This document describes my experience with getting SUSE Linux 10.1 running
on an HP Compaq nc8430. I hope this will be useful.Last updated: 15 October 2007
| This is the SUSE VERSION | Go to the Ubuntu Version |
This document describes my experience with getting SUSE Linux 10.1 running
on an HP Compaq nc8430. I hope this will be useful.
This machine is certified as Linux-compatible by Novell, against Novell Linux Desktop 9 for x86, Powered by SUSE LINUX, and with some caveats. This laptop is operating under kernel version 2.6.16.13-4-smp. I have also got Ubuntu Linux running on the same machine, and with some different results; see my report on that.
Note that I haven't had this machine long, and I haven't put too much effort into some of the features listed below; I'm not interested in smart cards, for example. I'm too busy to do major investigations, but reasonable requests for info or simple tests will be heeded. See Contact Info at end.
This report is listed at TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones. Check the site out for lots more information about mobile Linux.
Note that there are several versions of the nc8430, which differ in things such as clock speed, type of optical drive, etc. My configuration is Core Duo T2500, 1024MB, 80GB, DVD+-RW.
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Hardware Components
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Status under SUSE
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Notes
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| Intel Core Duo T2500 Processor, 2.0 GHz | Works | Both CPU cores recognised; SMP Linux installed automatically |
| 15.4" 1680 x 1050 TFT active matrix display | Works | See next item |
| ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 Video (256MB) | Works | With driver from ATI. OpenGL
works after some tweaking (see below).
See my xorg.conf file.
According to an independent report, "fglrx and opengl work well if you install the drivers from ati.com instead of from repositories (it does for me at least)". Thanks Ramon. |
| 1GB DDRII SDRAM | Works | (Full memory reported by KInfoCentre) |
| 80GB Serial ATA-150 Hard Drive | Not tried | Swapped out before Linux installation for... |
| Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB 7200RPM Serial ATA-150 Hard Drive | Works | No issues |
| Broadcom BCM5753 Gigabit Ethernet | Works | No issues |
| Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG WiFi | Works | After manual installation of package "ipw3945d" and reboot |
| Internal 56k Modem | Not detected | No surprise! |
| FireWire | Not detected? | I have nothing to try this with |
| Bluetooth | Works | This originally worked straight from the box (I was able to send a file to the phone using KBluetooth). However, after a major disk disaster and a total re-install, I can no longer find the Bluetooth device. Missing driver? I'm not terribly motivated to fix this, unfortunately... |
| DVDRW (+R double layer) Drive | Works | Reads OK; CD ripping OK; DVD-R written and read OK |
| 4800 mAh Lithium-Ion Battery | Works | No issues |
| AD1981HD Sound Card (SB-compatible) | Works | At first, sound worked to headphone out only; the built-in speakers started working after a SUSE update which I got on 22 July 2006. However, the hardware volume/mute buttons still don't work, but the software volume control is fine. (The speakers worked out of the box in Ubuntu.) |
| Integrated microphone | Works | Enable "capture" in KMix (not the mic inputs); the mixer settings seem a bit mixed up. |
| Integrated speakers | Work | See Sound Card |
| Headphone out | Works | No issues |
| SD Card reader | Works | As of OpenSUSE 10.3. |
| Smart Card reader | Not recognised | |
| PCMCIA | Not recognised? | |
| Touchpad | Works | All 3 buttons OK |
| Pointing stick | Works | All 3 buttons OK |
| UK keyboard | Works | Pound, dollar, Euro, all OK |
| ACPI Power Management | Largely works |
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| USB | Works | Flash stick recognised and opened on insert; USB disks and mouse OK. |
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 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI (rev 01) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71c5 02:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments Unknown device 8039 02:06.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments Unknown device 803a 02:06.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments Unknown device 803b 02:06.3 Class 0805: Texas Instruments Unknown device 803c 02:06.4 Communication controller: Texas Instruments Unknown device 803d 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5753M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 21) 10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
It's nice! This is my first HP, and so far I'm impressed. It's nicely slim and light (compared to my "old" 15.4" Toshiba A75), and the 1680x1050 display is fantastic!
Minor negatives: the keys are a little more stiff than I'm used to, but I guess I'll get used to it. (Update: I totally got used to it.) The USB slots are on the sides, and closer to the front than I'd like; for example, with a wireless mouse, the tranceiver will be slightly in the way, whereas plugged into the back it would be less obtrusive. Likewise the headphone jack is right at the front on the right; you need a right-angle plug to avoid getting in the way of the mouse, and then the wire trails in front of the DVD drive drawer. Slightly annoying.
Overall, it's great, though. I like the hardware WiFi switch; the screen is great; it's very quiet (check your BIOS if not); and performance is excellent. (See below for more on performance.) One nice feature is that all the key components (RAM slot, WiFi, BIOS battery, etc.) are under the keyboard; you can get to them by removing two screws and popping down 4 latches on the keyboard. It looks like you could blow air through the heatsink from there too. The same operation took over an hour on my old machine! BTW, the BIOS battery is in a clip-holder, not soldered. Way to go HP!
I've been a SUSE user for a long time; their stuff always seemed good and well-packaged, with good admin tools. I'm not sure their web support has prospered under Novell, but 10.1 (which I've been using for a while) looks pretty good. So, I'm sticking with SUSE 10.1 on the new machine, which is to replace my failed Toshiba (bad power connector, re-soldered several times, finally failed completely). I use a boxed distribution for convenience.
I decided from the beginning to swap out the hard drive for a slightly larger, and faster, one. Given this, the setup procedure I used was fairly involved:
and that was about it. I've noted elsewhere the adjustments I had to make after the install; basically installing a package for the WiFi and the ATI graphics driver.
I initially got graphics working by setting the following parameters in the install:
but this only gave me 800x600 resolution. After the installation, I installed the driver from ATI, and got the full resolution working. There's a page by Toni with a link to the driver and some more info. Note that this was all before I got the software update run (see "SUSE Issues"); you may want to see how you get on with the update before doing this.
OpenGL didn't work at first; to fix this I went into /lib/modules/fglrx and ran the installer. This gave me some simple instructions to follow, which I did, then after logout/login it worked! Cool!
If you have ACPI issues, or your fans are noisy all the time, make sure your BIOS is up to date. (This is normally a pretty quiet machine.) See the HP driver page. Thanks to Pierre for this tip!
I get the impression that the HP is faster than my old Toshiba, despite having a 2GHz CPU vs. 3.2GHz. (Sorry, no scientific benchmarks here, the Tosh is totally fried.) This is not down to the dual CPUs; in single-threaded tasks like fractal generation and mp3 encoding it seems to fly. I guess the Tosh had a good CPU but lousy support hardware - certainly lousy graphics hardware, the HP is way faster for Windoze games. Speaking of which, I'm seeing 20-25 FPS in Oblivion, playing in 1280x800 (ambitious, the setup recommented 1024x768) with grass off. This isn't like an ultra gaming machine, but the result is pretty smooth to my eye, and the picture quality is superb.
To be more scientific, here are the results of a benchmarking run. This data was produced under OpenSUSE 10.2, using the 2.6.18.8 kernel, with UnixBench 5.0. The index group of tests was used, and run with both one simultaneous process and two simultaneous processes.
Single processing 678.2
Dual processing 1026.2
You can check out the full results. The score under SUSE 10.1 was much lower, just 444.
Note that the benchmark isn't multi-CPU aware, and was run as a single copy, so these results don't accurately reflect the machine's capabilities. However, running the Dhrystone test manually, two copies ran about as fast as one.