[30316 views]

[]

Linux on ACER TM 630

Linux on an ACER TM 630 Laptop

This is a short guide for the experienced Linux user. It describes how to get certain features of the Acer Travelmate 630 working.

Hardware features

  gimli: # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1671 Super P4 Northbridge [AGP4X,PCI and SDR/DDR] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation PCI to AGP Controller
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533/M1535 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV/V/V+]
00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
00:0f.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:13.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933/711E1 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller (rev 02)
00:13.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933/711E1 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller (rev 02)
00:14.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go] (rev b2)

Hardware support

Feature SuSE 8.0 / 2.4.23 Gentoo Linux / 2.6.x
ACPI no ok
APM ok ok
nVidia @ 1400x1050 ok ok
OpenGL ok ok
Touchpad partly ok
Hotkeys ok ok
Sound ok ok
USB ok ok
PCMCIA WiFi ok ok
Firewire ? ok
Ethernet ok ok
SmartCard ? ?
IR ok ok
TV-Out ? ?

Read on

Installing Gentoo 1.4

Recently I switched to Gentoo, mostly because the SuSE system became unmaintainable when I wanted to upgrade some packages to newer versions. SuSE only supports their online update (which is mostly security patches). Updates to individual packages are not provided by SuSE. You have to buy their update CDs and then update your whole system at once from 8.0 to 8.1 for instance.

This is a lot more easier with Gentoo. You can simply update individual packages and dependencies are handled very well! Also you have the great benefit of a system compiled and optimized for your CPU. There is a noticable performance gain by that. My KDE startup time has dropped drastically and also Mozilla runs faster. However you should note that compiling a Gentoo system with KDE takes about four days. Gentoo has a very good installation documentation on their website. So I don't need to copy it here.

Other TM 630 sites

Debian Linux on the Acer Travelmate 630 series, by Daniel Elvin
Linux on the Acer TravelMate 630LC laptop, by Konrad Wojas
Linux on Travelmate 634LC, by Niels Peen
You should check out TuxMobil.org as well!