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Distribution: SuSE 9.X, SuSE 10, SLES 9,RedHat, Feodora Gentoo, Solaris, and more
Posts: 50
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Linux on Acer TravelMate 3012WTMi
Hallo All,
Have someone here tested to install linux on a Acer TravelMate 3012WTMi? Any installation problems? Is there problems to get Wlan, Bluetooth and so on to work?
I am thinking on to buy one, and want to have SuSE or Gentoo on it.
why not to "google"? too lazy?*g search linuxonlaptops or tuxmobil webpages....
ps.: on acer usually everything works, except card readers (as usual), firewire (mostly not tested by the people due to lacking devices) and some acpi problems with corrupt dsdt's (nothing else than on other laptops. i myself have an acer tm 4601wlmi, after some time spending for the configuration everything - including suspend to disk and to ram - works, also bluetooth, all usb devices, wlan etc.
I don't think it will be a problem, you will need to install linux with kernel-smp as far as I know because this one supports more than one processor, that's all, why not to try???
Distribution: SuSE 9.X, SuSE 10, SLES 9,RedHat, Feodora Gentoo, Solaris, and more
Posts: 50
Original Poster
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Because I have not oreder the laptop yet, I have 2 alternatives Acer and a Asus. For the Asus was it easy to find information about linux installations on, but I like the Acer better so I will probably buy it!
Distribution: SuSE 9.X, SuSE 10, SLES 9,RedHat, Feodora Gentoo, Solaris, and more
Posts: 50
Original Poster
Rep:
A small report how it went with the installation...
The SuSE 10.1 beta 8 installation (I recommend to take the latest official release instead) on a Acer TravelMate 3012WTMi is a really pain, but the reason of that is mostly the SuSE-beta.
I Had to do a minimal installation first and then upgrade to my real install because when I tried to install everting direct then the installation freeze when it is time for CD 2. It feels like the installation program for the beta is really unstable...
Other problems that turned up was that it is not possible to set the external CD/DVD-player as the first boot alternative in BIOS, then it does not start. To get around this problem set for example usb-cd-player as first boot alternative and the external IEEE1394 cd/dvd to the second alternative and the HD to the third...
I still have to find a way to get the web-cam and my card reader to work...
I have an Acer Aspire 5500 and I have a lot of troubles with OSS 10.0 and FC4 too.
X server crashes every time and I don't know the real problem, may be HorizSync and VertRefresh, but I don't know which values put in xorg.conf.
So everything except the web cam and card reader works? ACPI?
Does Linux work well enough for you to remove Windows without loss of necessary functions?
I'm looking for to buy this computer, but it would be nice if power saving funktions were working properly...
card reader sd will never work due to licence problems. mmc perhaps.
I have opensuse 10.0 on a travelmate 4601wlmi which works fine except the card reader. firewire not tested. bluetooth, usb, ati video card, webcam, dma, suspendtodisk, suspendtoram, dvd, lan, wlan, all works. modem not tested. yesterday I killed my last windoofsxp partition...
Distribution: SuSE 9.X, SuSE 10, SLES 9,RedHat, Feodora Gentoo, Solaris, and more
Posts: 50
Original Poster
Rep:
No windows on my new TravelMate 3012WTMi and it will never be installed on it either ;-).
I have not had time to check the Web-cam and the card reader since my last comment here, because
I have a little other problems because I was stupid to choose the new beta version of SuSE.
For example have I a sound problem, but that is definitely my SuSE that are the problem, it worked with the first Beta version, but after I have upgraded then it doesn't work any longer and I have not found what is wrong yet. OTher beta problems that haveturned up is that my SuSE beta when I upgarde decide to uninstall VMWare server for me (only the server software, NOT the guest operating systems).
The power save functions in SuSE works really well and you can configure them quite much. As I have it now, is it full speed when I have a power and when I on battery then my CPU runs on 1GHz only to save battery time... Test it, I would say that SuSE power save alternative is good enough to change from windows...
Well, since all SD cards are backwards compatible with MMC - Linux uses the MMC method to access the card, since the SD specification is basically under lock and key without a lot of money, and even then the licensing prohibits a FLOSS driver being written (this isn't a problem since no-one uses the DRM part of SD, so treating the device as an MMC card works fine).
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anything special about the Acer card readers?
For the most part, the card readers use chips with proprietary interfaces and no public documentation for developers (e.g. my Acer Aspire 5021WLMi uses a proprietary Texas Instruments FlashMedia chip to handle the memory cards. TI being their usual selves have released no useful specs or information for driver writers, so the only alternative is to reverse engineer the Windows driver - but so far, there's only one person working on that project).
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