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| Component | Status with linux | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Core Duo T2400 (1.83 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB) | Works fine. | Great processor! If you compile your own kernel, set the processor to be a Pentium M and be sure to enable SMP (Symmetric multi-processing) and Intel Enhanced Speedstep (speedstep_centrino) as well as the CPUFreq governors for frequency scaling. Do not enable hyperthreading. This is not a pentium 4! When compiling programs with gcc, the -O2 -march=prescott -mtune=generic flags achieve good optimization according to hongjiu.lu@intel.com. See here. Processor supports MMX, SSE and SSE2. |
2GB DDR2 Dual Channel Memory |
Works fine. | No comments |
| NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 256MB dedicated GDDR2 VRAM PCI express 16x | Works fine. | Nvidia has very good Linux support. Just download their proprietary drivers from their website. See also my guide to install these drivers. |
| Acer CrystalBrite/16ms Screen | Works. | Backlight cannot be controlled by software but it can be controlled by the Fn+Left/Right key combination. |
Intel Corporation 945PM (82801G, ICH7 family) chipset |
Works fine. | No comments |
| ACPI 2.0 | Works. | Requires suspend2 to suspend correctly. |
| Hard Disk 120 GB SATA (Intel SATA controller) | Works fine. | Enabling laptop-mode for this disk will save much power when in battery mode. Hddtemp can show disk temperature! (Both features do not exist in Windows) |
| MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-845S | Works fine. | Slot-load, accepts all kinds of media except DVD-R dual layer (DVD+R dual layer is supported). It must be recognised as a SCSI disk (will show up as /dev/scd0 or /dev/sr0). It can also work as an IDE cdrom but it will be really slow. |
| Realtek ALC883 Sound Chip (Intel HDA based) | Works. | Volume controls are messed up and the microphone seems to have small gain. For kernels <= 2.6.18, the master volume is the "Front" one. For kernels >= 2.6.19, the master volume is the "Front" for the speakers, the "Surround" for the headphones and "LFE" and "Center" for the subwoofer. |
| Synaptics touchpad | Works fine. | Requires the "synaptic" xorg driver and it's features can be fully customized using programs like KSynaptics. Works even better than in Windows. See here for details. |
| Standard keyboard with a Dritek extended keyboard controller | Works fine. | The keyboard works fine but all those special hotkeys are enabled and disabled from the Dritek controller. This controller requires the acerhk driver. See here for further details. Some keys like the touchpad on/off, the brightness controls and the bluetooth/wireless buttons work at a hardware level and do not require any driver. They will work under any OS. |
| Broadcom NetLink BCM5789 Gigabit Ethernet PCI express | Works fine. | This adapter is based on the Broadcom Tigon3 chip. The kernel module for it is called "tg3". |
| Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG | Works fine. | Intel maintains a partially opensource driver for it. |
| Broadcom 2045 Bluetooth USB 2.0 (BCM92045NMD) | Works. | This is a usb bluetooth chip. When you enable it using the bluetooth button, it is automatically detected by KBluetoothD and I have no reason to believe it won't work. UPDATE: I tested it a little bit with the mobile phone of a friend and it recognized the mobile phone, although the mobile could not recognize the laptop. I bet it was due to bad configuration, but I can't be sure. |
| FireWire: VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller | Not tested. Must work. | This is a standard-compliant controller and does not need any special driver even in Windows. It is detected normally and I have no reason to believe it won't work. |
| Conexant HDAUDIO soft Data Fax Modem | Not tested. | This is a winmodem. I found some drivers for it on the web by a company called Linuxant, but they are closed source and you must pay for them. The bad thing about these drivers is that they mess up with the ALSA kernel modules. |
| Acer OrbiCam (Logitech 046d:0892) | Works. | According to Antony J Mee, this is a type spca5xx camera. Antony has talked with Michel Xhaard, the creator of the spca5xx driver, and he has told him that he is working on a new V4L 2 driver called gspca, which will hopefully suport this model. More info here. This device is also connected on the usb bus. You can get it working using Windows XP under VMware as VMware allows you to connect usb devices to virtual machines. UPDATE: Webcam works under linux but with 1 problem: Turning it around to look behind the screen doesn't flip the image upside down and everything shows upside down. Instructions here. |
| Card Reader: ENE Technology Inc PCI memory stick card reader controller ENE Technology Inc Secure Digital / MMC card reader controller |
Not tested. Must work. | Since linux 2.6.17 there is a driver for this device in the kernel. Somebody told me that in linux 2.6.19 it works even better. |
| PCMCIA: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller | Works fine. | It seems to be recognised by the "yenta" kernel module. Advhertz has told me that he has tested it successfully. I haven't tested it though. |
| Express Card: ENE Technology Inc Smart Media / xD card reader controller | Not tested. Must Work | Express cards are infact external PCI express cards and are supported by the linux PCI-E driver, as long as PCI-E hotplugging support is enabled. It should work out of the box on most distributions. |
| IRDA: SMSC IrCC FIR | Works. | There are two infrared receivers. The FIR on the left panel and the SIR on the front panel. The SIR is used for the remote control, which works. The FIR is detected as a serial port by the linux serial driver but to make it work you actually need to disable the linux serial driver and load the smsc_ircc2 module with lots of parameters. See here. |
| AverMedia Techonologies Inc M115 Hybrid TV Tuner | Partially works. | This is a hybrid card that uses both the Philips Semiconductors SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder chip (saa7134 module) and the mt352 chip for DVB-T (mt352 module). The saa7134 module detects it but it doesn't work. The mt352 module doesn't detect it. The mt352 module is not in the kernel. openSUSE includes it in their patches, but I don't know where they got it. Avermedia has released some GPL-violating proprietary binary-only modules available for SUSE 10, Fedora Core 3 and 4 and Mandriva 2006 which will work. They can be found in Acer InstantOn Arcade as well as here. More information concerning this GPL violation can be found here. UPDATE: Partially works with the development video4linux drivers. See my blog for details. |
| Acer Remote Controller RC-802 | Works fine. | Works at a hardware level and reports itself as part of the keyboard. All you have to do is to configure its keys in the same way you configure hotkeys. See the hotkeys section below. |
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.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (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.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce Go 7600] (rev a1)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5789 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 21)
05:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
06:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev c0)
06:02.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder (rev d1)
06:04.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller (rev 10)
06:04.1 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Memory Stick Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
06:04.2 Generic system peripheral [0805]: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Secure Digital Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
06:04.3 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc: (rev 01)
06:04.4 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0551 (rev 01)
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 046d:0892 Logitech, Inc. <-- camera
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:2101 Broadcom Corp. <-- bluetooth
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
00:00 PNP0a08 (unknown)
00:01 PNP0c02 Motherboard resources
00:02 PNP0200 AT DMA controller
00:03 INT0800 (unknown)
00:04 PNP0103 High-Precision Event Timer
00:05 PNP0c04 Math coprocessor
00:06 PNP0c02 Motherboard resources
00:07 PNP0b00 AT real-time clock
00:08 PNP0303 IBM enhanced keyboard (101/102-key, PS/2 mouse support)
00:09 SYN0703 (unknown)
00:0a SMCf010 SMC Fast Infrared Port
Choosing the right distribution is not easy. Personally, I have used gentoo, openSuSE and finally debian, on this laptop. From all three, I choose debian as the best distribution that suits both my needs and it works best with this laptop. On this website, I will give information for all these three distros but I highly recommend using debian as it is easier to make it work with this laptop.
To install linux, you will first need to set up partitions.
You will notice that the default partitioning on its disk is the following:
| 4 GB Hidden recovery partition. FAT32 | about 50 GB Windows C:\ FAT32 | about 50 GB Windows D:\ FAT32 |
The safest way to install GNU/Linux is to delete the D:\ partition and setup an extended partition where you can create your linux root and swap partitions. I don't remember, but I think that the D:\ partition is already on an extended partition so you don't need to create one. I recommend that you also create a separate partition for /home as it is easier to change distros without losing your desktop settings and personal files. The swap partition is not actually needed as the 2 GB of RAM memory is enough. I use the swap partition to suspend to disk (aka hibernate) and I have set its size to 1 GB. A 2 GB swap is a waste of space as software suspend 2 can compress the contents of RAM so when you suspend to disk, the disk image of your RAM is never 2 GB. If you want, you can suspend to disk using a file on your root partition, so you can omit creating a swap partition.
A normal partition setup is: 10 GB for root (/), 1 GB for swap and the rest for /home.
If you think that 50 GB for Windows is a waste of space because you never use Windows (like me), then you can resize this partition. But watch out !!! Some distributions can resize the Windows partition absolutely fine, while some others may completely damage it. Personally, I use comercial software for resizing my partitions as they are far more reliable than distributions' tools. I warned you, you are free to do what you want :-)
Another warning: Do not delete the 4 GB hidden partition!!! The recovery dvd that you may have created in Windows is not able to recover Windows if anything goes wrong. And even if you try to install another version of Windows from a normal Windows installation cd/dvd, then you will not be able to use Acer Arcade, which is the only way to get the remote control working under Windows. Some people also have told me that the bluetooth Windows driver doesn't exist in the web and in addition, the nvidia graphics drivers will never work under windows unless you install the one that was bundled with your notebook. (Well... I hate Windows!)
Installing any distribution is just a matter of inserting the CD or DVD of the distro and following the instructions. There is enough documentation on the web for that, so I won't talk about it here.
A thing I should note, though, is that to boot from the DVD-RAM drive, you have to press F12 at the BIOS screen (the Acer logo that appears when you power on the laptop) and then select MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-845S from the menu.
If you have any questions or you want to contact me for some reason concerning this laptop or this website, contact me at: gkiagiad (AT) csd.uoc.gr
My jabber IM id is: gkiagia (AT) jabber.org
Thanks to Antony J Mee for the information that he provided on his blog here.
Aspire and Arcade are trademarks of Acer Inc. PowerCinema is a trademark of Cyberlink Corporation. Windows and DOS are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. openSUSE and SUSE are trademarks of Novell Inc. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
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