Hi. there's other posts regarding this specific model and what problems you might run into, but i thought i'd make a summary here and maybe get some help.

On FEDORA CORE (applies to FC3 and FC4test2):
- Display not detected/configured properly (the Ati Radeon Xpress 200 M)
- Everything else seems to work fine except the wireless card and card reader.

On Ubuntu Linux 5.04:
- Keyboard does not work after GRUB unless I keep pressing buttons during boot. (If i don't press anything, at the login screen i can't type anything, not even [ctrl][alt][F1].)
- Gnome freezes right after the login screen and only way to get out is by using the 'power button' -> might be a sound card issue i heard, but still checking.
- However, the command-line works OK.

Other problems I encountered but are less significant:
-CPU stepping in AMD64 3200+ doesn't work automatically, usually stuck at 997Mhz. (however, i can change it manually in gnome-fc4.)
-CPU (or other electric component affected by CPU load) makes electronic noise (ticking/humming) when the CPU is stressed (as in if you resize a window slowly but not if you compute 999999999^999 for some reason... might be graphics i guess?)

I would like to know if anybody else had the noise issue (I can deal with it, not very annoying as long as i know the CPU won't burn in a couple of weeks. - and i would prefer not to take it back to the store as I already did that twice.)

I will come back and post if i solve any of the issues above... thanks :>

I have the R4012US, I haven't noticed the noise issue you mention, if I had to guess I'd say it's a fan kicking in..

on the CPU speed issue in Fedora Core 3, you can send a SIGUSR1 to the cpuspeed process (kill -s SIGUSR1 <cpuspeed proc#>) and it'll bump it up to normal. I just found that out about 5 minutes ago, and haven't looked yet to see what can be changed in the /etc/cpuspeed.conf file to make it work right normally.


Issues I've run into:

Ubuntu:
I was unable to install Ubuntu on this laptop, it would start the installation, but then be unable to remount the cd-rom for some reason.

Fedora (3 and testing 4):
Clock speed issue, basically my system clock would run at double the normal rate when booted into linux. I found a kernel patch that hacks around this (google search on timerhack) and that seems to be working for me. The other suggestion I saw was to boot with "noacpi" but when I tried that the onboard ethernet stopped working.

I've had numerous problems with the touchpad and keyboard. The keyboard doesn't seem to want to work immediately after a reboot.. if I pound on the keys for a minute or two it'll start working normally. The touchpad also won't normally work.. this seems to have something to do with the psmouse driver being intiallized early? I didn't quite understand the explaination... but there were two fixes.. one was to recompile the kernel making psmouse a module, the other was to issue a reset command to the serio device under /sys but I can't find the site that recommended that now..

Then there is the problem with the ati card/display.. right now I'm having to run in vesa mode @ 1024x768.. I haven't been able to get the laptop running in 1200x800 yet in linux.

OK, I had the same problem with the display, can't use anything else other than the VESA driver on fedora, however, Ubuntu detects the graphics card fine, it just doesn't boot up.

If you want to try Ubuntu, I had the same problem with the CD-mounting, but it somehow got solved by burning the image onto a DVD instead... i know it's a waste, but it worked for me.

I am currently trying to get the ATi driver from Ubuntu to work in fedora... I don't know how, but I'm sure there's a way.. coz Ubuntu detects the Xpress right away with no problems... even the resolution is 1280x800 right off the bat.

Try downloading the synaptics driver (google: synaptics linux) it should work fine with a little bit of tweaking.

The noise issue i guess might be either not very noticable, or a defect in my laptop, but i'm willing to live with it. This is the THIRD laptop i've went in and exchanged (1st was different model, second had a dead pixel). If you can try on Windows the following and tell me what happens:

put your ear close to the backspace button on the keyboard, then try and resize a window... do you hear a ticking noise? maybe not, the it's just my luck

TIP: you might need to keep tapping the keyboard for it to work in the ubuntu setup... I think it's a Mapping issue, coz it starts all screwey... the shift key prints 'v' on the screen at first.

I dont know if this problem (Fedora Install) occurs with every zd6000 series, but, I have read some forums that Im not the only one that have this problem.
The installation freezes after boot choices parameters. I already try to use another cd installation, try to use different boot command parameters like:
noapic, nousb, noprob, nousbhotplug, nofireware, noohci1394, nofb, nopcmcia, apm=off, noaccel, resolution=1280x800 and Nothing... in diffent ways and Nothing again...
Im very disapointed !!!
Anyone have a solution for this problem ? PLEASE tell me !!!
Thanks!
Ighor.

First off, for Ubuntu and Debian you need to boot with vga=771 for the setup to work. Second, once you boot to the setup or even the OS hold the FUNCTION KEY and the LEFT SHIFT key at the same time to reset the keyboard driver, your keyboard will then work. Stop pounding on your keyboards during boot up.

As for getting video to work after an install, if it isn't working, I booted into Mepis' live CD and fixed the x-config file from there, because MEPIS will properly detect your video, or at least a working model. I didn't write down the settings, you could just use whatever settings it uses on Ubuntu or Fedora.

I had no CD mounting issues. I used a regular CD. Also Debian SID 64 version works except for the touch pad and it runs slow. Has anyone experienced the laptop running slow after a Ubuntu 32bit, Ubuntu 64 bit, Debian 64 bit install? Upon booting up, my CPU usage is over 50% and the mouse moves slow, etc. Now I'm trying to get Suse to work on it.

I heard the touchpad issue is resolved if you update the kernel. I rather use Debian/Ubuntu so let me know if anyone gets these issues resolved.

I had similar problems with this laptop and the versions of Linux I tried. Thanks for the Left shift + Function key tip!

Mepis was the only distro I was able to boot with. But the keyboard and touchpad didn't work. I did find a Synaptic option in the mouse settings of the Control Center, but I was on the Live CD so I didn't save my changes.

Kubuntu wouldn't boot, even with the noacpi.

Suse 9.3 installed just fine, but rebooted to Grub and then I couldn't get it to boot. Failsafe died detecting my PCI something...

I downloaded the Mandriva amd-64 CD but I'm trying to avoid Mandriva. I have it on my desktop and while it works great, I'm finding weirdness whenever I try to install other packages through the installer.

I also tried Gentoo but I could see that it was going to take more time to install than I wanted to spend right then. I might go back and try it in the future.

Anyway, right now Mepis seems to be the winner on my zv6000 series laptop. Does anyone know of any other distros that work moderately well on this laptop?

Did you get the NIC, sound and wireless card to work on Mepis? If so what did you do? I know on Suse 9.3 someone got it to work, for the wireless they used NDIS. Let me know how you got the sound and NIC working. I'm sure it is simple since it works on other distros, but I haven't played with it lately.

That is odd cause the mouse and keyboard worked fine on Mepis from what I could remember. Did you try the FNC+LShift trick on Mepis?

I didn't install Mepis, I just used the live CD to boot to it. The sound worked right away in the live cd. I found the place to adjust my wireless settings, but since I hadn't installed it those changes weren't saved. I was just playing around.

I didn't try the Function + Left Shift trick in Mepis. I heard about it just tonight. Earlier to get the keyboard working in Mepis I just held down the function key and pressed num lock, break, and sys rq, until I saw the num lock light go on.

I tried to install Ubuntu (because of the ATI drivers that were mentioned earlier in this topic) and the keyboard trick worked great. Then it hung while formatting my partitions. I let it sit there after it hit 100% for about 10 minutes. Then I rebooted to a crashed drive. I'm reformatting and reinstalling WinXP now. I probably won't be trying Ubuntu again.

I'm beginning to think this laptop just won't work with Linux.

The thing that's killing me is that I don't want a lot out of Linux. I don't care about running anything other than a few native apps and getting maybe 5 Windows programs to run. I don't need to run a server, except maybe Samba. I can program in Windows so I'd like to play around with that in Linux, but it's not necessary. But I just keep running into brick walls.

Does anyone know if Mandriva amd-64 works well with this laptop? I'd rather not put another Mandriva on one of my computers and was hoping to use the laptop as a bit of a test bed for a distro to use on my work desktop. It's not going well...

Edit: I should add that the Ubuntu freezing problem I describe here is probably my fault. I tried to install it to a partition that Suse 9.3 created (Reiser) and that I subsequently deleted in WinXP when I realized Suse wasn't going to work.

Hi guys, I'm fairly new to Linux, but I think it's just great !

Today I bought the HP ZV6000 laptop, I wasn't happy with the XP Home, so I got XP Pro running now, and I tried to get my SuSE 9.2 for 64-bit running with dual boot (distro on the DVD).

So far, no success for SuSE 9.2, I got the GUI to install it, but it hangs after the format of the partitions.

After searching the internet and reading these posts, I'm got very disappointed in this new laptop.

I'm trying Mandriva 10.2 (from the limited edition 2005 DVD) as I write, it got through the install, it recognized the sound card and LAN, but I'm afraid to get the display and wireless network working.

I just don't get it, they come out with a 64-Bit processor, and they didn't try loading some distros of Linux on it???
To me it means that the laptop will go back to where it came from... unless someone will convince me soon enough to keep the machine.

Greetzzz

I just purchased a Compaq R4000 and had the same problem installing SUSE 9.2. After partition and formatting to 100%, the installation process just froze with the hard drive light on continuously.

After attempting several boot parameters with no luck, I decided to buy SUSE 9.3. The install worked flawlessly and I'm happy to have a true 64 bit OS on my notebook!

Matt

Hi Area51,

Unlike Matt I didn't have good success with Suse 9.3. When I installed it from the DVD everything went fine and I could get to Grub, but it wouldn't load. I think it hung on the PCI Express (or some PCI entry in the boot process).

I did find a forum where people had reported good success with Fedora Core 4 test 3. Here's a link: http://www.zv6000forums.com/viewforum.php?f=3

I don't think these are really problems with the laptop or HP/Compaq per se. In the old days it used to take a little while before new hardware was fully supported in Windows too. It's more of an issue with Linux catching up with the latest hardware. If you give it a month or two I'm pretty sure that the issues will have been resolved and you'll be able to find more work arounds on the forums.

It's pretty amazing that Linux is as good as it is considering most of the work done on it is voluntary. If someone was waiting on me to voluntarily fix problems like this and release improved drivers, they'd be waiting a lot longer than a month or two.

I did install FC4 on my wife's computer. I'm working out the bugs there before trying it on my zv6015 laptop or my desktop (which I need for work). So far FC4 has been nothing but excellent. I'm very impressed with it.

You're right, it does take a while for them to catch up with the new hardware, and therefor I'm keeping this laptop.
I also downloaded FC4 and that one works really well now !

I'm still looking to get the ATI Radeon Xpress 200M and wireless lan drivers.

Thanks for the info !

Hi all,

I just bought the UK version of the zv 6000, my model is the zv6009EA and Fedora Cora 4 loads up no problems. There are no graphics drivers yet for it, but everything else works. I used ndiswrapper with the windows inf file for the wireless card and use a usb mouse instead of the touchpad.

The generic graphics drivers load the display up at 800x600 which is fine for me as i program on linux and can wait for the graphics drivers. overall fedora core 4 i think is the best at the minute to have this laptop on... just now waiting for the correct drivers to experience the real linux experience.

Benbot

update:
Since I do have the 2.6.10-5 kernel working with ATI's fglrx driver, I figured I'd install the kernel source and patch arch/i386/kernel/io_apic.c to fix the 2x timer/clock issue. Worked like a charm. I also would like to say that I've run the 2.6.11 kernel with DMA enabled( console mode only ) and it's run without problems through many kernel compiles so I think that ATIIXP chipset driver is fine and that the problem resides with the ATI fglrx graphics card driver.

I installed Ubuntu v5.04 and with kernel v2.6.10-5 I was able to get the fglrx driver from ATI working but since the R4000 also has the ATI chipset, DMA was not functioning with this kernel( broken atiixp ).

Here's some of what I did to get stuff up and running with the stock 2.6.10-5-i386 kernel:
notes:
You might have to install your gcc compiler if that's not already installed since the ATI driver needs to compile and link the driver code to your kernel. That also means you'll need to install the kernel-headers if you've not already done that.

1) The trick to getting fglrx working was to first add "Option "noaccel" to the ati driver section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You'll need to do this from the ctl-alt-f1 console when the system first start the Xserver.
2) uninstall the current fglrx driver with Synaptic. Search for fglrx
3) install ATI's driver for the Radeon Xpress 200M using these:
sudo alien fglrx_6_8_0-LATEST-DRIVER.i386.rpm
sudo dpkg --force-overwrite -i fglrx-_6_8_0-LATEST-DRIVER-i368.deb
get the driver here:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...p?folderID=358
4) change all occurances of pci_find_class to pci_get_class in the newly installed fglrx file:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agpgart_be.c ( vi command: :1,$s;pci_find_class;pci_get_class;g )
5) run both build scripts in this order:
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod; sudo sh ./make.sh
cd /lib/modules/fglrx; sudo sh make_install.sh
6) run the Xorg config utility using defaults if you don't know the answers: sudo fglrxconfig
7) install the fireglcontrol application so it's menu icon works:
cd /usr/X11R6/bin; sudo bzip2 -d firecontrol.qt3.gcc3.3.3.bz2
sudo ln -s fireglcontrol.qt3.gcc3.3.3 fireglcontrol

As for kernel 2.6.11, DMA seems to work with this( atiixp loads ) but the ATI driver did not compile with the above steps. I had to apply two patches first. You'll find them here:
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=110

apply these patches and then edit the agpgart_be.c file

This generates a loadable fglrx module for the 2.6.11 Ubuntu kernel but whenever I login to the system/GUI, sortly after, it locks up hard. Even changing the xorg.conf back to the original one with the ati driver module and 'option "noaccel"', it still locks up. This tells me that the atiixp IDE driver might be bad or incompatible with the R4000, or something....

Another note about the R4000 and GNU/Linux, it seems the clock/timer is off on this. I've heard that there passing no_timer_clock to the kernel at bootime will fix this but no with the current 2.6.11 Ubuntu precompile kernel. This results in the CPU running at 50% when it should be idling at 0%.

Getting DMA working is a must since I've seen how fast the default ati driver without acceleration ran when it ran for a short period with DMA enabled. It was faster than the 2.6.10 kernel with the 3D support running on the fglrx driver. Or atleast things loaded/started very fast...

I hope to find others attempting to install GNU/Linux on the Compaq R4000 so we can all hash this out together. I'm sticking with the 32bit stuff now since I could not get Java3D working on the 64bit kernel. Test with the Ubuntu64 LiveCD with Java/Java3D tar'ed from a USB-drive for testing.

UPDATE2:
I got IDE DMA working on the 2.6.10 kernel! So the Compaq R4000 is pretty much fully operations( as far as I'm concerned ). Here's what I did:
1) copy drivers/ide/pci/atiixp.c from the 2.6.11 kernel
2) edit line 346 so that "return" moved to line 347 as "return 0"
3) replace in include/linux/pci_ids.h, lines 346 and 347 with:
3a) #define PCI_DEVICE_ID_ATI_IXP200_IDE 0x4349
3b) #define PCI_DEVICE_ID_ATI_IXP300_IDE 0x4369
3c) #define PCI_DEVICE_ID_ATI_IXP400_IDE 0x4376
4) compile and install the new kernel with IDE DMA working!

So, to recap what's working on a Ubuntu v5.04/Debian install:
1) full ATI proprietary driver( 2D and 3D ) fglrx_6_8_0-8.13.4-1.i386.rpm
2) builtin wifi with ndiswrapper and bcmwl5.inf driver
3) builtin sound, ethernet, usb, 2nd video output, powernowd, pcmcia, touchpad, cdrom
4) Timerhack/2x problem and CD/HD with DMA!
YeAH!

I have the R4000 and I tried to install Mepis 3.3.1 on it. The install went fine but the wireless card does not work, it appears the radio is off. I have SUSE 9.3 downloaded, but I really want Mepis to work.