that worked really well.

  • Fire wire worked really well out of the box, I recall having to tinker with hal when on Dapper in order to mount fire wire drives because it kept mounting it as a network device.
  • SD card reader works as well as inserting usb thumb drives.
  • Burning of Dual Layer dvd works fine with Gnomebaker
  • My camera was also recognized by gphoto out of the box.
  • S-video out works but not out of the box. Requires the following to be added to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
    Please use this as a guide and tweak the Monitor and Screen settings like TVStandard, sync and refresh rates for your own Television.

    Section "Device"
    Identifier "TVOut"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen 1
    EndSection

    Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Television"
    HorizSync 30.0 - 50.0
    VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0
    EndSection

    Section "Screen"
    Identifier "TV Screen"
    Device "TVOut"
    Monitor "Television"
    Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
    Option "TVStandard" "PAL-B"
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    EndSection

Stuff that DONT work aka are broken

  • Built-in webcam does not work
  • Hibernation is broken big time, system freezes completely when attempt to hibernate. I have not got a fix for this at the moment.
  • Wifi works but rather unreliably and very much slower than on Windows XP with the same access points. Tried disabling IPv6 according to Google but does not seem to help. Seems like the ipw3945 module needs more work.
  • Wired Ethernet does not work if the laptop is booted without the network cable plugged in. Need to reload module and restart networking in order to get it working again. Never had this problem before Feisty.


    rmmod r8169
    insmod r8169
    /etc/init.d/networking restart

  • Beryl looks broken on fresh installation. Fix involves added the following line


    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

    into /etc/X11/xorg.conf under the Device section for the Nvidia card.


    Section "Device"
    Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA Default Card"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
    Screen 0
    EndSection

    Note that this is for the non-free Nvidia driver.

Links

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/AsusV6J
http://mdessus.free.fr/Divers/Asus_v6j_linux.html


TuxMobil - Linux on Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs and Mobile Phones   Linux On Laptops

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5 comments

  1. Permanent link for this comment mezhaka Email said on
    have you tried using memory stick cards? the sd works ok, but MS does not...
  2. Permanent link for this comment Brinley Ang® Email said on
    Hi, I've never tried memory sticks but it is a sd card reader not a MS reader and MS is different from SD so I wouldnt expect MS to work on it. You may have been confused with other laptops that support MS and SD from the same slot but you will find that those devices will almost always advertise itself as a multi reader or something of that sorts.
  3. Permanent link for this comment Benji Email said on
    I had no problem with the hibernate mode and the WiFi connection out of the box... Strange
  4. Permanent link for this comment ichthyostega Email said on
    Important Note: meanwhile the ATI card used here (radeon X1600) counts as "old" and isn' supported properly by the current releases of the "catalyst" closed-source driver from ATI.

    When upgrading to Ubuntu Janunty, you won't be able to start X with *any* driver (even VESA fails), unless you *completely* remove the proprietary driver module from the kernel modules. It's not sufficient just to speficy another driver (xorg.conf or via HAL).

    apt-get purge xorg-driver-fglrx
    apt-get autoremove
    dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

    After doing so, the driver installed by xserver-xorg-video-radeon could again start up the graphical environment nicely (with the proper resolution).

    Moreover, the handling of the fan seems to have been improved, the laptop does make less noise.

    PS: otherwhise I'm quite happy with this Laptop. Just works, never gave me much headaches. Using it to do professional multitrack sound recordings with an RME Multiface attached via cardbus.
  5. Permanent link for this comment Brinley Ang® Email said on
    Just to avoid any confusion, the ASUS laptop model mentioned in the article uses an Nvidia GeForce Go 7300. But there is also a Ati variant and ichthyostega has posted some very useful info about it.

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Brinley Ang

Brinley Ang is a sysadmin, web dev, coder, geek boy, jedi knight fragger, caffine addict, deaf meloncholic and rockstar wannabe. Listens to the sex pistols and a wide assortment of heavy metal.

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