Got my new laptop.. it was supposed to be Evo N800w (with 60gb 5400 rpm drive and Radeon Mobility 9000), but I ended up receiving a N800c (40gb 4200 rpm drive and Radeon 7500) instead. Oh well.. anyway, off to install Linux on it. This entry will be updated as I learn new tricks.

Update: you may also want to read about my experience with Fedora Core 1. Most of the details in this article concerning OS packages are out of date (unless you're installing RHL9, which I would not be doing at this point).

Compared to my previous computer, an HP Omnibook 6000, this thing is obviously faster. However, even with the experience of just a couple of hours, I've found that the keyboard is very annoying, having a very strange layout of peripheral keys like pgup, pgdown, ctrl, etc. Also, the built-in trackpad is a two-button design, unlike the Omnibook.

First thing that happens when you start one of these, it will ask which of the pre-installed Windows versions (multiple versions of 2000, maybe XP was there as well) you want to enable. None of that for me, please! So insert RH CD, reboot with rescue mode, run parted and move the preinstalled partition to a 5 gig corner of the disk (just in case..), and then go on with a normal install.

Red Hat Linux 9 seems to work pretty well here. APM doesn't work, so to get power-saving ACPI will be required. I'm going to test the kernel from Severn for that. Trying to avoid building the kernel myself for now, although I guess using a beta RPM won't be any more helpful for using third-party modules (I'd like to use RPMs for ALSA and FreeS/WAN too, and then there's the ATI binary driver that I was thinking of trying).

Anyway, for the most part, the system is completely functional without any tweaking. That, of course, doesn't stop me from tweaking..

update: To use reiserfs, Severn, Fedora and other RH-related kernels require kernel-unsupported or kernel-unsupported-modules as well as the base kernel package.

update: To make SpeedStep work, you must have either a 2.4 kernel with fairly recent ACPI patches, or the 2.6.0 kernel. I'm using 2.6.0 patched with ACPI and cpufreq development code, and frequency throttling works (through ACPI and through p4-clockmod module). Core voltage can not be dropped, though, so the effect for battery lifetime is quite negligible. I would have expected the fan to stop completely when throttling CPU to 12% of maximum, but that doesn't happen, either.

Installation: RHL9 custom install on a 33gig reiserfs partition, with all errata updates (using Fedora's APT repository). This way, also Flash becomes available (package flash-plugin), thanks to it being included in Fedora's apt config.

Installed Microsoft's core fonts, which still are legal to install on Linux although MS themselves no longer distribute them, and the excellent Bitstream Vera, using Ximian's RPM.

Evolution 1.4 and OpenOffice 1.0.3 from Ximian, because those are the best-of-breed builds that I know of. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a method of installing them with apt, and Red Carpet, excellent though it is, won't coexist nicely with apt. So I downloaded the RPMs and installed them manually, with the basic set of dependencies. This requires replacing Red Hat's printer management with Ximian's version.

GStreamer updated from their own apt repository, primarily because it includes a recent build of Net Rhythmbox. For some other stuff, like Epiphany, I use Dag Wieers' packages. Thanks, Dag!

Java 1.4.2 (whoa, I didn't even know it had finished beta) is of course available as an RPM from Sun. For other Java stuff on Linux, JPackage Project is a nice source.

Other sites with more info.

Comment by Dan Delaney on Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:47:08:
I'm been trying to get Linux running on my N800C. I've tried installing SuSE 8.2 and RedHat 9.0 and both have the same problem--the video is all screwed up. I get bizarre images of the windows showing up around the screen with lines through them. Did you have this problem when you first installed? And if so, what did you do to alleviate it? Thanks --Dan

Comment by oa on Tue, 18 Nov 2003 09:37:47:
That happens to me sometimes when I boot or switch virtual consoles, and can be fixed by switching VC's again (ctrl-alt-F1, F2 etc). I think it's a BIOS bug or something.

Comment by Marcelo on Wed, 19 Nov 2003 01:43:15:
Well, I've had the same error when I tried to use the ATI Mobility Radeon M7 instead of 7500, after I switched back to 7500, it seems to be ok. I can't get any better than 800x600. Can anyone help me?

Comment by Sebastian on Sun, 23 Nov 2003 18:18:54:
Hi, I've got RH9 running on my n800c. Can you tell me if there's a way to get the full 1400x1050 resolution on the console using the framebuffer device? ( maybe some strange grub opts ) And where can I get the kernel-patch you mentioned to get the battery stat working? anyway, runs fine out of the box though.

Comment by oa on Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:09:47:
As far as I know of, the best available console resolution is 1280x1024. Close enough for me, since I rarely touch the console anyway. For ACPI enabled kernel, you could try just rebuilding the kernel with ACPI instead of APM, but do take a look at acpi.sf.net, too.

Comment by Sebastian on Fri, 05 Dec 2003 18:38:53:
Hi again! I finally got the 1400x1050 mode running on the console... The only thing you have to use a commonly undocumented kernel vesa mode at your boot-options: vga=834 This gives me a crisp 1400x1500-16bpp Console. Is there a way to make redhat init-srcipts be aware of higher resolutions to position the [OK] messages at the right border of the screen?

Comment by oa on Sat, 06 Dec 2003 15:26:49:
I don't think that's possible. However, I've recently upgraded to Fedora Core (I guess I should write something about that), and the graphical boot is pretty cool.

Comment by oa on Sun, 07 Dec 2003 15:06:14:
I updated the entry with a link to my experiences with Fedora Core 1. I can definitely recommend it - only a few upgrade related problems, and a very smooth package overall. Compared to a more mainstream RH9 install, FC1 is very nice, for my customised system, it's mostly the same as before, but easier to manage.

Comment by David M. Day on Sun, 23 May 2004 04:10:49:
I don't know if you have figured out how to move the "[ OK ]" after setting vga=834 yet or not so I am posting it here just so it is on-line. vim /etc/sysconfig/init edit RES_COL=60 I changed mine to 145 and it works pretty well.