Ubuntu Forums - View Single Post - Ubuntu 7.10 on a Acer Aspire 5315 Gemstone

bytor4232 · 01:13 AM

I picked up the $348.00 deal Friday morning at 8am. Our Wal-mart had 20 of them, I got the 15th one. I've been working on it ever since, trying to get everything working. Here are some helpful, if not somewhat cryptic, ramblings from my travels.

First order of business, Vista had to GO. Ubuntu installed quick, and impressed me with as much as it got working. This is all pretty new hardware, and I expected nothing to work properly. And in true Linux Zealot fashion, I wiped everything, burning all bridges to Microsoft forever. Bye Bye Windows Recovery partition.

After you get through the install, which is painless, first things first, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and disable the synaptics driver. It doesn't work right. Once you comment out the line, looks like InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" under serverlayout twords the end of the file, the touch pad started working properly. The middle button even acts as a scroll mouse. Obviously, you need to restart X.

Wireless was a pain. I tried all the madwifi drivers, and no luck. I even tried ndiswrapper, and the version shipped with Gutsy is too old. You need to download the most recent version, mine is using 1.49. Next you have to download the Windows XP drivers for the wireless device. The vista drivers don't work. You'll need to apt-get install build-essential to compile ndiswrapper. Oh, every kernel update will need this rebuilt and installed, so make sure you save it somewhere sane. i put mine in /drv.

Here are the two files you need for the wireless:
http://arthur.jfmi.net/ndiswrapper-1.49.tar.gz
http://arthur.jfmi.net/Wireless_Athe...XB62(WHQL).zip

After uncompressing the Atheros driver, its located in Wireless_Atheros_V5.3.0.67_XP_XB63_XB62$WHQL$/Drivers/XP-x32/

To install the driver, run ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf

Before you reboot, you need to blacklist the non-working driver (madwifi):

echo "blacklist ath_pci" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

And put ndiswrapper at the end of /etc/modules

As for the sound, no luck. I tried updated alsa to the latest rc, tried installing from mercurial, and even upgraded the kernel to 2.6.23.1. No luck so far. However, it doesn't really bother me. I have two portable DVD players, one plays divx, and I have an iPod Nano. I have all the portable entertainment I need, what I have to have is a portable wireless workstation, and I'm to that point with this baby. Besides, this isn't a bug specific to Acer Aspire's. Pretty much all the most recent laptops all use the intel HDA drivers, and none of them are working right. There is bugs out to Alsa, Kernel, Ubuntu, and most major distributions. It will sort itself out in time.

All in all, I'm extreamly happy with this laptop. The display is beautiful, the wireless strong even with winXP drivers. This pretty much is the laptop I've always dreamed of. Besides my 7 year old Compaq is really starting to show its age.

You can email me at arthur(at)jfmi.net if you need any help. I'll post when sound starts working.

November 3rd, 2007	#6
bytor4232 5 Cups of Ubuntu Join Date: Feb 2007 Beans: 32	Re: Ubuntu 7.10 on a Acer Aspire 5315 Gemstone I picked up the $348.00 deal Friday morning at 8am. Our Wal-mart had 20 of them, I got the 15th one. I've been working on it ever since, trying to get everything working. Here are some helpful, if not somewhat cryptic, ramblings from my travels. First order of business, Vista had to GO. Ubuntu installed quick, and impressed me with as much as it got working. This is all pretty new hardware, and I expected nothing to work properly. And in true Linux Zealot fashion, I wiped everything, burning all bridges to Microsoft forever. Bye Bye Windows Recovery partition. After you get through the install, which is painless, first things first, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and disable the synaptics driver. It doesn't work right. Once you comment out the line, looks like InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" under serverlayout twords the end of the file, the touch pad started working properly. The middle button even acts as a scroll mouse. Obviously, you need to restart X. Wireless was a pain. I tried all the madwifi drivers, and no luck. I even tried ndiswrapper, and the version shipped with Gutsy is too old. You need to download the most recent version, mine is using 1.49. Next you have to download the Windows XP drivers for the wireless device. The vista drivers don't work. You'll need to apt-get install build-essential to compile ndiswrapper. Oh, every kernel update will need this rebuilt and installed, so make sure you save it somewhere sane. i put mine in /drv. Here are the two files you need for the wireless: http://arthur.jfmi.net/ndiswrapper-1.49.tar.gz http://arthur.jfmi.net/Wireless_Athe...XB62(WHQL).zip After uncompressing the Atheros driver, its located in Wireless_Atheros_V5.3.0.67_XP_XB63_XB62\(WHQL\)/Drivers/XP-x32/ To install the driver, run ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf Before you reboot, you need to blacklist the non-working driver (madwifi): echo "blacklist ath_pci" \| sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist And put ndiswrapper at the end of /etc/modules As for the sound, no luck. I tried updated alsa to the latest rc, tried installing from mercurial, and even upgraded the kernel to 2.6.23.1. No luck so far. However, it doesn't really bother me. I have two portable DVD players, one plays divx, and I have an iPod Nano. I have all the portable entertainment I need, what I have to have is a portable wireless workstation, and I'm to that point with this baby. Besides, this isn't a bug specific to Acer Aspire's. Pretty much all the most recent laptops all use the intel HDA drivers, and none of them are working right. There is bugs out to Alsa, Kernel, Ubuntu, and most major distributions. It will sort itself out in time. All in all, I'm extreamly happy with this laptop. The display is beautiful, the wireless strong even with winXP drivers. This pretty much is the laptop I've always dreamed of. Besides my 7 year old Compaq is really starting to show its age. You can email me at arthur(at)jfmi.net if you need any help. I'll post when sound starts working. Last edited by bytor4232; November 3rd, 2007 at 01:13 AM..