n01getsout.com’s blog

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire 5100-5840 that had Windows Vista Premium preinstalled. I was planning on buying a Linux laptop, but I found a deal on this Acer so I decided I may as well keep Windows Vista for any Windows only capabilities I may need in the future. I decided that although I use Debian on my desktop PC, I would try installing the 64bit version of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn along side of Windows Vista.

The Acer Aspire 5100-5840 comes with an AMD Turion 64 x2 dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB 5400rpm hard drive, a DVD burner, an integrated Atheros AR5007EG 802.11b/g wireless network adapter, and an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated graphics card that pulls 256MB of RAM from system memory.

The hard drive was partitioned into 3 partitions: a hidden Acer restore partition that takes about 9GB of space, a Windows Vista partition (C:\) that takes up about 70GB, and an empty 70GB NTFS partition (D:\). I originally planned on installing Ubuntu on the empty D:\ partition, but with Windows Vista taking up around 20GB of space, I figured that I should probably set more aside for it as Linux would be happy in a much smaller amount of space.

I used the Windows Vista Disk Management tool to delete the empty D:\ partition. I then expanded the Windows Vista partition to 100GB. I was amazed at how fast this happened, I didn’t even have time to cross my fingers! I then rebooted into the Ubuntu LiveCD and everything seemed to be working so far, with the exception of my wireless network card, but I figured it just needed to be configured. I launched GParted from the Ubuntu LiveCD and created a 40GB ext3 partition and a 512MB Linux swap partition. I started to panic when I saw the Acer restore partition and the Windows Vista partition pop up in Nautilus, but I quickly figured out it was just opening them automatically because GParted mounted the drive.

I then launched the Ubuntu installer and accepted the defaults except for the time zone and drive partitioning. I set up my mount points for Ubuntu and told the installer not to use the Acer restore partition and to mount the Windows Vista partition as /windows. The installation process went quickly, I think the whole thing took about 30 minutes, and then I rebooted.

I was relieved when I saw that GRUB had correctly detected the Windows Vista partition. I also noticed it had detected a partition that it labeled as Windows 2000/XP, which must be the Acer restore partition. I tested the Vista partition quickly just to ensure that everything was still working (which it was), and then I booted into Ubuntu. The first thing I noticed was the Restricted Drivers Manager telling me that it had set up drivers for my Atheros wireless network card. I then clicked the checkbox for the ATI proprietary drivers and it told me it could not download the packages from the Internet. I tried everything I could think of to get Ubuntu to bring up the Atheros wireless adapter, but nothing I tried worked. I plugged in a network cable and looked online for instructions on how to make it work, but I was unable to find anything. Apparently the Madwifi drivers have not caught up with the new Atheros hardware yet.

I then tried to install the ATI drivers again and it worked fine. I then ran Synaptic and installed updates and a few programs. I was going to install a kernel that supported SMP for my dual-core processor, but I could not find one. Apparently, Ubuntu has a generic kernel that automatically detects the type of processor you have. I checked in the Gnome Process Manager and it listed two CPUs. I think it was very smart on the part of Ubuntu to do this as it will help people new to Linux get the most performance out of their computers. I also installed GSynaptics so I could turn off the tap-to-click feature on my touchpad. GSynaptics said that it could not start because the SHMConfig option was not set to true in my X.org configuration file. I added that option and it worked properly.

I also checked the system logs and found I kept getting an error that said hda_codec: invalid dep_range_val 0:7fff. I found some information online and edited /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and added the following line at the bottom:
options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=3 position_fix=3 and that seemed to fix my problems.

All in all, I am very impressed at how little work I had to do to configure Ubuntu to get it to work on my laptop. I think their generic kernel and Restricted Drivers Manager will help new Linux users feel at home. I hope to see many more improvements from the Ubuntu team in the future, so keep up the good work!

P.S. If I manage to get my wireless adapter working, I will update this post.