Midnight Whispers

Installing UBUNTU 6.06 (Dapper Drake) on Acer Aspire 5502

After a long time of using Kubuntu 5 on my Acer 5502 (more as a end-user), and having original CDs of xUBUNTU in hand (order it from ubuntu for free and spread the word), I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 6 (dapper). On my work PC I did the upgrade and it was successful. But since after my laptop hard disk malfunction (I messed with MBR!) a fresh installation was needed.

Anyways I put the live CD of ubuntu 6 (dapper) to see what live looks like on my laptop. (One great option they add to ubuntu CD is that you can first see the live version, if it works for you, then install it from within live environment. It is a very genius way to give the option of test before installation along with a graphical installation wizard.)

Well startup seems to be ok, but, as I expected the X startup leads to a dead screen. It look like a working system with a turned off monitor!

I waited till the hard disk light went off (meaning system is completely up) then switched to console by pressing “Ctrl+Alt+F1″. To bring back the monitor in basic resolution just adding one line in “xorg.conf” helped:

~$ sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

And adding this line to the section “Device”:

Option “Monitor Layout” “LVDS, CRT”

After saving and quiting the vim, I had to restart X. It should be done by pressing “Alt+F7″ but it didn’t work for me. Starting X didn’t work either since it was already started! Instead it gave me a useful error message regarding a file lock in “~/.tmp” directory. I removed the file (sudo) and started X again. Bingo! Gnome appeared but in 640×480!

Now I could go through the real installation by clicking on “Install” shortcut on the desktop.
Setup wizard is quite straightforward and takes about 45 minutes.
After finishing the setup time comes to reboot. A successful reboot and GRUB menu with UBUNTU and Windows XP (If you already have it). Again I faced a dead display as I expected because I did those changes in live CD on a fake mounted disk. So I passed the same steps bringing back the Gnome in VGA.

I had already connected the machine to LAN and eth0 was automatically set (with DHCP). Immediately I got ATI Mobility Radeon driver from:

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&
task=knowledge&folderID=300

At that time the version was 8.29.6 and direct link:

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/
linux/ati-driver-installer-8.29.6.run

A very easy installation by:

~$ sudo ati-driver-installer-8.29.6.run

and doing exactly what wizard says, then a reboot and valah! Gnome with 1024×768 and 24 bits depth, but it is not what exactly I wanted.

~$ aticonfig –resolution=0,1280×800

This changed the resolution to what my laptop needs.

The important point that I am still trying to figure it out is that after hibernation the screen gets scrambled and noisy and the cause is likely to be frequency. It makes me not to hibernate (pity, it’s my favorite!) or use “Ctrl+Alt+Backspace” to restart X on the fly to fix avoid the issue.

Now time to check other peripheral which often have problem with Linux. Starting from Wireless card surprisingly I realized that it’s been detected properly as “eth1″. Just because Lan (eth0) is the default it is kind of ignored.
In Gnome: “System > Administration > Networking” brings up a very easy to use network device setting tool. Because I usually don’t use LAN even at home, just disabled it to not to interfere. Then I changed default default gateway device combo to “eth1″ (Wifi Card).

~$ sudo ifdown eth1
~$ sudo ifup eth1

And everything’s finished, even a nice applet appears on desktop bar showing signal strength. Then to easily detect and change hot-spots I installed “Wireless Assistant”.

My HP Officejet 5610 was easily installed although I’m still struggling with scanner.

Bluetooth is detected and when you turn the button on it enables successfully. The point is I couldn’t search fro devices the way ubuntu documentation said at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup

But “bluetooth file sharing” lets sending and receiving files between 2 devices. I tested it successfully with my Nokia E61.

The 6in1 card reader seems to be detected but giving me a hard time and still not functional.

IEEE1394 (iLink / Firewire) and the 56k Modem are both detected although I didn’t tested them yet.

Everything else is working safe and sound along with power management although I feel battery life is longer in Windows. This could be because system could not detect the correct CPU (Centrino 1.7Ghz) to benefit power saving features. I remember Gentoo and Knoppix detected it correctly.

Sphere It October 20th, 2006