Installing Linux on My HP G6030EM Laptop

3rd January 2008

PREAMBLE

This cheap and cheerful laptop has a Pheonix BIOS/AMD combination, which doesn't seem work well with some current kernels.

I spent a lot of time trying to make this work with Gutsy.  Installation would only work with ACPI disabled.  Despite trying many grub options, the best I could manage was the system maybe booting once every 10 attempts due to failure to initialise the ndiswrapper.  When it did boot,  CPU scaling had to be disabled, and there were frequent lock-ups during use.

After a few weeks, I gave up and looked for another distro.  I had information that PClinuxOS had worked for many HP laptops, so decided to try.  To minimise download time, I decided to try their new PCfluxboxOS liveCD.

SPEC

Mobile AMD Sempron™ Processor 3400+

 Phoenix BIOS rev F.1D

 Vista Home Basic 32-bite

1024 MB

80 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive

Super Multi DVD Writer (+/-R +/-RW) with Double Layer support

High speed 56K modem

Ethernet 10/100BT integrated network interface

802.11b/g WLAN Broadcom BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 02)

1 VGA port; 3 USB 2.0 ports; 1 RJ 11 modem connector;

          1 RJ 45 Ethernet connector; S-video TV out; 1 Headphone-out, 1 mic-in

15.4” WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen1280 x 800

GeForce™ Go 6100

3D Sound Blaster Pro compatible sound 16 bit integrated

Altec Lansing® speakers

Touch Pad volume control, mute buttons, 1 Quick Launch Button

PREPERATION

- grab the 32-bit broadcom drivers from here:  ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe

- you will need to unpack the files ( cabextract ) or from windows.  Dump them onto the windows partition, if you have one.

The two files needed are bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys

LINUX DISTRO

PCFluxBoxOS 1.0 liveCD

http://pcfluxboxos.wikidot.com/  (small ISO image, quick to initially download)

LIVE CD BOOT

No problems -- booted to correct resolution

Wireless worked out of the box via ndiswrapper (you will need to grab the 32-bit broadcom drivers prior to booting (see preparation above), dump them into a directory on the vista partition, and point to the bcmwl5.inf file when prompted.  The standard Vista ones don't work.)

You can probably activate the wireless later, but I did it during live CD bootup and installation.

INSTALLATION

- Booted the liveCD through to a working system

- Then selected the option to install to hard-disk

NOTE there is no option to install at initial boot, the harddisk install is done from a working liveCD system

- As a rough guide, I used the instructions in this thread  http://tinyme.mypclinuxos.com/forums/index.php?topic=1423.0

- Used custom partitioning to prepare a partition

- Grub recognized the Vista partition.

BOOTING UP

- No problems.  No special grub options, Nice grub screen.  Very quick to load.

POST INSTALLATION

  - Allocated /tmp to the hard disk rather than tmpfs  (limited memory on machine)

  - Reduced hard-disk parking with a hdparm command (google for more info)

  - Enabled cpu scaling service

  - Setup the encryption on the wireless

   

NOT WORKING

- Speakers do not automatically mute when headphones connected (have to be manually switched off in the mixer)

- The special HP "FN" buttons aren't active

- smartd does not work with this harddrive/kernel combination  (later kernel needed, I think)

NOT TESTED

-Wired ethernet

-Modem

-Mic socket

-s-video

-vga

-hibernate / suspend / resume