Installing Linux on a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1655G

Last updated: 11/03/2006

General Hardware Specifications of the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1655G:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
AMD Turion MT-32 (1.8 Ghz, 512 kB L2)	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
15.1 WXGA TFT Display	Works	No special procedure required during installation
ATI X200 integrated video (shared memory)	Works	No special procedure required during installation
1024MB, SDRAM DDR 333, 2DIMMs	Works	No special procedure required during installation
100 GB Seagate STUltra ATA100 Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Via Firewire 400	Not tested	The FireWire modules are loaded, so I suppose the thing is recognized. Haven't had the chance to test it.
Integrated Network Card (RealTek 8139)	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Internal 56k Modem	Not tested	N/A
Broadcom 4318 802.11b/g Wireless adapter	Doesn't work	No results with a patched 2.6.16-rc5 kernel with native (bcm43xx) drivers; same with the stock 2.6.15.4 kernel with ndiswrapper 1.10
53 WHr Lithium-Ion Battery	Works	No special procedure required during installation
ATi IXP onboard sound card (Intel Azalia High-Definition audio compatible)	Works	No special procedure required if using kernel 2.6.x. Uses the hda-intel sound driver.
Built-in speakers	Works	Work out of the box. Nice (but crappy sound :-P)
Express Card slot (36/54 mm)	Not tested	No clue if this works... I don't have one of those cards.
Flash card reader (SD/MS/MMC/MSPRO)	Not tested	No flash cards now, but when I get a digital camera, it might come in handy.

This laptop is operating under kernel version 2.6.15.4. 2.6.15.6 and 2.6.16-rc5 run fine on it too.

Basic Installation of Zenwalk 2.2:

• Advantages of Zenwalk

  I have fallen in love with the Slackware philosophy. Zenwalk continues that tradition, while making a deliberate future-oriented choice in its packages (latest stable kernel, full udev, no hotplug needed anymore; one app per task). I tried Ubuntu Dapper Drake – because it supports the Broadcom 4318 device out of the box – but it gave me no luck with that friggin' wireless adapter, so there was no longer any reason to stick with Ubuntu (I'm no particular fan of deb/dep checking ;-)). Furthermore, Zenwalk is a light distro, not necessarily for light systems, but designed to run swift. (Ubuntu is slow, even with Gnome 2.13 - this is no flame, just a mere observation).

• Obtaining Zenwalk is quite easy normally: http://repository.zenwalk.org/ISO/ (but not for the moment, our repository is down...)

• Installing is straightforward: pop in the CD and answer the questions.

• Post-Install modifications/tweaks: I had to do the following:

  - uncomment some modules in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (and of course, load them, unless you love to reboot your linux): powernow-k8, processor, thermal, button, fan, and battery.

  - install cpufrequtils; this is a set of utilities that use the various cpu frequency drivers (Intel Speedstep, AMD PowerNow) as backends. For some strange reason, Zenwalk doesn't clock my Turion down after booting up (whereas Ubuntu brings it down nicely to 800 Mhz). Of course, like Slackware, Zenwalk is a DIY distro, so I didn't bother. I compiled cpufrequtils, installed that, and I added some commands to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to lower my frequency – and change the cpu governor from performance (which leaves it to 1.8 Ghz default, all the time) to ondemand – which clocks my Turion up when needed, blessing me thus with lots of silence :-D. So my CPU clocks down nicely after boot, but for some reason the ondemand governor is not set as default, even with the command in rc.local... Once I'm logged in, I can enable it as root, no problem at all. I'll have to dig in on that one.

• Unfortunately, XFCE provides very little plugins related to laptop information (battery charge, and so on). I have found one meagre XFCE plugin showing me battery usage. I run most of the time on AC, so it nicely displays my laptop is running on AC... However, when I unplugged the power cable, the plugin didn't seem aware of it. Yet, this is still a CVS version (XFCE 4.3), so maybe that will be solved later on. Furthermore, the XFCE devs are not to blame – the plugins are no official part of the project, but third-party programs.

Setting up additional features for Zenwalk

• Haven't tried suspend-to-disk. I recently read you can use some simple commands (calling scripts, really) in the terminal to make your laptop go to sleep, or suspend to RAM, so I will try those first. But not now :-).

• The touchpad still operates as a PS/2 mouse. For now, that's ok for me... The laptop thing is still new to me, and this is intended as a DTR. So for now I just use it with a USB mouse.

• I added some custom udev rules for my USB disks and sticks. It's always nice to see them show up as /dev/usbstick or /dev/usbdisk (I know, I'm pathetic).

• Ubuntu (yes, again) sets X to use my native 1280x800 resolution. XFCE tries with a 1024x768, which looks odd, to say the least. However, a few quick modifications to /etc/X11/xorg.conf do the trick. After that, it just looks great :-), and Gnome is no match anymore :-P.

Unresolved issues

• The crappy Broadcom 4318 chip. For those who want to take a shot, I tried the following:

  - compile the latest 2.6.16-rc5 kernel with both dscape and softmac patches (one at a time of course). Those patches originate from the Broadcom 43xx Linux project: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/. I went on their IRC channel, but they couldn't help me either (they were helpful though!). Browsing the forum (which shows it's still a pretty young project) didn't yield anything either. After that, I tried ndiswrapper. Driver loaded, hardware present, etc. But no network!

  - install another distro to see if the device actually works under Linux (second time I do this; I did it some time back with my wireless RaLinks, which are natively supported by SuSE 10.0). This is a procedure that might take some time, but it's certainly worth it (I, and I assume most people with me, prefer native drivers). It didn't work under Ubuntu 6.04 'Dapper Drake' either (where I could use the default 2.6.15 kernels); not with the native driver, not with ndiswrapper.

  - credit to whom credit is due: even under the (formerly) pre-installed Windows XP Home, it didn't work. Well... Actually, it saw my wireless network, but believed it is a WPA2-encrypted one. Close, but not correct: I run WPA-PSK AES encryption (both under Linux and Windows). Yet, even with the good keys and settings, I never manage to get on to my network from my laptop. I tore the encryption down, leaving the network unprotected, made Windows scan again for networks, but it still showed my home network as WPA2-protected. A bit bizarre.

  - last but not least, this laptop requires you to push a button to activate the wireless device. Needless to say, this particular button doesn't generate an ACPI event under linux. So at least the button is unusable. On the bcm43xx forums, extracting the driver's firmware to /lib/firmware is said to remedy this. I tried with different firmwares (and different kernels)... To no avail. Maybe it has to do with the udev/hotplug thing (Zenwalk has migrated fully to udev since kernel 2.6.15); however, under Ubuntu, I didn't see any improvements either.

• The onboard sound remains crappy. I connected my Zennheiser headphones, and a lot of noise, from internet radio... Not good. I suppose it's the interference with all those devices on a tiny surface.

Configuration Files

• There was a feeble effort to modify /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/trip_points. I tried to lower the treshold values because I thought my laptop was getting quite hot (60° C). I lowered the four values from 10 to 7 degrees (lowest: 50° C, highest (critical shutdown): 95° C). The fan went mad, and I had to shut down to silence it. On next restart, the settings were restored to normal. So I guess editing those values is something you need to do every single time you reboot (of course, this can be automated – and /proc is dynamic, so it's recreated at every boot; and of course, this is not a brilliant idea if your ventilation goes bananas after). But it was an interesting experiment, nevertheless.

More Specific Information. Specific stuff such as:

• HD usage: Zenwalk installs on a 3GB HD just fine (full graphical install). Of course, it won't leave you a lot of elbow room.

• lspci output: http://users.telenet.be/saranno.famosi/A1655G/lspci.log

• cpufreq-utils sources: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/cpufreq/cpufrequtils.html

• The cpufreq-utils package I built (for Zenwalk 2.2, but I guess it can be used on any Zenwalk version with GCC 3.4.5 safely) can be found here: http://users.telenet.be/saranno.famosi/Packages/cpufrequtils-0.4-i486-1Z24.tgz checksum: http://users.telenet.be/saranno.famosi/Packages/cpufrequtils-0.4-i486-1Z24.md5

• Broadcom 4318 Linux native driver: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/

Contact Information (Optional)

• stijn dot zenwalk at gmail dot com

• you can find me on IRC at irc.freenode.net, #zenwalk (nick: Borromini)

Links:

• ACPI documentation: http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/thermal.html

• Manufacturer: http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/

• And of course, back to Linux on Laptops!

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