Hi Guys
I got myself an eMachine laptop today. The specifications are here . From the messages I read I dont think my integrated wireless is gonna work on Linux coz I have a broadcom card. How abt the rest of the stuff. U think it will work fine? Am planning to install Redhat 9. Am a diehard Redhat fan and am running Redhat on my desktop. and I just love it... hope it works with my laptop too.... any inputs are welcome.. will start installing this weekend. Cheers

I have a hp ze4125 that has the same video card. The only video driver selection in Redhat 9.0 that works is the vesa driver. It's ok, but not what the notebook was designed for. You won't have the three d acceleration. But since I am not a gamer, I can live with this.

Yup, I got one of the eMachines as well. I've gotten everything working in v2.4 kernel. I'm trying to get things working with v2.6 kernel.

Yes, Broadcom sucks because linux is an afterthought in support.

On video, you'll have to do some work if you want full video support. Here's the link:

http://bugs.xfree86.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314

I've been able to get xine to work with dvd player as well. I'm not sure of your comfort level with compiling and stuff, but you can get pretty much everything working with some effort and patients.

Sorry, but I do have a correction.

You can get pretty much everything EXCEPT wireless until broadcom comes out with driver or specs.

That Sounds good,.. Couldnt get started on the installation last weekend, so this weekend it is. I guess I can go ahead and buy a PCMCIA wireless card .. at least the rest of the stuff works. .. Am pretty comfy getting down and dirty with compiling. had a desktop (actually still do) and am running Linux quite succesfully on it .... Thanks .. but please dont be surprised if I come back for some help
Cheers

No worries, I'll help when I can.

Lasirona:

A friend of mine has an M5310 and is trying to get Linux running properly. Any chance he could contact you with a few questions?

No problem, I would feel better if the questions were posed here on the message board for all to benefit. Besides, there may be others who have dealt with issues your friend may have run into that I may have not.

If your friend would like to start a fresh thread with getting linux up and running, I think that would be a good idea. We could walk each step for others to also follow. Plus, if there are docs on the net that are not clear we can discuss them as well.

Hi. i'm very new to the world of Linux. Its somthing ive wanted to give a go for some time but havent really got around to it until now.

Ive installed Redhat 9 on my emachines m5310 and so far ive had nothing but troble.

It took me hours to figure out how to get the screen to display properly and now i cant get the modem to work at all.

Can anybody give me any tips on getting the modem to work? from what ive read, its probably going to be tricky, but any assistance in this matter would be greatly received as i'm about to delete the partitions containing linux.


thanks in advance!!!

I have used Mandrake 9.2 RC2 on my 5310 without any problems. However I don't use the modem so I don't even know if it works or not. If Redhat is giving you to much problems you could try Mandrake. Everything pretty much worked out of the box except for the intergrated wireless and possibly the modem. For the wireless I bought a PCMCIA card which installed without a problem.

The only issue you might have is trying to get the laptop to run cool. ACPI seems to be spotty and I have tried for several weeks to get CPUfreq, powernow, and anything else to lower the speed of the CPU when idle. I so far haven't had much luck. Hopefully the 2.6 kernel when released will have fixed a lot of these issues and ACPI support will be as good as it is in windows without the headache.

I was considering Mandrake before i installed red hat. But i read a few horror stories which turned me off to it a bit.

I started out using Fedora which seems pretty much the same as redhat. The only problems being that i followed the instructions to get my screen at 1280 x 800 only to find that each time i tried it, fedora would load but the screen did not display at all. Redhat set the screen up perfectly.

I understand about the ACPI probs and haven't really started looking in to those yet. I want to be able to make sure I can get the things running that i need before i start delving that deep.

I'm really quite frustrated at the moment because ive been attempting to get the modem running for a couple of days and haven't made any progress at all, looking around on the web seems to give me very little in the way of answers.

I want to get in to the world of linux. And hopefully be able to do away with windows completely in the future. At the moment tho, its proving tricky as everything seems to be a stumbing block.

Hi SgtBhaji, If you could give us a little more info and what you've tried. Maybe we can pinpoint it a little better, although I know I won't be a big help. I've used the modem on a laptop several years ago and haven't used it since. I'm not the only one here, but maybe we could give it a try.

I too have a m5310 and it took me a little work to get everything working, so being a newbie I'm sure your pretty frustrated. There's a big learning curve going from winbloze to linux. One of the sites I always start with is http://www.tldp.org. This site has a ton of documentation and you might find something there helpful.

Hi.. thanks for responding to my question.

Well in some ways its tricky for me to say what i've done so far as i'm mainly fumbling my way through it.

ok... let me try and get this in order.

In windows. My modem is identified as a Conexant k56soft data fax modem. So i went and downloaded some free sets of drivers from a site called linuxant i think it was.

My system has a Mobile Athlon processor, so i tried the athlon drivers for redhat 9. installed those. Tried to initiate a connection using wvdial. but it keeps saying that there is no device. Ive tried chaging it to the i686 versions and the i586 versions but still the same prob.

I also ran listmodem on there... but the then showed my modem as Intel 537 [m5457 AC-Link modem]

I have seen people say that i should just get a new modem. but i dont want to do this. I'd have to get a pcmcia modem as an external is out of the question. It would make my portable machine pretty un-portable.


I'm really sorry if my explanation is really scetchy. But i've been dabbling blind and consumed a few too many beers on the process. I'll be honest. Its drivingme nuts.


----------edit-------------
sorry... i suppose i should really ask if somebody can at least point me in the right direction of a starting point. Like i say, i'm new to this and have no real clue if what i have done so far has been done correctly. Any tips for a complete beginner would be appreciated. Thanks again everybody

After sniffing around a little, I would go with the linux hardware driver suggested. One thing I would suggest before going there is to just configure the modem through 'redhat-config-network-gui'. You should be able to create a modem device and then setup the network from there. The device you should use I believe is /dev/ttyS0 (I'm not completely sure, I don't use modems).

Let me know how this goes, if it doesn't work I'm willing to chase it down (Only because I'm going to have to get mine going at some point >;0) ).

hi... thanks for getting back to me once again.

Pardon my ignorance. but what would be the correct driver?

I have tried to set up a modem via the network setup interface, but then i'm confused as to how i test it or dial the connection ive set up. do i use wvdial?

sorry for my complete lack of knowlege in this dept. ive been using Windows too long.