Ubuntu Linux on an HP zv6100 Laptop

Every couple of years I like to get myself a new laptop. This helps me stay on top of new developments in that area, and of course it’s usually much better-performing and feature-packed than the old one. This time is no exception.

The Hardware

I was looking around for a long time before I settled for the one I’m writing this article on. I knew I wanted an AMD64-based system, not too expensive, with dedicated video RAM and a 15″ wide-aspect screen, and had relatively few requirements besides. My search quickly narrowed down to offerings by HP/Compaq. In fact I spent some time looking for a Compaq R3000 or R4000, but had a tough time finding one in good condition. After looking at a few models at my local Best Buy, I decided to go the Ebay route and ended up finding a zv6100 for a hair less than $600 US. Not too shabby, if I say so myself. Granted it was only for the laptop and AC adapter, but frankly I don’t need the accessories, and I wasn’t going to use the standard Windows distribution anyway.

I was tempted to dish out for the newer dv2020 model. That features a dual-core AMD64 processor, faster RAM and an Nvidia chipset which may have saved me a bit of pain (see the Issues section below), but being new it would also have been a lot more expensive — with tax, perhaps as much as twice the cost of the dv6100 — so I had to go for the less costly option. Also the dv2020 only has shared video memory, but because it’s faster (533MHz instead of 333MHz) I’m not sure the effect would be all that noticeable.

In terms of specs this is a fairly promising machine:

  • AMD64 3200 processor
  • 1 GB RAM
  • 80 GB HDD
  • ATI X200M video w/ 128MB dedicated memory
  • Brightview 15.4″ widescreen
  • Integrated Broadcom bcm43xx “Air Force One” wireless NIC
  • RealTek 8139 NIC
  • Bluetooth
  • Firewire
  • DVD+-R burner w/ double-layer support
  • 4 USB 2.0 ports

Overall a good deal. One of the things I like when dealing with HP hardware is that it’s all fairly generic. No special hardware, it’s standard off-the-shelf stuff, so it’s no problem getting Linux to work, for the most part (more on that later).

It is big, however. Basically it shares a platform with the Compaq R4000 series. It takes up a lot of space. There’s a non-negligible amount of extra space around the already-large screen, and the overall package is over 2″ in height. On the other hand it’s not that heavy, and it does feel quite solid, something I can’t say about Compaq laptops overall. It also has very good Altec-Lansing speakers, so it’s quite appropriate as a media PC (to play music and watch DVDs, for example).

The Software

Along with the hardware change came a software change, and I felt I had no choice but to abandon my once-favorite Slackware distribution. Simply put, Slackware just doesn’t have 64-bit support; there is the SLAMD64 distro but it’s a private effort that’s been in hiatus for a while, and it’s not quite endorsed by Slackware in the first place. Looking around I found 4 “major” distros that have an official 64-bit version:

  • Fedora
  • SuSE
  • Gentoo
  • Ubuntu

Fedora and SuSE are visually polished distributions that install fairly easily and support most things. BUT they’re both RPM based, and frankly I can’t stand RPM. At least Fedora has the YUM system that can be set up to access various repositories that aren’t part of the official distribution; SuSE, not so much. If something hasn’t been blessed by Novell, you’re largely on your own with SuSE. Mind you, I’ve always seen it as the corporate distribution, and its emphasis is naturally on making it easy for system administrators to roll out in a corporate environment. As a hobbyist, well, that doesn’t work for me. When I’m looking for an OS that makes it easy for someone else to take over and control, I’ll go for Windows…

I didn’t even try Gentoo. Why? Well, because I installed Ubuntu before getting around to it, and am quite happy with this new distro. The idea of installing using an X11 gnome aplication on a Live CD is an absolute stroke of genius, especially when said Live CD is so well thought-out. Seriously, bravo to the Ubuntu people. Rarely have I seen software so well-engineered as this. What really impressed me was the amount of hardware support that’s built into that CD, and especially the fact that my prism54 wireless card was supported even when running off the Live CD. Now that’s a distribution that really gets it.

Also, since Ubuntu is Debian-based, it uses the apt-get method for software management. In my experience this is the best method of installing and updating software, especially when combined with Ubuntu’s universe/metaverse package metaphor. Support is also outstanding, and there are lots of documentation, both officially and in the wiki, that’ll help you through solving any issues that come up. I even got the notoriously finicky Broadcom Air Force One rev. 02 to work quickly just by browsing a couple of wiki articles.

Ubuntu is a glimpse into the future of Linux. It really is, and it’s well worth a look by anyone interested in open-source.

Installation

It could hardly be any easier to install Ubuntu on the hard drive. Simply boot up with the Live CD, double-click the Install icon on the desktop, and away you go. This is far easier and especially quicker than installing Windows.

Issues

Nothing is perfect of course, and there are a couple of things I can complain about (yay!).

ATI Sucks

First is the ATI video chipset. ATI just doesn’t get open-source software, and I am starting to doubt that it ever will. If I were to send a message to ATI, it would be that if you can’t be bothered to support your own chipsets, then open-source the drivers and let people who know what they’re doing do it, because you don’t. You see, ATI has proprietary drivers for Linux, which would be a good thing if they worked. However, they don’t work. It’s frankly pathetic. The X200M chipset isn’t supported by the people who made the thing. Now, that doesn’t mean that it won’t work, it simply means that you will not be able to get 3D acceleration working in any way while in Linux, and although the specs on the laptop are quite impressive you won’t be able to get any 3D game or app working at anything resembling reasonable speed.

ATI hasn’t made much any improvement to their notoriously awful installers either, as those are completely unable to recognize either an unsupported chipset OR the fact that their dependencies are broken. That is basic installer technology we’re talking about here, and ATI is apprently incapable of understanding that much, or even of contracting more knowledgeable people to do it for them! And what happens as a result of that incompetence? To put it simply, using the ATI installer will break your X11 configuration if you try and use it on this laptop. As a matter of fact it will also do that if you try and use it to install drivers for an X700 AGP card on a desktop (which I also tried). This is just sad.

To add insult to injury, if you send ATI feedback informing them of this they write you back and basically tell you that they’re not interested in your problems. The technological failure is followed up by a customer service failure. Hopefully AMD will take over in that department and push ATI into providing decent support, but I’m not optimistic that this will happen anytime soon. In fact my experience has been so overwhelmingly negative that I have resolved not to buy anything by ATI again. They’re not interested in having me as a customer, and I’m more than happy to return the ‘tude.

SD/MMC/XD Reader

The card reader doesn’t work. It’s not been an issue for me as I don’t have any such devices to use, but I thought I should mention it.

Broadcom Air Force One Rev. 02 Wireless Card

This particular laptop comes with revision 2 of the Broadcom Air Force One mini-PCI card. This doesn’t work with the standard bcm43xx driver which is included with the documentation. That being said it’s easily set up using ndiswrapper and an application called bcm43xx_fwcutter. The only thing to remember is that you have to blacklist the bcm43xx kernel module and prevent it from being loaded in the kernel. Once that is done the integrated wifi works flawlessly. No more fragile PCMCIA cards to lug around (yay!).

Macromedia/Adobe Flash

Flash doesn’t work on any 64-bit browser, and overall it’s uninstallable using the standard scripts. This is extremely disappointing. This problem also affects 64-bit Windows, although this latter OS’s 32-bit emulation layer makes it possible to install and run Flash on a 32-bit browser. Still, someone needs to tell Adobe to shell out for a 64-bit compiler. If open-source OS’s can be developed entirely in 64-bit by volunteers with no budget, it’s hard to fathom why it would be so damn hard for one of the world’s biggest software companies to do the same. There’s already a petition online with several thousand names on it asking for 64-bit flash, which Macromedia (and now Adobe) have done little with but ignore, so shame on them.

Conclusion

Overall I’m quite pleased with my purchase. It’s fast, good-looking, feature-packed, and I get to enjoy 64-bit computing in a portable package. If only ATI and Adobe can get the message regarding the points I raised earlier, it’d be perfect, but overall this has been the shortest, least-painful Linux install ever. I also have 64-bit Windows Vista installed on this same laptop, which shall have its own review when I feel like writing it — but as with my last laptop, the new one is far and away best used with Linux.

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