Installing Mandriva 2006 on Asus A3H: Linux on Laptops

Installing [Mandriva 2006] on [ASUS & A3H]

Last updated: [8 March 2006]

General Hardware Specifications of [ASUS A3H]:

Hardware Components

Status under Linux

Notes

Pentium M Processor, 1.6 GHz

Works

15" SXGA+ TFT Display

Works

Select Generic LCD Display in Installer, suprisingly only does 1024x768

Onboard i915

Works

Use i810 or vesa driver, VESA framebuffer

Webcam

Does not work

There is now way to get this working

Harddrive

Works with DMA enabled

Works out of the box

USB

Works

Work OTTB

Integrated Network Card

Works

Works OTOB with reaktek 8139too driver

Internal 56k Modem

Doesn't Work

Might be able to get it to work with the linmodem hsf drivers, but looks doubtful, they installed form me but will not dial. The full speed drivers will set you back US$19.95. You milage may vary.

DVD ROM drive

Works

AIRFORCE ONE

Works

Needed to use NDIS wrapper and windows xp drivers

Keyboard

Works mostly

Cannot get multimedia (fn + Fkey) keys to work, display brightness works, volume controls do not even sent an event to XEV or the kernel

Trackpad

Works

ACPI

Does not work

Will not start up once put to sleep

Frequency scaling

Does not work

Will not work

Inbuilt Sound

Works Mostly

Works with ALSA, although pluggin in headphones does not work, good luck

Card Reader

Not Tested

Also looks doubtful, as it is not recognised at boot or in lspci.

This laptop is operating (just) under Kernel version 2.6.12

Basic Installation of [Linux Distribution]:

Used Mandriva as most thinks work without too much configuring

Free version from their site or any number of mirrors

Installing is straight forward, nothing you need to know here

Most things work that will work straight away.

Unresolved issues

Multimedia Keys

Getting sleep modes to work (suspend to ram or disk, neither work)

Unable to use headphones, which is very annoying on a laptop

Webcam, this will never work

No Frequency scaling means 2 hour battery life if you are lucky

No ACPI means you can't just close the lid to put it to sleep and wake it up, you'll have to shutdown and start up again. It looks like nobody has done this before, and I have read quite a lot and tried to get this working, as it is something every laptop must have, imo. I have given up, as this is impossible to get this to work properly, and it seems nobody else has tried to get this working on one of these laptops, as it just will not work. So if you require a laptop with this functionality, keep looking.

Getting ASUS to answer the phone (impossible)

Configuration Files

Contact Information (Optional)

I don't recommend buying one of these laptops, but if you have already bought one and can't think of a cunning way to get your money back, (you should have done your research better before purchasing!) you can contact me at, although there isn't much more I can tell you, mrgreen@supersynergy.com or better, if you have been able to get some things working.

Links:

Ebay? Maybe you can sell it :)

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