I’m not a Linux wizard, but I just helped a friend install Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 on her HP Mini 5101 and tried to get things working for her. My experience was pretty similar to mine installing it on my HP Mini 2140, only with some additional problems. Here are the problems I know about and ran into. Not all are fixed yet, but I’ll give some pointers on how to fix them in case it helps anyone.
Dual-core support will make your system more or less unbootable
It might not happen on every boot, but it will happen on some. The non-booting is pretty much as described here and here . You can either disable the dual-core in your BIOS setup screen or install kernel 2.6.29-02062904-generic from kernel-ppa as detailed in the second link.
WiFi doesn’t work out of the box
I found a set of drivers on the Broadcom site which work. They don’t seem to load automatically, which is probably because I don’t know the fascinating intricacies of Linux booting and driver loading architecture which I’ve just been dying to know in order to get my computer working so I can browse the Internet. What I did to get them working is 1) Download the 32-bit drivers, the README.txt and the 2.6.29 kernel patch. Extract stuff. Apply the kernel patch to the drivers as detailed in its readme (though it seemed to have some errors and didn’t patch everything I thought it should). Then follow the readme for installing the drivers with the exception of any deviations in the patch readme.
Every time you want to bring your card up and get it working you seem to have to type something like the lines below. Reboot? Type these lines. Come out of sleep mode? Type these lines. I’m sure they would go in some init.something-or-other file. I stuck them in a shell script to make it faster than typing them. Maybe I’ll just hang out on the street corner with a case of Jolt Cola and an AD&D rulebook in hopes of tricking some nerd to come make them work automatically for me. If all goes as expected, he’ll regale me with tales of Linux’s clearly superior ease of use while he types many lines of tersely abbreviated commands and rearranges things in that completely obvious way that the entire population (and especially his grandma) should be acquainted with. Oh yeah, the lines I’m using to start the damn network adaptor follow (got a little involved in my rant there):
sudo modprobe lib80211
sudo insmod wl.ko
Ok . . . update . . . after messing with things and looking at about 20 different terse and partial code snippets online here is how I got it to load automatically.
- Copied the .ko file to my kernel drivers folder.
sudo cp ~/hybrid_wl/wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net - Update module dependencies or some such update.
sudo depmod -Ae - Edit the /etc/modules file
sudo pico /etc/modules - In the editor add the following two lines to the end of the file:
lib80211
wl - After adding, press CTRL-O to write the file out (press enter to accept same file name).
- Press CTRL-X to exit the editor.
- Reboot the computer and make sure the wireless network works without having to manually load the drivers.
Sound doesn’t work at all
I have no idea why. I suspect it’s possibly the same problem as with many other netbooks. That will be a good time when I get to try fixing that problem. I can hardly wait since I’d really rather spend half my life trying to fix driver problems rather than using a computer (or any other tool) to accomplish anything. Oh joy.
Other fixes I feel are likely in my future
The detection of the lid close doesn’t work. Maybe a link such as this one will give me many more hours of joy trying to sort out conflicting advice and I can perhaps try about 10 different things before I find something that works. You know, that’s what I’m hoping for.
I suspect that the web cam and the microphone may not be working either. I’m really hoping for some large chunks of quality time with this computer next weekend. There is nothing sexier than typing sweet arcane commands to a computer while sitting in my underwear and hoping one set of commands or another will seduce it into the base level of functionality that makes use of the hardware I paid for.
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